She was the keeper of our family history.  Long before the days of high-speed internet and ???Google??? searches, my mother could rattle off obscure names, dates, and events in the lives of her ancestors, with an accuracy that would make a historian blush.  A storyteller who never understood the power that her words could convey, my mother could ???take you there??? and make you cry.

            She didn??™t have much in life, so she left little behind.  Thankfully I have my mother??™s shawl.  The shawl was crocheted from bits of yarn that my mother saved from every crocheting project she had ever begun.  She would save those bits of thread, and when she had enough leftover she would make ???something useful.???   The shawl was a ghastly shade of pink, with bits of every clashing color imaginable.  It belongs to me, now, and when life seems weary, I often cling to it and remember. 

My mother and I had a stormy relationship.  Some years after one of our long periods of ???not speaking,??? my mother and I had finally begun to forgive each other.  She had softened, and so had I.  At the end of our last phone conversation she told me that she loved me.  ???I love you, too, Mom,??? I said, as my voice broke.   I??™ll never forget that exchange.

Four days later she died.  I was devastated.  I flew from Texas to Florida.  It was a closed coffin funeral.  My mother was buried in a felt covered pine box.  A woman of simple tastes it would have suited her.  Though my heart ached over the wasted years, I could not cry.  Returning to the house after the funeral, I had little to say.  I walked into my parent??™s home, and I made my way into my mother??™s bedroom. There on the dresser lay her shawl, the ugly, pink monstrosity, made from left-over bits of yarn.  I picked it up and buried my face in it.  My mother??™s light, sweet fragrance was all over it.  Bittersweet memories flooded my soul.   I remembered my mother??™s smile as she crocheted that shawl.  ???You??™ll see, I??™ll make something useful,??? she had assured me. 

She had made the ugly shawl to warm her aching shoulders, as she crocheted so many wonderful things.  I drank in the memories of my mother as I pressed her shawl to my face, and finally I wept.  I asked my Dad if I could have the shawl.  It was the only thing that I requested, and it was all that I wanted to remind me of her.  Sadly, the years have reduced her scent to oblivion.

Now, as I grow old I often pull out her shawl to warm my aching shoulders.  I see her face, each time I look in the mirror.  I hear her voice when I laugh.  I feel her heartbeat every time I pray to the God she served, in spite of all that life dealt to her.  I have to smile each time I realize just how eccentric my mother was, and how much like her I am today.  It was so like her to save bits of yarn so that she could make something useful.  Perhaps she has also made something useful of me.

Jaye Lewis

Jaye Lewis is an award winning writer and contributing author of recently released Chicken Soup for the Recovering Soul and Chicken Soup for Every Mom's Soul.  Jaye lives with her husband and daughters in the beautiful Appalachian Mountains of Virginia.  This is Jaye's twenty-first Mother's day without her mother, Margaret.  She still misses her.  You may visit Jaye's website at www.entertainingangels.org and see a picture of her mother at age seventeen.  Email Jaye at jlewis@smyth.net

May your day be blessed

Bob Johnston