A Beginning

I sit across the table from a woman I'd never taken the time to truly understand or see.  She had always just been Mom.  I'd cried with her, carried her burdens in my heart, loved and, at times, hated her but I had never truly seen her.  Over the years she has given me little more than glimpses into her story, though I've cherished each as a gift to my heart in understanding and loving her. 

The gentle bustling noises of the small town deli create a play list for quiet conversation.  The busyness and stress of her day briefly forgotten as we share a simple, quick morsel in the rushed moments between her two jobs.  The conversation has shifted and her tired eyes fill with a sadness of old.

We were just talking about the new life growing and being knit together in my womb.  She had asked if I was afraid and I admitted that I was more fearful than I had been with my first two births and wondered if, in her four birth experiences, she could relate.

She responds simply that my birth, the last of the four, was the most fear-filled of them all.  I think to myself I've heard this story and am not prepared for the glimpse into her life and heart that she is about to share.  Her eyes glass over with remembrance as her mind is taken back to August 21st of 1987. 

She was little more than 7 months pregnant with what she thought was one healthy baby.  Poor and having no insurance, she had been unable to find a doctor who would see her throughout her pregnancy.  She had had no prenatal care and had no doctor to call.  So when she became incredibly sick and needed medical attention, she went to the local teaching hospital in Orange County, California.

A doctor finally agreed to see her after she waited six agonizing hours in the waiting room.  She was taken to a room with one doctor and nearly 15 students.  No privacy to be had.  She was nothing more than a teaching moment and they treated her accordingly.  They spoke about her as if she wasn't in the room; as if her pain were not real; as if she were not human.

Finally, unable to understand what the doctor was saying, my mother interrupted and asked the doctor to speak plainly to her.  His cold eyes met hers for probably the first time as he said, "you are pregnant with twins, one is dead and we don't expect the other to make it."  And he left the room without a reassuring word or kind hand squeeze. 

The words pour from her mouth with acceptance.  Sadness is a part of her story, she doesn't fight it.  I am caught off guard and take a minute to process as best I can.  But I am even more unprepared for the words that follow.

My father, a man I know very little about thought I lived with him for the first 14 years of my life, refused to be in the room with my mother.  He believed that the death of his only son, the twin who was still born, was a punishment from God because my mother did not respect him enough. 

Left alone by those she loved, my brave mother gave birth to two children, one who she would never know beyond the remembrance of his chubby checks and curly hair.  The doctors and nurses left her the room as she held me and my brother.  And my father, he chose to never hold or even look at my brother.  He never even came in the room to comfort my mother.

She smiles through somewhat moist eyes as her mind returns to the present moment.  And then she speaks these words, "But Mindy, He was there.  I felt His presence and it was so thick, like butter, that you could have cut Him with a knife."

For a minute, I am confused.  I think to myself, trying to recall her words. Who was she talking about; who was there?  And then I notice the slight smile on her face and I understand. 

God met my mother in the deepest, darkest, most lonely moment a mother can ever know.  His presence was so thick, she felt she could breathe Him in and that is the deepest form of chara, joy that anyone can ever know.  To be held by and breathe in JOY Himself in our deepest grief. 

And that is my beginning, bathed in my mother's lonely, broken chara.