HAPPY ARE THE WISHES

Today is my wife Ellen’s birthday! She is once again 25 as she was the day she became a mother for the first time. In all those years of being a mother, she was steady, consistent, devoted to her kids, and loving.

She is a special mother who has given her all to those children, and I say this as an up-close observer of what she has endured. No one deserves to be called ‘mother or mom’ more than she does.

Heartbreak is for the weak; she is strong. What she has endured no one should have to. When your child is born with a disability it is unfair. Your dreams for that child are quickly crushed and you become the mom of a child with special and intensive needs, your heart breaks for that mom. Ellen has endured it twice.

As a mom you carry a child for nine hard months, each successive month harder than the last, knowing that next month will be even harder. Knowing too, that the last month will bring forth the process of birth and all that it means to a mother’s body, and the subsequent months of after-birth. And after that ordeal to see that child pass before her very eyes tearing out the heart and soul of that woman. She has endured that too.

If a child is in trouble or despair, she takes her leave to be next to that child either in a hospital or in a plane to travel 2,000 miles away, she will be there. Like many of you, she is a mom, the most important word in the languages of the World

The birthday girl

She has taken on the heartbreak of losing her daughter-in-law as if she was her own, for, in reality, she was. She consoled her son and grandchildren and even helped me. 

So, today I will celebrate her, while we try to celebrate her birthday and her children, living and dead. The day itself is but a date in the annals of unscripted devotion by this woman, and the devotion like a rising sunrise is all I can see, the tears fill my eyes for the gratitude that she is the mother of my children and hope the sunrise never sets.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOM!