Me with my mom in January 2020, right before COVID restrictions stopped visits to care centers. I saw little of Mom in the final years of her life due to the pandemic. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo January 2020 by Randy Helbling)
TODAY, JANUARY 13, MARKS three years since my mom died. I hadn’t intended to write about this anniversary date. But then two friends blogged on topics that changed my mind.
My dear friend Beth Ann from North Carolina, who blogs at It’s Just Life, writes today about observing a grocery store encounter between a daughter and elderly mother that reminded her of her sweet mom whom she lost several years ago. The point of Beth Ann’s post is that grief comes in the most unexpected of moments and hits you hard. She’s right.
Hot fudge pudding cake slathered with real whipped cream and topped with sprinkles. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
Then my friend Sue, who lives in Minnesota, winters in Arizona and blogs primarily about food at Ever Ready, published a post featuring Hot Fudge Sundae Cake. Waves of nostalgia and grief swept over me as I scrolled through Sue’s post. Hot Fudge Pudding Cake, as my family called this delectable, easy-to-make dessert, was a favorite of Mom’s and of me.
Neither Sue or Beth Ann could have known I would be reading their words on the third anniversary of Mom’s death. But I did. And it was meant to be because my grief needed an outlet. My friends’ writing prompted me to write this post.
The cover of the altered book created by Kathleen. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
In the process of writing, I headed upstairs to pull a mini keepsake book from a closet. My friend Kathleen, formerly of Minnesota and now of Idaho, created the altered book for me following my mother’s death. She tapped into my blog to pull quotes, information and photos that truly summarize Mom’s life and our relationship. The book brims with words of love, faith, family and farm life, all at the essence of my mom. It truly is one of my most treasured possessions.
The first page in the keepsake book shows my mom holding me. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
So on this day, while the grief of losing Mom feels particularly heavy, it is the creativity of friends that comforts me. Beth Ann’s “Right There in the Baking Aisle” resonates. Sue’s shared recipe brings smiles as I remember. And Kathleen’s keepsake mini altered book stirs within me so many memories of the mom I loved, and still love.
TELL ME: Who are you grieving? What can spark your grief? What comforts you in grief?
I printed this message inside a handmade Mother’s Day card for my mom back in elementary school. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
I’VE WRITTEN OFTEN about my mom, the life she lived, the legacies of kindness, compassion and faith she left. But what about about you and your mom?
On this Mother’s Day, I invite you to share about your mom. What do you hold dear? What was she like? What did she pass along to you? Who was she, in addition to being your mother?
I don’t know what my children would write if asked those questions. But I hope they would describe me as loving, caring, compassionate, kind and supportive. Creative, too. I’ve tried to follow my mom’s example. And, even though my maternal grandmother died shortly after I was born, I’ve heard that Josephine was a kind and gentle soul. Just like my mom.
I recognize that Mother’s Day can be difficult, especially if you’ve recently lost your mom. Like my friend Gretchen. Grief rises anew in a day focused on mothers. To lose a mom is a profound loss, whether that occurred a month ago or 20 years ago. Mother and child share a bond unlike any other, which intensifies the depth of grief.
A page in an altered book my friend Kathleen created for me. That’s my mom on the left counting jars of homemade horseradish. That’s me with my clown birthday cake, which Mom made for my third birthday. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
Yet, to grieve is to recognize that we have loved. I consider all the ways my mom loved me. Though she didn’t tell me she loved me or even hug me when I was growing up (that would come later), I felt and saw her love. Her love showed in homemade bread and peanut butter oatmeal bars. Her love showed in the animal-shaped birthday cakes she made for my five siblings and me. Her loved showed in clothes washed in a Maytag wringer washer. Her love showed in quarts of fruits and vegetables lining planks in a dirt-floored cellar. Her love showed in clothing stitched from flour sacks. Her love showed in poring through booklets of house designs from the lumberyard, always believing that some day she would move into a new house. One with a bathroom and a shower to replace a galvanized tub set on the kitchen floor and a makeshift shower of garden hose strung through an open porch window. One with more than three cramped bedrooms. One with a furnace rather than an oil-burning stove. One with windows that didn’t rattle in the winter prairie wind.
