March 27 marks the day my beautiful Mima (mother) passed away twenty-three years ago. Though a long time has gone by, to me all my memories of her earthly travel, flash brightly in the domains of my mind, my heart and my spirit. I dedicate this blog to her.
I recall vividly that when my brother Maurice died, age 47, how it placed the heavy stone of sorrow into her heart. I remember my Mother sitting in the funeral home weeping, her head bowed. Her sobbing called out to me and I went to her side. She told me that Maurice went to her home once a week to take her to a restaurant for breakfast and then to the grocery store to help her with her grocery shopping. “I will miss that so very much,” she said through tear-filled eyes. I assured my Mother that she could count on me to take over what Maurice had done for her. Hence, every Wednesday I was at her door at 8:30 a.m. We went together to the restaurant to eat and chat, then went on to the ‘Metro’ in Aylmer. She pushed our grocery cart up and down the aisles of the store, selecting food items and what not in the way of supplies for her weekly needs. My sister Pauline joined us most of the time. We always had a good visit.
Mima endured much heartache and trauma too in her life (she lived in a sanatorium in Montreal, battling tuberculosis for 2 years). She gave birth to 13 children, she lost her first two sons, Paul Emile (17 months) and Raymond (7 months). She lost Anne (age 21) and Russell (age 25) too, early in their lives. Mima suffered greatly and sadly, the wildness and nonsense of my life before my sobriety began, also brought worry and despair into her life. I am truly ashamed now for being such an idiot during those wasted years.
I promised myself that day in the funeral home, I would be as perfect a son for her as I could possibly be for a mother who deserved the best of the best life can offer. I felt being there for her in her older years was the least I could do for her in appreciation for the wonderful Mother she was to all her children. I was a ‘good’ son for the last nine years of her life!
My Mother was not the type of person who wanted to be wined and dined by my dad. She didn’t want expensive jewelry nor fine clothing. All she wanted was to be happy and what made her heart sing was looking into the eyes of her children and seeing love, peace and joy looking back at her.
Mima took sick with congestive heart failure when she was 82 years of age. There came a couple of weeks near the end where she was in so much pain from blood clots in her legs that she cried, begging for death to relieve her of it. I spent a lot of time with her then. My feeling was that she was there when I took my first breath of life and I wanted to be present when she drew her last.
One day, in those last hours of her consciousness, she told me of a memory she had when she was 12 years old and working in a lumber camp as the cook’s helper (my grandma was the cook). Grandpa was also at the camp working as a lumberjack. She shared that at the camp, a worker had taken very sick. It was believed that the poor man’s death was imminent. While this was happening travellers arrived at the camp, an old man and two old women, all Indigenous. They asked permission from the camp foreman to set up their lodge for one night within the perimeters of the lumber camp. Permission to do so was granted.
Mima told me that after nightfall came, the travellers saw that there was a lot of activity at one of the shanties. The old man among them inquired as to what was going on in the cabin. “A man lays dying there,” he was told. For whatever reason the old traveller asked if he might go to the dying man’s bedside. He was told “yes” he could do so.
My Mother related that the old man went into the shanty for a short while. He then returned to his lodge and prepared to smoke a pipe. My Mom described the pipe as big, very long. She measured a distance of at least 18 inches in length by spreading her arms.
“He sat on the ground and smoked it,” she said, telling me that while the pipe was smoked, the two old women travelling with the man danced on either side of him. I asked my Mother how they danced. She replied that the women were wearing long skirts and only how the cloth of their dresses moved, made it clear that the feet of the women were moving in a gentle manner on the earth. My Mother stated that after the pipe was completely empty of tobacco, the old man raised up from the ground and returned to the sick man’s bedside. “This man will not die,” he told the people holding the death vigil. “He will recover and regain his strength and return to his worksite, strong as ever before.” At dawn the sick man’s fever broke, he regained his health and worked again as he had before taking ill.
I knew that my Mother told this memory of hers to me because it was her way of telling me the spiritual beliefs I have embraced are good to keep strong by my side. They are powerful and can be there to assist in bringing about wonderful things.
My beautiful granddaughter Kyrstin gave birth to my first great-grandchild on May 29, 2023. ‘Carter’ didn’t live long, only 7 weeks! How we all loved him! My heart knows that there is no greater love than that which lives in the heart of a mother for her children.
Kyrstin I know, holds her son spiritually, each and every day since he left us. So it will be till she, after living a long life, will bring Carter once again to her bosom. A mother’s love is a fire impossible to extinguish.
Many of my dearest friends are mothers. There is no sacrifice too great that would deter them in any way from going to the side of that child and fight with the ferocity of a mother bear to protect her offspring. To all of you reading this, all the sons, all the daughters, I say, “Never take the love your mother has for you for granted. It is a love you should cherish, honour and feast, you will never again know it from any other human being on this planet.” To me, the word ‘perfect’ was created to describe the unconditional love dedicated moms have for their children. The word ‘perfect’ is not a ‘fit’ to describe anything else around us save for the trees, the waters of the rivers and lakes and all else we look to when we say “All our Relations”.
Keep the Circle Strong,
South Wind (Albert Dumont)
