Mother’s Day was fast approaching, and my mother’s death was now years in my rear view mirror. Our local newspaper placed an ad for a story contest. The theme was something to the affect “what was the best lesson you learned from your mother”.

I knew the editors were looking for the obligatory heartwarming, sentimental mush that most local rags peddle on the holidays. Knowing the editor’s probably wouldn’t have the courage to acknowledge that not everyone has parental memories that warm you like the hottest hot chocolate on a bitter winter’s day, I submitted the story hoping for some editorial hutzpah. Fiction writing isn’t my thing, so the story I crafted was as real as the memory of my mother’s torment taking itself out on me, her words piercing me like cold steel.

Forgiveness is an amazing grace, offered to all who will lay down the hurt, the pain, and the damage done in the wake of another’s brokenness.  “To err is human, to forgive divine”, so says Alexander Pope.  It is the Divine alone that changed my hardened heart, allowing the eruption of grace to forgive even her.

WHAT I LEARNED FROM MY MOTHER

She taught me to fear, and to be invisible so as to avoid her drunken wrath.  She taught me shame.  She taught me to run from the reality that is me, in the bottom of a bottle of vodka.  She taught me that the lies she fed me daily about myself would be my sustenance, and would all come true.

But what she ultimately showed me was that forgiveness could restore even the deepest wounds.  She showed me there are second chances and healing in a life of sobriety.  Demonstrated through tearful cries, God showed me that we could all find redemption.

I held mom safely in my arms as she slipped closer to God and eternity, and she told me that she loved me.  That’s the best lesson I learned from my mom.