The old woodframe farmhouse where I lived the first 11 years of my life with our new house in the background. That’s my sister Lanae posing on the porch steps.
Mom taught me to hold hope. She finally got her new house in 1967, the year my youngest brother, her final child, was born.
On this Mother’s Day, let’s honor our moms—those selfless, wonderful women who raised us as best they could. Those women who carried us, physically and emotionally, who want (ed) the best for us. Being a mother requires strength, energy and so much more, but, most of all, unconditional love.
Happy Mother’s Day, if you’re a mom! And if you are missing your mom, let’s celebrate her, too.
My sweet mom, featured on the Parkview Facebook page, Mother’s Day 2020. (Photo credit: Parkview Senior Living)
IN EVERYTHING I WRITE, truth rests. In creative nonfiction, more than any other genre, truth writes the story. In poetry and fiction, life experiences, observations and emotions weave into poems and stories. Not necessarily the full truth, but based on reality. The adage “write what you know” rings true for me.
Five of my works (poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction) published in Fine Lines. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo 2017)
The book title, Fine Lines fits my selected entry, a story about the Sunday evening phone calls I made to my mom. Every. Week. I looked forward to them, as did Mom. My short story is one of raw emotions, of grief and pain. And today, days before Mother’s Day, seems an appropriate time to share this piece of my writing.
I hope it sparks an understanding that simple connections linking us to those we love are to be valued. When Mom could no longer hold or talk on a phone in the years before her January 2022 death, I felt a deep loss. I missed her voice. I missed her stories. I missed sharing my life with her. And today, I miss her, as I try to recall her voice, the words she spoke, yet always remembering the love we shared.
Parkview Senior Living in Belview, where my mom lived for many years. While 120 miles separated us, Mom and I remained connected via our weekly calls. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
The Weekly Phone Call
It’s 6:30 p.m. on Sunday when I punch the green phone icon.
“Hello, Arlene speaking,” she answers, the indiscernible dialogue of a television blaring in the background.
“Hi, this is Audrey,” I say, then wait while she turns off her TV. “How are you doing?”
Her answer never deviates. She is tired and blames the weather. Already sadness threads through my thoughts. Inside the sheltered walls of a care center, she can’t feel the bite of a winter prairie wind, the drench of rainfall, the smothering humidity of a July afternoon. She feels only artificial heat and cold while sequestered in her over-sized dorm style room.
My mind drifts as Mom laments an in-house obsession with BINGO, recounts an escape attempt by a friend—big and exciting news—and complains of failed jets in the whirlpool tub. I listen, insert appropriate responses, and await the usual repetition of information.
When she repeats herself, I say nothing. There is no point. My love prevails in silence. But inside, my anger rises at her declining memory. I want the mom who never forgot a birthday, who remembered what she ate for lunch, who knew names. I miss her undeniably kind and positive spirit. I am grieving.
But I tell her none of this. Instead, I end our conversation with “I love you” and a promise to call her next Sunday, at 6:30 p.m.
Mom’s journals stacked in a tote. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
DAYS BEFORE MOTHER’S DAY, I slide a clear plastic tote from a closet in the bedroom where my daughters once slept. I unlatch the lid. An overwhelming musty odor rises from the spiral-bound notebooks layered inside.
These are my mom’s journals. The story of her life recorded on paper from 1947 until her final entry on March 4, 2014, with a few years missing.
Mom died in January 2022. She left this handwritten documentation of an ordinary, yet extraordinary, life. As her oldest daughter and as a writer, I cherish the words she penned. They are not flowery poetic or personal entries, but rather a record of life as a farm wife and mother to six. Days that revolved around family, faith and farm life.
The only photo I have of my mom, Arlene, holding me. My dad is holding my brother, Doug.
