A bittersweet box of Mother's Day chocolates to all the moms out there

[thatcrazycajun]

Ever since August of 1995, hearing the very words "Mother's Day" has caused my teeth to grit and my heart to ache. That would be the month my mother, June Ann Girouard Leger Holder, died of cancer.

Mama was 56 and had many more years coming to her, based on average life expectancy; she didn't smoke or drink or have any other vices really (unless you count her chocolate addiction, which I inherited from her), and had no genetic predisposition to which I was privy. And as she was the only one in my immediate family I was at all close to growing up, and the only one who came even close to grokking me, this still rankles me. (I still suspect she got the cancer that so baffled her doctors chiefly from living in two of the most polluted states in the Union, Texas and Louisiana, most of her life. There's a reason the lower Mississippi Valley is nicknamed "Cancer Alley," as my Songbird or anyone else at CDC could tell you...but that's a rant for another day.)

But as I contemplate this decade and more without her, as well as the years both my grandmothers have been gone (Alice Girouard followed her daughter in death by barely a year, and Clotile Chiasson Leger died in 1986), I realize that I can get so wrapped up in my own loss that I forget how wonderful and precious all the other mothers in my life have been, and continue to be. And how lucky I am to still have so many of them in my life, to one degree or another.

So on this Mother's Day 2007, a toast and a big box of bittersweet chocolates:

• To my sisters-in-law, Susan Thibodeaux Leger and Darla Robin Leger, both of whom managed to raise loving and responsible kids despite the handicap of being married to my brothers;
   
• To my Aunt Tessie, legally Theresa Girouard Decou, mother of my first cousin and dear friend Margie, who grew up to become a pretty neat mom in her own right, Margaret Decou Beridon;
   
• To Lucy Simpson Leger, RN, who took my father's pain and loneliness after being divorced by my mother and eased it, as she did so many others' in a long nursing career, and built a marriage (the second for both) that still stands today, as well as raising some fine children and grandchildren herself (happy Momsday to you too, Linda!);
   
• To Jane Mulholland, mother of my precious Songbird and widow of James Mulholland, who raised a big, boisterous Irish Catholic brood of six (with hubby away on business half the time, yet!) and lived to tell of it;
   
• To Denise Mulholland Martineau, daughter of Jane, Songbird's younger sister and now a mother of her own two daughters, who has opened her home and her heart to both of us numerous times (including the Gallbladder Crisis of 2004);
   
• To pocketnaomi and folkmew and suecochran and ericavdg and pagawne and telynor and one_undone and daisy_knotwise and all the other terrific moms on my friends list;
   
• And all the other women (some no longer with us) whose motherhood made possible all of the people I know and know of that I have admired and loved and cherished.

I wish each and every one of you a very happy and relaxing Mother's Day. Goddess knows, some of you will likely need it—and all of you have richly earned it.

Comments

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

God bless them all!

[ericavdg.livejournal.com]

Aw, gee! Thanks!

[wolfette]

I get it twice - Mother's Day in the UK is in March, then two months later all my US friends start with the "happy Mother's Day" stuff.

My mother's birthday was always a day or so away from the UK Mother's Day.