8 Questions I'd Like to Ask My Mom on This Mother's Day

pink bubblegum petunias overflow from three wooden barrels

When Mom was still alive, I had the habit of calling her at least once a week, usually while I was walking the dog. Around and around the park I’d walk while Mom dispensed a Midwestern commentary regarding her pink bubblegum petunias, the neighbor’s corn fields, lifelong friendships, and the latest happening in the family -- from cousins three times removed to her grandchildren all around the country.

This ritual is one of the Biggest Holes left from my mom’s death a little over one year ago from ovarian cancer. I want to pick up the phone and hear her voice. I want to compare notes on mothering grown children and grandparenting. I want to join her as the cheerleader of future generations – a role she fulfilled so well. I long to ask her deeper questions about suffering and losing a spouse and having a terminal illness – a situation we experienced, but were so busy living, that sometimes I wished I had done more sitting on the end of her bed and asking.

As Mother's Day approaches, I find myself wishing I could ask my mom 8 Questions:

1. I was so focused on getting the kids raised, that I never stopped to consider what life would be like when the children were grown. I never realized how much I would still worry. How much I would continue to pray. How much I would bite my tongue.

Mom, how do you parent grown children?

2. My three siblings and I all left our small Minnesotan hometown as soon as we were raised. I remember Mom talking about how fast those high school years went, with four of us leaving in six years. My kids are currently all living near me, but I know that may not always be the case. I see my husband and I doing some things together, and also starting new, separate activities.

Mom, how do you transition to the empty nest as both a parent and as a wife?

3. I never totally understood the emphasis Mom put on all of us getting together for holidays and reunions. I never considered it from her point of view, only my own. I longed to come home and give my kids roots. But now my own generations are spreading out and I want to let them fly and I want to gather them under my wings.

Mom, how do you balance the flying and the gathering?

4. After Dad died, we never got a chance to adjust to Mom being a widow as she died nine short months later. Mom would talk about losing Dad and my own grief was so raw and new, that I could only process the loss from the viewpoint of a daughter. Now I want to talk woman to woman and hear her heart.

Mom, what was it like to lose the other half of the Two Becoming One?

5. Mom was an incredible list maker. Even at the end. Funeral arrangements done. Lists of things at the house. Finances in order. Four days before Mom died, she declared she was done. The maker of lists, the grand organizer was done. I assumed it was because she was tired of dealing with the pain and the doctors had run out of options, but I never stopped to probe. I got busy with my own lists, calling siblings, making Mom comfortable. Now I wished I would have asked for details. As a woman who also struggles with being ruled by lists, I wished I would have asked,

Mom, how did you know you were done?

6. When Mom’s cousin died last week, a man who had a deep connection with my mother because of their shared past, I felt the clipping of one more link that joined me to an older generation. I wanted to call Mom and hear the stories of when she was little. I wanted to hear about my grandparents and Mom’s 11 siblings and living in a small South Dakota farmhouse and growing up in a one-room schoolhouse. I’ve heard the stories a thousand times, but I never truly understood that one day I would be the Carrier of All Those Stories. Mom was the connecting point of 4 generations. Her roots went as deep as the fjords in Norway, but she always cheered for the younger generations.

Mom, how do I do this matriarch thing?

7. Mom's flower gardens covered their acreage. Her thumb was green. Mine is brown. The family jokes that plants come to my house for hospice care. Yet, every year, I find myself buying flowers to plant with unending optimism that spring will come again.

Mom, what WAS your secret with those pink bubblegum petunias?

8. Mom lived out her faith before my eyes, so I don’t need to ask if what she believed was real or if it was worth it, because I know the answers to those questions. My relief is HUGE that those questions don’t make this list. I am thankful she gave me the gift of seeing how to face eternity without fear. In her last minutes, she kept calling the name of Jesus, her whole being focused to a place, a person, beyond this life. I wish I would have grabbed her hand and asked, before she slipped away:

Mom, what does eternity look like?

If you no longer have your mom on this Mother's Day, I pray for peace in regard to your own wishes and unanswered questions.

If you still have your mom on this Mother's Day, I pray for an open window to ask your own questions, and if that is not possible, because relationships are complicated, I pray for grace in the silence.

If you are a mom or a grandma this Mother's Day, I pray you live out the answers to your own children and grandchildren's questions as you leave your own destiny and legacy.