With Mother’s Day only days away, I chose Mom’s 1955 journal, the year she became a mother, to begin reading. Mom invited her parents over for a Mother’s Day goose dinner that May, about two months before she gave birth to my oldest brother. I flipped ahead to July, reading her entries in the days right before Doug was born. Even at full-term, she kept working as hard as ever, freezing 24 boxes of green beans, canning a crate of cherries, pulling weeds in the garden and ironing clothes within days of delivering an 8-pound baby.
A page in an altered book crafted by my friend Kathleen. This page honors me and my mom. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
Fast forward to May 1956. Mom notes in her Mother’s Day and subsequent entries that her mom went to the “Heart Hospital” on May 10 and came home May 17. Some six months later, Josephine died of a heart attack. She was only 48. And I was only two months old. I cannot imagine the grief my mom felt in the unexpected death of her mother. But she never put those emotions on paper. Rather her diary entries are straight forward, almost of journalistic detachment. Notations of her mom’s December 1 death, a funeral and writing thank yous.
My mom saved everything, including this Mother’s Day card I made for her in elementary school. I cut a flower from a seed catalog to create the front of this card. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
On the next Mother’s Day in May 1957 and through 1961, there are no references to any special way in which my mom was honored. No gifts. No special meal. Only that I had a bad case of the measles as a nine-month-old. In May 1962, my brother had the mumps. But I did give Mom a paper flower at a school Mother’s Day program.
In entries in the years that followed, Mom always wrote of attending the Mother’s Day programs at Vesta Elementary School. I hold vague memories of standing on the stage, reading a poem about lavenders blue dilly dilly in verse that now eludes me.
And although I don’t remember, I gave Mom plants and, in 1967, “a fancy flower,” whatever that means. But most meaningful to me, a writer, was the gift of a writing pad to Mom in 1964. Now, in return, I have the gift of her words written in perfect, flowing penmanship.
In May 1963, Mom got a Whirlpool dishwasher. In May 1968, she redeemed Green Stamps for two lamps. She also got an automatic Maytag washing machine with suds saver for $300 from Quesenberry’s Appliance in Redwood Falls. I can only imagine how these Mother’s Day gifts of dishwasher and automatic washer eased her workload.
A section of a family-themed photo board I created for Mom’s January 2022 funeral. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo 2022)
I wish I’d realized while growing up on the farm just how hard my mother worked. That would come later in life, when I became a mom in 1986, raising three kids, not six like her. In her final years, I thanked Mom many times for loving and caring for me, for raising me to be kind, compassionate, caring and a woman of faith. I hugged her and held her hand and cried whenever I left her care center, each time wondering if it would be the last time I would see Mom.
One of my favorite later photos with Mom, taken in 2017. (Photo credit: Randy Helbling)
Now, as I mark my second Mother’s Day without the mom I loved, still love, tears edge my eyes. I read page after page after page of her writing. Gratitude rises for this legacy she’s left, this story of her ordinary life on a southwestern Minnesota farm, this story of a mother who loved, labored, and lived a full and beautiful life.
The cover of an altered book my friend Kathleen created for me following the death of my mom. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo 2022)
THE CALL CAME SHORTLY after 6 pm on a Thursday evening one year ago. In that moment, when my youngest brother’s name flashed on my cellphone screen, I knew. Mom died. Not passed. Not was gone. She was dead.
The news was not unexpected. Yet it was. As much as we think we are prepared for a parent’s death in the light of long-time failing health, we are not. I was not.
One of my treasured last photos of my mom and me, taken on January 11, 2020. Because of COVID restrictions, I was unable to see Mom much during the final years of her life.(Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo January 2020 by Randy Helbling)
A year after that January 13 call, I still have not fully-grieved. Part of that I attribute to the timing of Mom’s death during the height of omicron. For me, there was nothing normal about Mom’s big public funeral (which I did not support) during COVID. No standing in a receiving line beside my siblings. No hand shaking. No hugging. No crying beneath my N95 mask. Just tears locked inside. Feelings held inside. Emotions of feeling disappointed and disrespected in a church packed with unmasked mourners checked.
It is a struggle to let go of such hurt, such pain. But I’m trying. Mom would want me to focus not on her death, funeral and burial, but rather on her earthly life and now her glorious new life in heaven. She taught me well, leaving a strong legacy of faith.
