Write Team: How was your Mother’s Day?

Mother’s Day was last week. To be honest, I never really did too much for the holiday. I knew I had a good mother and did try to do things to help her, especially as she aged and I was living a state away. My mother died in 2007. She endured a lot with her other sons, as some very different things came out of their life experiences.

When working at the Detention Home, I would use part of our family history with the youth to illustrate that bad things in your life were not excuses for you to fail – or not to try. My younger brother and I are the remaining brothers of a group of five.

Let me share some things from my family history. My maternal grandfather died when a tractor flipped when he was trying to pull a stump out of a muddy area. He was under the flipped tractor and forced down into the mud. The brother just older than me died from cancer when I was a freshman in college.

My next older brother died from cancer quite a few years later. He also had been stabbed at a dance club, many years before, in our town by someone who should not have been in the club, as he was too young to be there since alcohol was served. Had the knife penetrated less than an inch more, my brother would not have survived.

I can go on with divorces, problems with alcohol, multiple auto accidents (including one where my grandmother’s car was hit from the side and forced up a telephone pole while I was in the back seat), and suicides by extended family members and friends.

As you can see, my mother endured a lot in her lifetime, and much more could be listed.

My mother amazed me (much more in retrospect than at the time) that she took it all in and never complained about her life or really even was outwardly upset. She was extremely proud of her five boys, when at times she would have been justified in being disappointed. In later years, she even laughed with us as we told her of some of the things we had done that were far from exemplary. She gave me an example of unconditional love, so it was easier later on to understand God’s love for me when I didn’t deserve it.

Through it all, I don’t really remember a time where she yelled at me. Although I had less traumatic happenings in my own life than my brothers, I was far from a perfect child. That is probably why in many situations I don’t get very upset, but try to reason out what can be done to make the situation better. I miss my mother, but probably not nearly as much as my wife does. Like all good mothers, she prepared me for life, but perhaps in a much calmer way than many mothers. Happy belated Mother’s Day.

• Rodney Verdine is retired as the assistant director at the La Salle County Detention Home, but also has been a probation officer. He can be reached at newsroom@mywebtimes.com.