Mother's Day 2011

This Mother's Day was Mom's first since Dad's death, and it's a little hard to imagine what she must have been feeling, although I am sure that with every new event or holiday, there is another first that she has to deal with. The weather was beautiful today, though, and I had talked to Dave previously and knew that he was going over to Mom's house to do some work cleaning up the flower beds and planting some flowers. This seemed like a very nice way to honor Mom, so my whole family went to pay our respects and pitch in.

Dave and I were apparently thinking along the same lines, which is no surprise given the years living there as kids. Growing up, the two kinds of flowers that could pretty much always be found at our house were geraniums and marigolds. When we arrived (with a few pots, some geraniums, and some other plants), Dave was already out front planting marigolds.

As Dave has written in a post over on his blog, there is something peaceful about having your hands in the dirt, and that was certainly true today. Being on my hands and knees in the yard of the house I grew up in, with my wife and kids playing and talking to Mom, and my brothers working alongside me did make for a very pleasant afternoon. But there was one bittersweet thought that kept occurring to me; we were doing Dad's work. We shouldn't have been doing what we were doing, because he should have been. It made me glad to be there, and sad to have to be there at the same time, if that makes sense.

So thanks to Dave for the idea to go there and do this today, because I think we not only honored our mother, but honored the memory of our father as well.