A portion of a family-themed photo board I created for my mom’s January 22, 2022 funeral. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo 2022)
That legacy is not one simply of beliefs and words, but also one of attitudes and action. My mom was one of the kindest, humblest, gentlest souls I’ve ever known. My five siblings and I would occasionally test her spirit, her patience, her fortitude. But seldom did she express her exasperation. Sometimes I think Mom just had too much to do in the day-to-day running of a household and mothering of six kids to get upset. Wash clothes with the Maytag wringer washer. Can a crate of peaches. Weed the garden. Bake bread. Make supper. Scrub the floor. Iron clothes. On and on and on the list of endless chores went inside and outside our rural southwestern Minnesota farmhouse. She never complained, simply pressed on in her own quiet, mothering way.
Another page of the altered book features a photo of my mom holding me. I love the quote. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo 2022)
Even with all that family-centered work, Mom found time for outside activities. She was active in St. John’s Lutheran Church, the Legion Auxiliary, Extension Club, Craft Club, Senior Citizens and helped at Red Cross blood drives. Some of this came many years into motherhood, when her responsibilities lessened. I was already gone from home. I once asked Mom if she missed me when I left for college in the fall of 1974. No, she replied. She was, she said, too busy with the other four kids still at home. While I didn’t necessarily appreciate her answer, I understood, and I knew she loved me. Mom was undeniably honest, a trait I hold dear also.
I am forever grateful for the loving sympathy cards, memorials and other gifts I received. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo 2022)
Honesty. Integrity. Service to others. All were part of Mom’s life story. She lived her faith. These words from the hymn “Beautiful Savior,” sung at her funeral service, fit Arlene Anna Alma Kletscher: Truly I’d love thee, Truly I’d serve thee, Light of my soul, my joy, my crown. The hymn has always been my favorite for its message and its beautiful, poetic imagery.
On the Sunday before the one-year anniversary of my mother’s death, “Beautiful Savior” and “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” were sung during the worship service at my church, Trinity Lutheran in Faribault, some 120 miles from St. John’s in Vesta. The congregation also sang “Precious Lord” at Mom’s funeral. Because of illness, I missed Trinity’s worship service last Sunday. But I listened on the radio, thankful in many ways that I was not in the church pews. Trying to sing the hymns from Mom’s funeral may have proven a breaking point for me, unleashing a year’s worth of grief. Oh, how I miss my mom.
I miss her smile. I miss hugging her. I miss talking to her and remembering with her. I miss calling her every Sunday evening at the same time. I miss sharing photos of my grown children and her great grandchildren. I. Miss. Her. In the hard moments of life—and I’ve had plenty in recent years—I’ve turned to Randy and said, “I just want to be the kid again, to have my mom take care of me.” It is an impossible wish, a longing, a yearning, yet a verbal acknowledgment of my mother’s love.
I printed this message inside a handmade Mother’s Day card back in elementary school. Mom saved the card and I am grateful. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
Now, in my year-old grief, I still feel Mom’s love. I see her love, too, in the memory of her lips curving into a slight smile when I saw her for the last time, when I said goodbye and I love you and exited her room at Parkview. That smile proved her final, loving gift to me, her oldest daughter. I’ve locked that moment in my heart to unlock when grief sneaks in, when the pain of missing my mom rises within my spirit.
I unlock, too, the comforting lyrics of “Beautiful Savior”: He makes our sorr’wing spirit sing.
The photo of my mom and son which prompted my grief to surface. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo 1994)
MY FOREFINGER SLID UP the photo toward her face, circling repeatedly as if I could somehow reach into the image and connect with my mom.
It was Sunday afternoon and I was filing through a stash of old photos given to me by a sibling at a family holiday gathering the day prior. I’d never seen the photo taken nearly 29 years ago of Mom cradling my chunky newborn son on her lap. She was 60 then, younger than I am now. The two would eventually form a special bond, despite the geographical distance. When Caleb headed off to college, he would call his grandma occasionally. She shared about the lengthy conversations and I felt thankful. Those phone calls benefited both of them.
