You know who you are - you who are planning to visit your mom on Mother's Day. Don't do it. Stay home. Call her. Or Zoom with her. But don't enter her home with your viruses and germs. Don't be the problem. Don't infect your mom. Don't let her infect you. Do the right thing. Stay home.
Update 5/7/2020 11:19 pm CST - As I sat on a table at the physical therapist's earlier today, a group of therapists and patients at adjoining tables engaged in a discussion of what they are going to do on Mother's Day. All of them are planning to go visit their moms; several were going to visit both their own moms and then their spouses' moms. There weren't enough people present to constitute a statistically valid sample, but my conclusion from this anecdotal glimpse of people's attitudes is that collectively we have given up on staying home. Everyone is tired of it, and the spirit of "we're done with it" is now abroad, no doubt reinforced by the protesters and civil disobeyers (and politicians who cater to them) who are now all over the news and social media. I've also noticed that street traffic is increasing. My state, Illinois, has hardly relaxed anything at all since the stay-at-home order first went into effect; the only difference is that some businesses previously deemed non-essential may now do curbside deliveries. But people are getting out more. And at the risk of doing my Chicken Little impression: I'm finding scant reason for optimism in the numbers of infections and deaths.
The only place I'd be visiting my mom is the cemetery. But I will miss seeing my kids and grandkids. The girls always get me some kind of a goofy gift, like that cat throw pillow that was pictured with my now deceased cat awhile back.
ReplyDeleteMy husband always asks what I want for Mother's Day. I always say a hanging basket of flowers for the front porch, and I pick one out at one of the garden centers. All that stuff is outdoors now, so I can probably still get one, and maintain distance.
It doesn't affect me, because my kids are older, but it was a gripe previously that the PTB would always schedule prom, graduation, First Communion, or Confirmation on Mother's Day weekend. Sometimes two or three of those. For most mothers, the thing they want most, in addition to contact with their loved ones, is a day of rest.
No problem for me. My mom died, and The Boy never remembers "occasions," which is fine by me because he does keep in touch in other ways. Raber usually goes off on his diatribe about holidays invented to boost greeting card and floral sales.
ReplyDeleteI usually take some time to pray for those for whom Mothers Day is fraught with difficult memories.
Jim is young enough to have both parents. Katherine has her father. For the rest of us, I believe, mothers and fathers days are days of remembrance. I may try to drive down to the Philadelphia area to visit my mother's grave. Hard to believe I just wrote that.
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone else remember the custom of wearing a flower to church on Mother's Day; a red one if your mother was living, and a white one if she was deceased? The only time I did that was the year my mom died.
ReplyDeleteI'm not good at remembering death dates, I prefer to remember their birthdays. My husband remembers all the death dates in his family, and mine. And all kinds of other dates, some of which I prefer to forget, like that car wreck in '95. I think part of it is being a deacon. They have a book called the Ordo, updated each year, "The Order of Prayer in the Liturgy of the Hours and Celebration of the Eucharist". It also has, by date, the names and death years of all the deceased clergy of the archdiocese, as well as the religious order priests who served here. He always reads it and will sometimes say, something like "Hmmm, Rev. Florian Kudrna, OFM, 1895, today." Sometimes interesting from a historical standpoint, but mostly goes right past me.
Some people also keep loved ones' funeral home holy cards in their breviaries, in the appropriate date. Katherine, does your husband do that?
DeleteOh, yes. In his Bible, too. I keep them in my prayer book, too, in no particular order. Sometimes I drop it and they all fall out. I've got some cards commemorating ordinations and religious profession, too.
DeleteKatherine,
DeleteThere is a word for this list of people whose death dates are commemorated, it's called the Necrology, List of the Dead.
It is also an important part of religious orders. It is parallel to the Martyrology or list of saints and martyrs who are also often commemorated on the day of their death.
The Orthodox have an interesting custom. They mainly commemorate the dead with Saturday Divine Liturgies several times a year. AT the main one which occurs right before Lent they read a list of all the people from the parish who have died since the parish was founded. During the reading the choir and people chant Lord have mercy, usually done in several languages, e.g. Greek and Slavonic to make it more interesting. It takes awhile even for our local parish which is about 30 years old. I wonder what it is like for really old parishes.
Well,like everyone except Jim, my mother (and my husband's) departed this life years ago - in our case, both mothers and my husband's father died in 1992. I did not know my own father well. He died in 1985.
ReplyDeleteI never really liked Mother's Day for myself, so we never made a big deal of it with our sons. I asked my husband and sons to just low-key Mothers' Day. Now they usually call or send a card, and that's fine.
My father is buried somewhere in Los Angeles. I don't remember the name of the cemetery. Although my mother was born in LA, lived her entire life there, and died there, she wanted to be buried in her father's family's plot at a church in New York state. So we did that, but none of us have ever made it back to visit her grave. It's a bit remote from all of us. My parents were divorced, so she had no wish to be buried near her one-time husband.
