Pieta

One of the world’s best known pieces of sculpture is the “Pieta”.  Latin for “pity” it depicts a weeping Virgin Mary holding the broken, dead body of her son, Jesus.  Christ is prone, across her lap, his arms hanging to the floor.  Mary looks with sadness and love, motherly love, at the body of her dear son.

That came to mind this week as I thought about mothers.  As I wrote a few weeks ago, my younger brother, my only sibling, passed away.  He lived a difficult life punctuated, I imagine, by moments of joy such as at the birth of his daughter.  My brother had a very difficult relationship with our mother.  He lashed out at her frequently.  He could be – and regularly was – verbally abusive.  For much of his adult life he was full of anger and self-pity.  He needed someone to blame and that fell on my mom.

My mom isn’t perfect.  She’s half Italian, half Irish and three-quarters worried what everyone thinks.   But, on her own she was her congregation’s visitation committee.  Birthdays, anniversaries, celebrations, tragedies, it’s my mom who gets cards and meals out.  She goes to hospitals and nursing homes every week.  She was able to reach and help so many, yet my brother was unreachable.  So many times in my life I remember her eyes welling up with tears as she’d whisper “he hates me”. 

Then a strange thing happened.  As my brother lay dying those last few difficult weeks it was my mother he called for.  Going in and out of lucidness he’d call “where’s mom?” and mom was always there.  My father, a stoic Korean War Veteran, couldn’t stay in the room and watch my brother’s life ebb.  He would walk out, go around the hospital halls.  Not my mom.  She took his laundry (t-shirts, pajama bottoms) each night and brought them back fresh the next morning.  When Mark lost his appetite, she made rice pudding (one of his favorites) and fed it to him.

The morning my brother died my mother had spent the night “I just had a sense,” she told me.  At 4:30 am she called my father at the house.  “You need to come back.”  My dad arrived just a few minutes before Mark took his last breath.  My mother never left his side.

A mother’s love.  I have seen grown men in here, men who have been stabbed, beaten, shot, kept in solitary for months, who have never shed a tear in their lives until their mothers passed.  And then?  I’ve seen them weep uncontrollably.  A guy I respect in here told me early on a piece of advice I’ve thought about these past few weeks.  He said “if his mother hasn’t given up on him, he’s still got a chance.”  For nine months after my arrest my father refused to speak to me.  My mom?  Multiple times each week she wrote. No matter what I did I knew my mom still believed I could overcome this.

Shortly after our second son was born, he developed a severe respiratory infection.  His oxygen level hovered, at times, in very dangerous levels.   Our family physician lived in our neighborhood.  He debated hospitalizing our young son but, knowing us and being willing to come by our house anytime we called, he allowed us to keep our son at home.  We were both exhausted.  At one point, late in the evening, I fell asleep on the couch.  When I awoke I looked across the room.  There, sitting in our recliner was my wife.  She held our son to her chest.  He slept soundly under her watchful gaze, his fist hours of restful sleep in days.

I looked at the two of them for the longest time trying to fathom the mystery of a mother’s love.  She would not close her eyes, she would not move while her child lay sleeping. 

Last Wednesday would have been my brother’s 49^th birthday.  I sent my folks a card and called Thursday.  My mother wept when she spoke to me.  “Yesterday was tough,” she told me.  I get that.  She carried that child.  She birthed that child.  She was there when her baby breathed his last.

Thanksgiving is here.   The past few months have given me a new perspective on life, a new sense of hope.   I am thankful for this experience.  More than anything, I’m thankful that my eyes have been opened about my mom.