A Mother’s Day Story: My Mother’s Legacy To My Daughter

I want to wish all of the mothers a most special day today. I believe that being a mother has been one of the hardest, as well as, one of the most rewarding jobs I have ever had. After having my own children, I now have a fuller appreciation for all the wonderful things my own mother did for me.

This is my lovely mother! Happy Mother’s Day, Mom! My mother is my style icon, my biggest supporter, and my best friend. My mother has taught me so many life lessons. I believe the greatest lesson she taught me was The Golden Rule.

Just as my grandmother taught my mother, I have tried to teach the golden rule to my children. I pray that my children have a teachable heart so that they will take these life lessons and use them in their lives.  My mother has taught me so many valuable lessons, however, I think her greatest gift to me, my children and future grandchildren, is the book she has written about her childhood and losing her father in World War II.

In my mother’s book, When Daddy Comes Home, she poignantly recounts losing her father when she was only five years old. Her father, {my grandfather}, was killed in action during World War II only one week before the war ended. My mother spent much of her adult life trying to fill the hole left by the loss of her father. At the age of sixty two, my mother asked her mother to see the letters she had received from her father during the war.

My grandmother found the letters and she and my mother began pouring over what had been buried for six decades. The reading of her father’s letters began the healing of my mother’s loss and the reconciliation with the fact that her father never came home. My mother’s book, When Daddy Comes Home, is a story of loss but is also tells a profound love story between her mother and father.

What struck me the most after reading my mother’s book, was how terribly strong my grandmother and mother were. My grandmother was left with 3 children and no means of supporting them. Through grit and pure determination she managed to provide for them. My mother, at the ripe age of five years old, became the chief caregiver for her siblings when her mother was at work. The end of the war also marked the end of her carefree childhood.

My grandmother and mother were survivors. I now understand when I see my daughter dig her heels in and make her mind up to do something that this is simply her legacy. She is the product of generations of strong women who will do whatever it takes to get the job done.

So, to all the mothers who have sacrificed to raise your children, I wish you the Happiest Mother’s Day of all. And to my own mother and grandmother, thank you for making me the person I am today.