Remembering Mommy: Forty Years Later
I have never been a family photo posting person, but a reminder popped up on my phone. August 7, marks the 40th anniversary of my mother’s death. Yet in my mind, when I remember hearing that she had died while I was in the midst of studies at Ulpan Akiva, it seems like yesterday. The notification came as a shock to me. The last I had heard, only weeks earlier, she was happily moving from a nursing home into an independent living apartment. Her health, mood, and relationship with God had all improved. Then, out of the blue, she was no longer here.
I’ve shared a lot about my relationship with my mother in my book, Connecting the Dots of a Disconnected Life: Hope for a Fractured Soul. As I ponder the 40 years since she died, I am amazed at the work God has done in our relationship. I believe relationships are eternal, and I do think my relationship with Mommy is a case in point. God was still healing my attitude toward her when I wrote my book. I just did a search of the manuscript and found that I referred to her as “mommy” 26 times, whereas I mentioned “my mother” 255 times.
The Distance Between Us
I don’t remember when exactly, but somewhere between junior high and high school I stopped calling my mother “mommy” and started referring to her as “Mother” or “Mamma.” Anything to distance myself from her. Anything to prove that I’d grown up and away from her. But the cliché is true: a rose by any other name is still a rose. And for better and for worse, my mommy was and always will be my mommy. I won’t waste time here to go into all the details, if you really want to know more, I share it all in my book. But I can summarize the distance between us like this: there was once a time when I remember praying that when I died, since eternity and heaven had to be a very big place, would God please keep my mother on one side of heaven, and me on the other?
Nowadays, when I think of her, it is not as the woman she was—who had been terribly hurt and endured griefs I will never fully comprehend—but as the redeemed child of God living forever with her Heavenly Father and Savior, and all the other redeemed who went on before her, and have since come after.
I look forward to the day when I can hear her testimony, and more importantly, say, “Mommy, I love you. Thank you for the good things you gave me.”
Perhaps this is one of the positive sides of growing older. I’ve been discovering new reasons to thank God for making me my mother’s daughter. I feel closer to her now than I ever did during her lifetime, with one exception. A year before she died we had our first-ever talk, not just as mother and daughter, but as friends. It was the only adult conversation we ever had, but in many ways it set the course for the rest of our lives.
In Honor of My Mother
It seems appropriate that today, 40 years after my mother’s dead, I honor her memory and thank God for the mother He gave me. I hope you enjoy these photos and a glimpse into my early life, and into the woman God used to help shape me into the woman I am today.
To view the photo album, click on a picture below to see it enlarged with descriptive text. Click the pale white arrows to the far right or left of your screen to move to the next picture. If you are reading this post via email, you may need to visit my website to view the album.
Ruth Cole McGarvey Shapiro: December 30, 1923—August 7, 1986
I am so thankful that God’s redemptive work did not end with my mother’s death. She is with Him above, and He is with me here below, continuing His redeeming work.
About the featured image on my website: The featured image is an AI-enhanced restoration of one of our family photographs. The original photograph appears in the album above.
