An Open Letter to my Mom,
It started with a telephone call last week where you explained why it wasn’t important to be there for your 85th birthday, no need you said, it’s not really a milestone – it’s just another day. Of course you are right, it would just be another day, and a new one comes along every 24 hours. But then I started thinking about what a lost opportunity it might be to thank the person that brought me into this world. To thank the person, who raised me, who raised my three sisters and with the help of a few good neighbors collectively raised our friends. A lost opportunity to once again express my deep conviction that our very best characteristics are not genetic, they are instilled through the constant exposure of the care and nurturing that our parents bestow upon us from birth through the entirety of our lives.
I realized that this might be a lost opportunity to thank you for the vast wisdom and guidance, for teaching us how to learn and grow, how to love and how to be loved and how to have compassion, empathy and respect for others. A lost opportunity to express how much you have influenced my life, my wife and my daughter’s lives and you manage to do that all from some 3,651 kilometers away.
A lost opportunity to remind you that it was you that taught us what true strength and sacrifice means. That is okay to stumble and fall but understand that success comes in having the courage and tenacity to get back up and try again. That you and your husband are the center of our vast universe and that it is possible to have a loving marriage that lasts a life time. The opportunity to validate that the love of a Mother is infinite and everlasting.
So, yes I agree June 16, 2018 will be just another day, but just think what a wonderful opportunity it could have been.
Happy Birthday Mom
Douglas Banks
