Reflections

Dear Mommy

• By fannieb
• August 15, 2016
• No Comments

Well, Mommy I made it three years without you.  And I’m alive. You planted a seed in me when you told Mark, the Hyundai car salesman, that a 3-year lease, not a 5-year car note, was all you needed, because you would only live three. After you died, fulfilling that prediction, I started to believe that my days would wind down within three years too.

You see, Daddy died three years before you did. And your accurate prediction gave me pause. It made me think that perhaps my turn would be next, three years from your death. However it fostered a sense of purpose, instead of a feeling of gloom and doom, surprisingly. I thought, What did I want to get out of life? What did I want to experience?, if my time was running short. The answer was happiness, a sense of peace, and to make you and Daddy proud.

So I set out to find peace and live my life in a way you would be proud of. This led me to adopt greater strength and resolve rather than a victim mentality, even when I felt hopeless about my circumstances.  It led me to pursue a career in which I touch and help people through mentoring, coaching, and, yes, teaching.

Remember when you said to me, “Whatever you do don’t become a teacher.” all those years ago? I took your advice to heart because, I saw how unhappy being a teacher made you, at least for most of your career.  In the end, what you came to know was that it wasn’t teaching you disliked, but the bureaucracy surrounding it. Your last few years were happy ones working for a unique kind of principal. I remember your coming home after your last day and bawling.  I remember asking you, “What’s the matter, Mommy?”  To which you replied, ” I just retired.”  That was not the reaction I’d expected to see from you, not at all.

So now I understand that teaching is noble.  And there are all kinds of ways and places to teach.  I’m building my own business centered around helping people find meaning, purpose, and contentedness, even joy, by teaching them new ways to see things, teaching them how to increase their consciousness.  And while I am only at the beginning, I’m finding I am having some impact. I am becoming a leader at work, lifting people’s spirits and giving them something in which to believe.  My book, which I’ll release in October, will help catapult me to the next stage. Overall I feel good. Life is good.

I miss you so much, Mommy.  Thank you for all that you sacrificed for me, so that I could have this wonderful life.  I know you are still here with me, in spirit, and that you can see all that I’m doing.  You are probably mystically responsible for so much of what I’ve accomplished.  I love you.

I’m not sure how to close this letter.  So I’ll leave it here with this: Thank you for being my guide in life, and now, too.  Please don’t let three years be the end of your tutelage of me in spirit.  It doesn’t have to be.

I love you with all my heart,

Trish

Photo Credit: abbamouse