Sweet, funny, joyful, wonderful, sunny, gentle, strict, sad, delicate, emotional – that’s my mom. I don’t remember her being bad at all. Of course, like any person, she got angry (who among us is completely free of anger?), did foolish things (she was only human!), and was sometimes unfair (not everyone can boast of being completely just).
But when I think about her, I always picture us laughing together until we couldn’t stop, coming up with new jokes and ignoring the dullness of everyday life. I remember how she smiled at me, lying in my crib, when I was still under four years old.
I remember how she used to pull me on a sled to kindergarten, how she took me to the cinema and the theater, how she sewed (and she sewed so well!) me beautiful little dresses.
When I was in school, it wasn’t easy for us. Not that we were struggling financially, but emotionally, it was incredibly tough for the two of us.
Unfortunately, we were such different people that even our strong familial bond and love couldn’t always bring us together. Now, with sadness, I look back at the time when I couldn’t (and didn’t want to) understand her.
I justified myself by saying that she didn’t try to understand me either. But now, after she’s gone, I realize that I could have extended her life if I had loved her more, if I hadn’t let anger, resentment, and selfishness take control of my mind. Now I know that sometimes what prevents us from loving those close to us, loving them “as ourselves,” is precisely this. You can’t love a boss, you can’t love a troublesome neighbor, and you can even not love your children. But how can we live without loving our parents, who gave us life, who sacrificed their time, pleasures, and even refused themselves that new dress or a jar of crabs, just so their child could have a new backpack or shoes that already looked like they were made for them?
I don’t want to write a treatise about the importance of loving our parents. I just want to express how much they sometimes lack our love. When we’re children, we think the world should love US.
Youthful maximalism and selfishness give us the certainty that we are better than others and therefore deserve love and recognition more than anyone else. But why do we forget about the people who gave us life? Why do we sometimes forget those people who are right there with us, who are so incredibly lonely… while we remain oblivious to loneliness? We think that everyone around us wants to lecture us, force us to do things we don’t want to do, control us. But in reality, parents desperately want us not to make their mistakes, they want us to be happy, because in truth, nothing and no one is more precious to them than us.
I don’t want you to think I’m being overly sentimental. It’s just that only when my mom died did I realize how deeply I love her and how much I miss her. For two more years, I dreamed a dream where she came back to life. In the dream, she was joyful, healthy, happy. And I was happy that she was back with me. But each time, the dream ended, and I woke up.
And honestly, I can’t describe the bitterness and pain that arose when I realized it was just a dream. Of course, I’m an adult, I can handle any hardship. But this pain, it seems, can’t be soothed by anything…