My siblings and I lost our mom in November of 1988. That means that today is the 20th Mother’s Day we have spent without her – or at least without her here. And maybe even that’s not the best way to put it, because there are some very real ways in which she still is here. You don’t live as vibrantly and as lovingly as she did without leaving a lasting impression on your loved ones.
I’m not into poetry as much as I should be, but I know a magnificent poem when I read one. Over the last couple of days, I have been finishing up my latest CD review for the Journal of Singing- and of the CDs at hand included Chester Biscardi’s setting of this Emily Dickinson poem:
Mama never forgets her birds,
Though in another tree –
She looks down just as often
and just as tenderly.
As when her little mortal nest
With cunning care she wove –
If either of her sparrows fell
she notices above.
Emily Dickinson had lost someone close to her – a beloved aunt, I believe – shortly before she wrote this poem which likens a mother that has died to a mother bird that has just flown to a different tree but still looks down with care and concern.
I believe that. And my mom looks down not only on her four baby birds- but on their babies, too. . . Aidan and Anna and Kaj and Henry. . . babies she never got to meet but babies she loves all the same.
pictured: one of the best gifts I ever got – Kate Barrow had a friend of hers do this drawing of my mom, based on the best photograph we have of her. Underneath in calligraphy is the text to my song “Mother’s Love.” It was on Mother’s Day maybe five or six years ago that this was given to me and it hangs in my studio.