Una Mona in Bogota: It May Be a Bittersweet Month

I do realize that it’s June as I write this, yet my reflections are from the month of May. That’s part of the sweet side. I usually have a few days, right at the end, when I can reflect... after nine months of nonstop brain labor, such reflections are restful.

Nine months of brain labor. Nined months of investing into the hearts and minds of children, children who I may never see and probably will never work with again. Thus the bitterness. I love “my kids” as I call my students. I may tire, yet I hate the thought of losing them. See comments accompanying pictures.

That one’s obvious I guess. May is more than that, though. May has holidays... Memorial Day, Mother’s Day. Truth be known, the former means little to me. We brand sometimes. Often it’s my first weekend off, so I’ll gad about the country a bit. Maybe the start of summer activities, but nothing life-changing or significant.

Mother’s Day is different. I have a great mom, of course; more than we 7 who bear her last name would champion that statement. The truth is, though, that Mother’s Day for us is the date of bittersweetness....

One year ago, on the eve of the holiday, I returned fromColombia. My mom was thrilled. She invited friends over and I wound up being more honored than she, unfortunately. It was GOOD to be with my family, to eat hearty healthy food, to have hugs all around and feel NM sunshine. Many stories to be told, much of life to catch up... yet for me, it was sad. I left my “mothering” role, my almost 4 year old, miles away. I left the only circle of friends who lived nearby that I’d ever had, including one of the best friends I’d ever had. I left a language, a classroom, a people that I loved, not knowing when I could return. Sometimes, even now, my heart longs for my “tierra querida.”

Two years ago came a blow greater for all of us. My beloved “Grandma,” my dad’s mother, had a stroke on Mother’s Day weekend. The memories are choppy: moments by her bed, moments of stories, relief at some news, and tears at other. A family scattered united in the hospital... Grandma’s greatest wish was for all of us to visit at once. She heard our “Happy Mother’s Day” greetings, this we know... that perhaps is one of the sweetest notes, for the following morning she met Jesus as we met the dawn. She is with Jesus, for this we are thankful, yet how much we’ll miss her. Always she valued relationship, so I can I pray for the sweetness of her memory to influence us - a lady in every sense of the word, a lady who could make the least refined feel welcome in her home, who understood the art of being a keeper of the home.

Back to Mother’s Day I must refer to my mom. She, certainly, probably most remembers Mother’s Day of 2001. My older brother had had a rough couple of weeks; we’d gone to visithim along with family friends. All of us, playing happily in the pool, then we realized that our precious baby Danny, my six year old autistic, cp brother, was missing. We searched, we prayed, we cried. We found him, but it was too late. The angels had taken Danny. The results were final the next day. Joe said, “Well, if he’s in heaven, he can have sugar now!”

Yes, he’s in heaven. The sweetness of that thought carried us through and encourages us all to look toward Jesus, the Author of our faith, the Author of our story, the Author of bittersweet moments which remind us of the comfort despite our earthly trials.

We know not what next May will hold, but we know Whom we have believed. We are persuaded that He is able to keep that which we’ve committed unto Him against that day.

(P.S. I’m not technological enough to paste my old pictures; instead I’ll share new ones with a similar significance and a relation to the memories)