MOTHER'S DAY

 

My mother Marie.

I posted this photo several previous times. It's one of my favorite photos because it was taken during the happiest time of her life. She was living in Red River, New Mexico, where her relatives had a summer resort. She worked helping to cook, clean the cabins, and care for the livestock. She had a passion for horses and was an excellent rider.

Many years later......
her favorite yellow roses.

She was an extraordinary pianist (and my first piano teacher). She loved music, art, literature, history, and had an insatiable quest for learning.

Despite the outward appearance of normalcy, my mother existed in the nightmarish realms of a private hell - - having to endure the extreme violence, the constant mental and physical abuse inflicted by my father.

The things that my mom and I endured are nearly impossible to describe and far too painful to remember. Survival was our desperate quest and - in retrospect - it's a miracle that we did survive.

Years later - when I embarked on a wild, reckless path of self-destruction - my mother had the uncanny ability to salvage me from my own demons. She unfailingly gave me courage, hope, rationality, and a sense of desperately-needed self-worth.

Without a doubt, she was an anchor in my sea of chaos.

It doesn't seem possible that she has been gone for nearly fifteen years. I'm left with bittersweet memories and the echoes of gentle ghosts that weave through the distance of faded time.

In Solvang, California. I like this photo because it's very typical of how she looked.

It had been raining before this photo was taken of mom and I.  Just as my father snapped the picture, a ray of sunlight broke through the clouds.

Happy Mother's Day to all,  Jon