Now here I was sitting at my dining room table, caressing that photo, missing the two of them. Mom died in early January. Caleb will, weather permitting, fly into Minnesota later this week for a short stay. I last saw him in early January, shortly before his grandma passed; he couldn’t return for the funeral.
Sunday marked about a year since my final visit with Mom in her long-term care center. That anniversary date and the photo, along with Randy asking me if I was familiar with the song “The Christmas Shoes” (I was) prompted my emotions to swell into full-blown grief. He found the lyrics for me, then played the song about a young boy buying shoes for his dying mother on Christmas Eve. That did it. The lyrics penned by Eddie Carswell and Leonard Ahlstrom in the song released by NewSong in 2000 moved me to tears.
The gingersnap cookies I baked for Mom in 2020. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo December 2020)
I sobbed, tears gushing down my cheeks. “I miss my mom,” I sputtered, the words emerging as my shoulders heaved in sorrow, my breath ragged. I miss her kindness, her smile, her gentle way. I miss baking gingersnap cookies for her, as I did each Christmas because they were her favorite. I miss hugging her and talking to her, even if she couldn’t respond as her health deteriorated. I miss the essence of her, simply being in her presence. I miss sharing with her about her grandchildren, including that baby boy she cuddled. I miss telling her about the next generation, my two grandchildren. I miss sharing about my latest writing projects. She was always my strongest supporter, happy to hear that I’d had another poem or short story published.
A sampling of the many sympathy cards I received when my mom died in January. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo January 2022)
This will be my first Christmas without Mom. Those firsts can be tough. I recognize that I am not alone, that many of you have lost loved ones, too, within the past year. I’m sorry. Grief often has a way of erupting during the holidays when families come together, memories surface. Time softens the edges of grief, yet never fully erases it. And that’s OK. To grieve is to have loved.
A reason to feel grateful,hung on a Gratitude Tree outside the Northfield Public Library. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo July 2019)
EVEN IN A DECIDEDLY DIFFICULT YEAR, as 2022 has been for me, many reasons exist to feel grateful. I fully realized that upon putting pen to paper to compile a gratitude list during this, Thanksgiving week.
Me with my mom. Oh, how I miss her. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo January 2020 by Randy Helbling)
The year started with the death of my mom on January 13, during the height of Omicron. It was, undeniably, a challenging time to lose her, not that any time is easy. But COVID compounded the situation, affecting my grief process. Memories from her funeral will always be really hard for me. Ten months later, my focus is one of thankfulness for my mom. She instilled in me care, compassion, kindness…and left a legacy of faith. What a gift. I will also forever feel grateful to the staff at Parkview, who so lovingly cared for Mom for many years like she was family. I am thankful, too, to the many friends who sent comforting sympathy cards and memorials and to my friend Kathleen, who created a memory book honoring my mom.
Wedding guests toss rice at Randy and me as we exit St. John’s Lutheran Church in Vesta following our May 15, 1982, wedding. (Photo credit: Williams Studio in Redwood Falls)
May brought a milestone wedding anniversary for Randy and me. Forty years. I don’t recall how we celebrated, but nothing splashy. I feel thankfulness every day for this man who loves me unconditionally, supports me and still makes me laugh.
Randy and our grandchildren, Isabelle and Isaac, follow the pine-edged driveway at the lake cabin in one of my all-time favorite family images. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo July 2020)
My immediate family means everything to me. That my two young grandchildren live only 35 minutes away is not something I ever take for granted. From celebrating birthdays and holidays to picking strawberries and apples together to overnights at our house to being there in a crisis, this grandma is grateful for the geographic nearness. There’s nothing like the joy I hold in being a grandmother. The hugs. The snuggles. Reading books. Baking together. Getting down on the floor to play. Scooping the almost four-year-old off the floor and into my arms, little lips pressing a moist kiss upon my cheek.
