This week was my parent’s wedding anniversary.  It is strange for me to realize that they celebrated only 26 anniversaries together before my mother died, stranger still to realize that nearly twice that number of years have passed since.

I had a vivid memory of their anniversary the summer after I was first married.  I was finishing grad school, we were about to move to a long distance for my (then) husband to start grad school and Mom called me.  We chatted for a few and then she asked me if there was anything I wanted to say to her.  I could not think of anything and there was a short silence. Then she reminded me that it was their wedding anniversary.  

I could not believe I had forgotten.  As a child, I always made a fuss over their anniversary.  My brother and I would walk to the shopping center, heading for the department store.  Our money pooled, I would pick out yet another useless serving piece that I thought was beautiful. My mother was never less than enthusiastic in her appreciation but, in truth, the silver coffee urn and its shiny companions never left the bottom of her china cabinet.

Thinking about that moment made me think about the relationship that she and I had, about how patient and loving and level she always was and how challenging I often was. I realize now, as a parent myself, how many times I said or did things that upset hurt her or disappointed her.

I wasn’t always a terror but I was never easy. The dresser drawer full of “I’m sorry” notes that I found in her bedroom after her death, began with crayoned pictures, progressed to misspelled apologies and was complete with long, handwritten letters that were both justifications as well as efforts to create peace.

When my mother died, I was 25, with an 18 month old child and a newly launched career. I had just begun to realize who my mother was and all that she had always done for me. She gave me everything she had, she poured her love into every interaction, she supported me, she made anything she could possible, no matter what. I never told her that I recognized and appreciated who she was and all that she had done. I never thought, even at the end, that she was really dying, that she would be gone from my life.

We didn’t have the time to have the adult relationship I wish we had, there was no opportunity for her to see the parts of her that I now see so clearly in myself. We didn’t have a chance for me to make up for all the difficult moments, to share without drama, and for her to answer the so many questions I still have. Most of all I wish that I had been the daughter she deserved, the one I hope that I grew into being.

There is no going backwards in life. Only forward. And nothing is guaranteed. If we only have today, if we only have now, let us remember to fill our own hearts as well as the hears of those we love.