Momma Bears' Teachings

To start with, the strongest people in the world sometimes struggle with mental illnesses. Depression, bipolar disorder, and worse can change a persons' circumstances dramatically. But, somehow my momma bear never let that stop her. While not always perfect, and sometimes a horror show, she imparted things onto me that make me who I am.

Perseverance. It isn't just a word, it's something that was a part of my DNA from the moment I was born to today. Literally, handed down through generations, perseverance makes its way through the generations and down to me from my mom. I remember as a kid, walking to the store with her. It wasn't a long walk by any means and sometimes it was kind of fun. We would cut through a trail area that served as a shortcut. It was an adventure and something that I looked forward to on the weekends. There was simply no quit in her and if it needed doing, like walking to the store when the car was broke down, that's what she did.

Mom was a single mother to two boys, and that's a hard life, to be certain. As kids, I always wondered why I didn't have a "dad". Learning, when I got old enough, about the abusive man that was my father, made me understand the life she chose. She feared what he would do after the war when he came back a different person. Something, that after meeting him, I could understand as an adult.

There was always food on the table and clothes on our backs. We always had birthday presents, laughs, and holidays with grandparents, aunts, and uncles. The women, like my mom, were stronger than most by today's standards. I could see early on where she got that little extra something in her from, it was inherited.

As I got older I grew to understand mom more, and saw her find someone special for herself. We were never neglected or put aside by mom or the man that would become my dad. It was good to see her happy for a while. They had many good years before her health failed her. I learned that you stay in the "fight" until you've lost and I learned it from my mom more than anyone.

Understanding. This was a trait that I came to know meant more than just understanding a person, it meant being able to sympathize, empathize, and show compassion. Mom was always someone that I could talk to, openly, even in my teenage years. She proved on more than one occasion, even after her faculties weren't there at times, that she paid attention. Sure, I had a "dad", but mom had always been there and dad was more old-fashioned, not that it was a bad thing.

When I was 19 years old it was my mom that I went to first, to tell her that I was going to be a parent. I had literally been the worst child as a teenager, and here I was again, disappointing them. Mom hugged me and told me she knew how scary it was. She was only a few years older than I when she divorced my ex-marine father for being physically abusive and she'd set out into the world with two children instead of just one. As scared as I was, it was a comfort to hear that she understood, even though the look on her face was anything but comforting.

"You will absolutely learn to be a good father," she told me. "Or else."

She was correct. What she couldn't have foreseen at the time was that just a couple of years later, at nearly the same age, I would find myself as a single parent. After all of the years protecting me as a child, being there every time I fell on my face as I moved through the teenage years, and into my earliest part of adulthood, mom never stopped.

"Just because you're an adult doesn't mean you aren't my kid anymore."

That lesson in perseverance served me well over the years when it came time for me to standby my son as he had his struggles and faced his demons while becoming a man. If not for that lesson, I don't know what kind of father I might have been. So many parents turn their backs on their children as soon as they're old enough, no doubt hoping to regain their freedom or quiet down their existence. Not my mom, she was a hard and true parent until the day she fell into a coma and had to be put on life support.

The greatest lesson my mom taught me was perseverance. It was that lesson that taught me to have the courage and the strength to persevere through seemingly insurmountable odds. College, a career in law enforcement until my son was 27, buying a house (the first in my family), and eventually to fulfill my most daunting promise.

"If I ever ended up on life support I want you to promise that you'll make sure they don't leave me that way for one day longer than they should..."

At 35 years old, I watched my mom go into a coma after a stroke at age 56. It was beyond devastating. My poor father didn't know what to do or how to function while we waited and prayed. My brother didn't know how to express his feelings, leaving me to wonder where he was at on the long-term question. I had made a promise I expected I would have more time to prepare for, that I hoped I'd be much older before I'd have to fulfill, and yet there I was, struggling to ask the doctors the right questions. As I stood in her hospital room, mulling things over in my head, I looked at all the impossible things I had put my parents through as a teenager and then all of the help they provided me as a single parent. How could I not fulfill this one request?

Mom's example of perseverance prepared me for the world as it truly is and that's something that even she might not have known. The world's hard, sometimes impossible, and we will face the most trying of times in our short existences. But, my mom's strength and courage when she was young helped prepare me for a task no child should have to complete. When it's over, and the dust settles, that loss is unforgettable and I felt a swarm of emotions. But, I persevered, the promise fulfilled, and we learned to survive without mom around. I helped take care of my dad, just to watch him die of cancer less than three years later, and I survived. Through good times and bad, I always do, thanks to mom, and a little perseverance.