Twice this year I also embraced dear uncles and an aunt whom I haven’t seen in awhile. I hosted Aunt Rachel and Uncle Bob, visiting from Missouri, for lunch. And I met Uncle John and his son Justin and family for lunch in Northfield. Oh, goodness, the happiness I felt in those hugs from extended family I love dearly.
Flying into Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo December 2015)
Soon my son, who lives in Indiana, will be back for a short Christmas stay. I cannot wait. I haven’t seen Caleb in a year and I miss him so much at times that it almost hurts. But before then, my second daughter and her husband arrive from Madison, Wisconsin, to celebrate Thanksgiving in Minnesota. You bet I feel grateful for the time we will have together. I miss my girl.
Randy and Isabelle on the dock at the lake cabin. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo July 2022)
As I write this thanksgiving list, I realize that most gratitude centers on family. That includes time together at a lake cabin owned by a sister-in-law and brother-in-law who open their guest cabin to extended family. Their sharing of this blessing shows such love and generosity of spirit and I feel forever grateful for this place to escape, to enjoy nature, to rest and relax, to rejuvenate, to make memories.
Following a gravel road in Rice County, near Dundas. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo autumn 2022)
I am thankful also for (in no particular order), country drives with Randy; gathering around a bonfire with friends; writers and journalists and poets and artists; vaccines; medical professionals who provided emergency and extended care this year for those dearest to me; democracy…
My two poems, far left, and center, in an exhibit at the Lyon County Historical Society Museum. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo September 2022)
Lastly, I am grateful for my creative abilities. To write and photograph bring me incredible joy, and some side income. I appreciate that my creative work is valued, published. My creativity came full circle this autumn when I traveled back to my native southwestern Minnesota to view an exhibit, “Making Lyon County Home,” at the Lyon County Historical Society Museum in Marshall. Two of my poems, “Ode to My Farm Wife Mother” and “Hope of a Farmer,” are posted in the exhibit along with a four-generation family photo and my mom’s high school graduation portrait. After touring that exhibit, I visited Mom’s grave site in my hometown. I stood there atop the hillside cemetery surrounded by corn and soybean fields under a spacious prairie sky feeling overwhelmed by sadness, yet grateful for the love we shared.
TELL ME: What are you especially grateful for this Thanksgiving? I welcome specifics, especially.
My mom celebrates her 82nd birthday at Parkview Home in Belview, Minnesota, in May 2014. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo May 2014)
THE FIRSTS ALWAYS prove the hardest. And today marks a first. Today would have been my mom’s 90th birthday, had she not died in January.
I miss her. Sometimes believing she is truly gone feels impossible. A lot of that has to do with COVID—of seeing so little of her during the pandemic and then attending her funeral in the absolute height of omicron. Like so many other families with elders in long-term care, with loved ones who passed during COVID, the loss is compounded. Closure seems elusive in the absence of community comfort.
But I don’t want to dwell on that. I want to focus instead on my mom, a woman of deep faith, humble, kind…and such a gift to me.
I think back on her birthday in May 2014, shortly after she moved into the long-term care center which became her home for the remainder of her life. Randy and I drove the 2.5 hours to visit her, bringing with us a homemade chocolate cake and several jugs of lemonade. A few extended family members joined us to celebrate.
I took a photo of Mom as she gazed upon that rectangular cake, nine candles blazing, sprinkles scattered atop the homemade chocolate frosting. She looks content, pleased. That I could bring her joy on her 82nd birthday still makes me smile.
On Monday I smiled, too, as Mom’s sister Rachel and her husband, my Uncle Bob, stopped to see me en route back to their Missouri home after a visit to Minnesota. As Rachel and I stood in the driveway wrapping our arms around each other in the tightest hug, I felt a moment of fleeting sorrow mixed with comfort. None of my mom’s siblings attended her funeral due to COVID concerns, health issues and/or distance. I was thankful for their decision, although I knew it had to be difficult for them not to say goodbye to their sister. As my godmother and I hugged upon her arrival, I felt Mom’s presence. There was an undeniable moment of shared grief.
