Communicating with Mom

By Dan Bales

I haven’t spoken to my Mom in a very long time. In fact, her passing has been thirty-eight years. Recently I realized she still communicates with me, and has for all of these years.

As a youngster, wanting a new baseball mitt, it was beyond my understanding that sometimes there just wasn’t money for all the things a boy considered important and necessary. Even so, after some time, there was a new ball glove.

Never knowing until later, as an adult, how that mitt came to be, has left a lasting impression. My Dad recalled that around Mom’s birthday, Grandma would send some money for Mom to go buy herself something special. That year, she bought herself a baseball mitt to give to her young son. Mom communicates through that act of love. That love resonates through me. It is the reason, for instance, I have walked to my old neighbor’s house during a snowstorm and joined him in silence as we worked to clean his drive.

When Mom gave that ball glove, I begged to go out and play catch. The moist spring air and exercise made her cough. When she coughed, she coughed hard. She coughed until her face grew red, and sometimes she had to cross her legs. It frightened me, but she reassured me she was okay.

Whether it was harder for Mom to give up a special gift for herself to buy that ball glove, or to give of her time and energy to a point of discomfort, is not possible to know.

The thing Mom continues to communicate through this experience is simple. It is possible to move beyond personal pain and suffering, to move beyond personal desire and gratification. It is transcendent to give selflessly. Mom still seems to be saying when an intention arises from a place of love, we are transformed.

I was nine that last morning she told me to have a good day at school, just before my sisters and I went out the door to meet the school bus. By the end of the school day she had completed her journey on earth as our Mom. Even having one more day with her, we still could not have talked about all of the things I wish we could talk about.

It isn’t the words Mom spoke that are remembered, but rather the deeds, and the spirit or attitude behind them. Everyday, through those memories, she has something to say.

Dan Bales is completing an M.A. in Transpersonal Studies at Atlantic University. He is the author of An Autumn at Lake Ann published in 2002. He lives in northern Indiana and visits northern Michigan regularly. Email: Dan.Bales@verizon.net