By Rosie Preston
Dear readers,
Mother’s Day will be celebrated this coming Sunday, and I have bittersweet emotions. I love my dear mother so much. Yet, as I visit her at the nursing home where she has been a resident for several years, my main heart wants more than anything to be able to care for her. But I cannot.
I visit and I listen to her talk about my daddy, who passed away in 2008. However, she does not remember that, so the poem she wrote covers many factors we all face in our lives, and I believe my mom’s poem can be appreciated by all mothers who love their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren every day.
There are many different mothers you will meet along the way who don’t follow the path that God has given them. As you may know, not all mother’s love their children and not all mothers are there for them. I am thankful my mother chose to cook, clean, hem our dresses, iron my hair and make sure we had clean clothes to wear, and she always washed our clothes and dried them. And I, being much younger, did not appreciate that she is a one-in-a-kind mother. She is a mother who made the choice to be there, to stay at home, and most of all, to be there for her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and now five great-great-grandchildren.
Of course, in her present condition the younger ones will never know the sacrifices my mother made, but I have lived long enough to understand more than ever that the love I feel for her now is a different kind of love – a love that appreciates and understand all the above that I have shared with you.
On this Mother’s Day, I will pray and thank God for every day my mother has to remember most of her family members and the happiness and love that she continues to share with her family!
So, on behalf of Mother’s Day, I’d like to share a poem written by my mother, Shirley Preston.
Puzzles
Can a heart sing and cry at the same time, or is life a puzzle never to be put in place?
I heard your voice, I know not why. And suddenly wanted to cry, to sing, and to dance, or anything.
Could only a voice do such fantastic things?
Because I love you, I feel this way. So today I was happy in a curious way.
I know you know the way I care, know the way I care. I know not why, it’s always been there, from the very start.
You were mine alone, a love as this I’ve never known.
So, if I hear your voice again, blowing in the wind, or swirling in a stream, I’ll listen again.
I’m not really here, I’ll say and bow my head and thank God above for a love I had.
I’m a pebble, a leaf, a robin, a swan, different things to everyone.
I’m me, I’m here, I’m she, I’m them. I’m what’s best for everyone.
So, I’m a puzzle, the pieces scattered, so I’ll laugh, I’ll cry, I’ll sing, and I’ll dance, and never shall I give one a chance to pick up the pieces, or put them together.
That life would be finished and the puzzle complete.
I’m only the beginning, I’m not on the shelf, like a completed puzzle put away and forgotten about.
Keep Smiling, Rosie