Later, after I served lunch, I grabbed a bag of gingersnap cookies from the kitchen counter to pass around. Mom’s favorite. I’d baked a batch awhile ago and froze some. When Mom lived at Parkview, I made gingersnaps for her every Christmas.
Today, May 24, I think of gingersnaps and birthday cakes and multiple memories that remind me of the mom I loved, still love. And miss. Oh, to sing “Happy birthday!” one more time.
One of the last photos I took of my mom. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo July 2021)
IN RECENT YEARS, as my mom’s health declined, I considered how I would feel when she was gone, when Mother’s Day would come and go without her. Now, four months after her death, I understand. I feel a deep sense of loss, but also thankfulness for the mother I loved and who loved me.
I love this sweet photo of Mom at age seven. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo)
Who was my mom? She was the oldest of five. (Her sister Deloris died in infancy.) She was valedictorian of her high school graduating class. She completed a short business college course thereafter and worked in an employment office before marrying my dad. Within a year of their marriage, the first of six children was born. I came next. And within two months of my birth, Mom’s mother died. Mom was 24, her mother only 48.
The Bode siblings, left to right: John, Rachel, Dorothy and Arlene. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo)
When I consider Grandma Josephine’s premature death, I wonder how Mom handled that. To lose her mother at such a young age is a profound loss. If only I had asked.
A portrait of Mom. I’m unsure of her age here, but probably around 20. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo 2022)
Mom left behind a collection of notebooks in which she wrote daily entries. Journals begun in high school and continuing into her senior years. The short entries are documentations of her life from student to full-time mother/southwestern Minnesota farm wife and, finally, a grandmother.
The only photo I have of my mom holding me. My dad is holding my brother Doug. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
I wish her writing held personal thoughts and observations. But that is mostly missing, along with journals from around the years she met Dad. Not a surprise given that generation’s aversion to expressing emotions. I don’t recall either of my parents ever telling me they loved me, or hugging me, during my growing up years. It just wasn’t done. Yet, I inherently knew they loved me. Only in later years, long after I’d left home, did love-filled words and hugs come.
Entries from one of Mom’s earliest journals. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo 2022)
Since my mom’s death, I’ve dipped into some of her journals as has my eldest daughter. Mom’s one-paragraph daily entries about the weather, everyday farm life and the occasional trips into town and social outings reveal a hardworking woman. I never doubted just how hard Mom worked to keep our family fed, the house clean and six kids in line. I read of gardening, harvesting, preserving. I read of doing laundry (in a Maytag wringer washer), ironing, folding clothes. I read of endless baking, including occasionally making her favorite Sour Cream Raisin Pie. To this day I have never developed an appreciation for that pie. But I loved when she baked homemade bread, shaping tiny buns just for us kids to eat hot from the oven.
This page in an altered book created by my friend Kathleen focuses on the animal-shaped birthday cakes Mom made for me and my five siblings. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
I also appreciated that Mom made birthdays special by creating animal-shaped birthday cakes from homemade chocolate cake and seven-minute frosting. Those cakes, selected from a cake design booklet, defined our childhood birthdays. Because my parents couldn’t afford gifts, Mom’s cake was our gift. Oh, the memories.
This shows family photos on a board I created for Mom’s funeral. The card at the bottom is a Mother’s Day card. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo January 2022)
That I never realized our family was poor is a credit to my mom. There was no emphasis on material possessions, but rather on self-sufficiency and contentment with what we had—each other and land, our land, all around us. Sure, I occasionally longed for rollerskates (like my friends Jane and Robin had), for shopping clothing racks other than the sales rack, for getting whatever toy I wanted from the Sears & Roebuck Christmas catalog. But, in the end, I didn’t care all that much. I had enough. I still do. And I still don’t get gifts on my birthday.
My mom saved everything, including this Mother’s Day card I made for her in elementary school. I cut a flower from a seed catalog to create the front of this card. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
Mom’s gifts to me stretch well beyond anything tangible. She exuded a spirit of kindness. Soft-spoken, except when we kids occasionally overwhelmed her, Mom always encouraged us to speak well of others, to serve with humility. She did. At church, in the community. I’ve been told she was much like her sweet and loving mother, my Grandma Josie.