My wife's parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles et al are buried in a cemetery in the suburban South Side of Chicago, in the so-called "Slovak cemetery" (every Catholic ethnic group on the South Side apparently has its own cemetery). She's mentioned to me several times that she'd like to be buried next to her parents. We don't live on the South Side, and it's difficult at present to imagine that any of our kids would end up down there so, if I outlive her, she'd be buried many miles away from me and her children. I'd rather we picked out a spot not far from where we live. I truly don't know how important it would be to me to want to visit a grave. I'm 58 years old and I've never visited one on my own. My own grandparents and extended family are buried in Michigan, a couple hundred miles away from me.
DeleteWe've had this discussion, too. Most of my family and also my husband's parents are buried at the cemetery in Ogallala, NE, our hometown. I would prefer to be buried there. He would prefer here. We have no family here, and I have memories of decorating the graves back home. We visit that cemetery at least once a year. But I have also said if something happens to one of us during this quarantine, it would be best to make it as simple as possible, and be buried here. I am also trying to get past my reluctance to put medical directives in writing.
DeleteMy parents wanted to be buried in the family plot up north. It's a 2.5 hour drive. We try to go up on Memorial Day and have a picnic, but it won't be this year.
DeleteMy parents died long ago and are buried in a family plot in the cemetery of the parish where I was baptized in SW Pennsylvania. It is on a hill outside of town, a very lovely place.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a child we visited my grandmothers grave as well as that of one of mother's sisters. However I have rarely visited my parents graves. There is a plot there for me next to them so I will likely be resting there forever.
My mother once remarked that although she visited and decorated the graves each year she did not really feel they were there. As an only child I had a strong relationship with my parents and feel they are always present supporting me even though I have lived alone these many years. Although I have family back in Pennsylvania I doubt any of them will be visiting the graves other than for my funeral.
Generally it seems to me that funerals are being de-emphasized. My mother and dad specified no public viewing only family viewing one night followed by public Mass the next day. It will be the same for me.
As for Mother's day, it was never a big deal in my family, no special gifts or practices. My mother had a very beautiful cross. It was actually a piece of jewelry more than a religious object. My mother did not like displays of piety but wore it often to Mass because it could be regarded just as another piece of jewelry. I wear it to Mass on Christmas, Easter and Mother's Day, and have worn it to family funerals.
Jack, I don't really feel the presence of loved ones at their graves either. I believe in the resurrection of the dead, but I still don't understand it. Sometimes I dream about the dead, I feel close to them there.
DeleteI don't think it's necessary to have elaborate funerals, simple and dignified seems best.
Is visiting graves common practice? I have never visited a grave except for during funerals. My mother, father, and brother are buried in three different cemeteries and I have no idea where any of my grandparents are buried. Three died before I was born. They are buried somewhere in LA but I don’t know where. It’s a big city with lots of cemeteries. One of the old Catholic ones I presume. I think there are online resources to locate grave sites.
ReplyDeleteThe only grandparent I knew was my mothers’s mother. I don’t think she ever visited the cemetery after the funeral.
I think we will give instructions to our children now. We want a green burial at the Trappist monastery with immediate family only. Graveside service only. No viewings. People in caskets look like wax figures not like themselves. I would rather our children remember us as we were while still alive. I have information about it filed with our trust papers, but they might not get to those until after a burial. It’s not likely that we will die at the same time, but just in case.
As a child I used to go with my paternal grandma to decorate graves on Memorial Day. I would sit in the back seat and keep the containers of peonies and irises from tipping over. If we were lucky there would be some roses budded out to put on the babies' graves, Nana's baby Mary and my little brother, John. There was one grave of a 21 year old cousin, dated 1885, who had died suddenly while visiting relatives there. We always left flowers for him. The stone had an epitaph, "Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God." I still leave flowers for him if I am there. There was the family story that his mother had awakened in the middle of the night and knew he had died, though he was far from home.
DeleteMom sometimes went with us and sometimes not. I think seeing her baby's grave was still painful.
Nana would talk about the people she knew in the cemetery. There was one grave of a lady, not a relative. Nana laughed that she and her brothers had crashed her wedding. Well, not really. They had ridden their ponies up to the open church door while the wedding was going on.
I think visiting cemeteries is a familial or cultural thing. My experiences with cemeteries are similar to Katherine's. It was a big family day, everyone told stories about the departed, and there was a big picnic afterward. It was often the only time we saw extended family each year because it was the only holiday where the weather was cooperative. Thanksgiving and Christmas were too cold and snowy, and Easter was either slushy or rainy.
DeleteThese were also very relaxed holidays because nobody had to dress up. We were there to weed perennials, scrape the lichen off the stones, and set out flowers in urns.
Somebody usually had a flask, and libations were secretively poured out for my Grampa, and Old Grampa Deits, the one who survived the Civil War.
My Gramma just kept setting out flowers, and grimly pretended not to see it...
I have very fond feelings about the old cemetery, and I do feel my relatives are "there" in some sense.
Jim,
ReplyDeleteRecognize that no only you and those in physical therapy are not a random sample, you are likely a biased sample because you are willing to go to physical therapy, i.e. to take risks that many people would not take.