Me with my mom during a January 2020 visit. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo January 2020 by Randy Helbling)
This Mother’s Day I hold onto the memories. The photos. The stack of journals. The lessons and qualities passed along to me that speak to a legacy of faith and kindness and love. Mom’s love. A love that endures in how I choose to live my life. A love that rises above grief to remind me how blessed I was to have my mother as my mother.
I printed this message inside a handmade Mother’s Day card for my mom back in elementary school. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
In my last visit with Mom before her January 13 death, I said my goodbyes, told her it was OK to go. She was mostly unresponsive then, heavily-medicated. But when I spoke the words, “I love you,” for the final time, her lips curved into a smile so slight I wondered if I imagined it. I didn’t. That was her final gift to me—an expression of love I will forever remember and cherish, especially today, my first Mother’s Day without Mom.
My friend Kathleen recently created an altered book honoring my mom, who died in January. She included a copy of this 2016 photo of my three adult children. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo 2022)
TRAUMA WRITES INTO my Mother’s Day history. Two events. Two Mother’s Days. Two memories that, even with the passing of time, remain vivid.
The first occurred in May 1987. Randy and I had just gotten off the phone with our moms. We wished them Happy Mother’s Day and then told them we were expecting our second child, due in November. The grandmas were excited. We were delighted to share the news.
And then it happened. The bleeding. The panic when I realized what was happening. The call to the ER with instructions to lie down and see my doctor in the morning. I recall lying in bed, flat on my back, overwhelmed by fear. “I don’t want to lose my baby,” I sobbed and prayed.
How could this be happening? Moments earlier we’d shared such good news. And now the future of our baby seemed uncertain.
Miranda, five days old. Photo source: hospital photo
In the end, we didn’t lose that precious baby girl born to us six months later. Miranda. Beautiful in every way.
Fast forward to the morning of May 12, two days before Mother’s Day in 2006. Miranda was a senior in high school, her older sister just returned home from college. And their little brother, Caleb, 12, was on his way to the bus stop. Then the unthinkable happened. While crossing the street to his bus, Caleb was struck by a car. He bounced off the car, somersaulted, landed on the side of the road.
The moment when I heard the sirens, when I instinctively knew deep within me that something had happened to my son, terror unlike anything I’d ever felt gripped me. I can’t explain how or why I knew. I just did.
I have a file thick with information related to my son’s hit-and-run. The file includes newspaper clippings, e-mail correspondence with the police, medical and insurance papers and more. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
In the end, Caleb suffered only a broken bone in his hand, cracked ribs, bumps and bruises. While it was a terrifying experience—compounded by the driver who left the scene and to this day has not been found—we felt relief in the outcome.
Even though I endured those Mother’s Day traumas in 1987 and in 2006, I did not lose a child. But in those experiences I gained empathy—for those who have lost children through miscarriage, still birth, disease, illness, accident, violence, suicide… And if that’s you, I am deeply sorry for the pain, grief and loss you’ve felt and feel.
My daughter Miranda and me. (Minnesota Prairie Roots file photo February 2016.)
Through those experiences I realized how deep my motherly love, how my children hold my heart in a way that the very thought of losing them caused me such angst. I would do anything to protect them from harm. Anything. Even today.
My son and I in 2016, when he graduated from Tuft’s University, Boston skyline in the background. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo by Randy Helbling)
Through those experiences I grew stronger. And I recognized that, no matter what, we are not alone. When Caleb was hit by the car, our family received overwhelming support from family, friends, his school and the greater community. There were prayers, encouraging cards and phone calls, a stuffed animal and even a gift certificate to Dairy Queen. What love, compassion and care.
To my dear readers who are mothers, you are cherished, valued, loved. And the children you raised/are raising are equally as cherished, valued and, above all, loved.
TELL ME: If you have a story or thoughts you would like to share about being a mom or about what your mom meant/means to you, please comment. I’d love to hear from you.
Minnesota Prairie Roots 
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