Thinking about my mother as Mother's Day draws near
Have I ever told you about my mother? No, because I have always made it a rule not to write about my family. Everyone has their own memories.
But Sunday is Mother's Day, so I've decided to write about my mother, Shirley Mae Gilbert. Not because she was so remarkable, wonderful and “historic” – though she was to me – but because, In many ways, my mother was everybody's mother.
I think, and hope, that by talking about my mother many of you will come to see and appreciate your mother as well. I am hoping that with my reminiscences about my mother, you will come to know your own mother even more that you already do.
My mother was born in a small farm community outside Windsor. My grandfather's farm was on the Canard River near Amherstburg. At 16, my mother was hit by a taxi in downtown Windsor and hurt her leg. She wasn't seriously hurt, but later developed polio in the same leg.
As a result of the polio, one leg was shorter than the other, forcing her to wear ugly black shoes, with one heel thicker than the other to balance her walk, for life. I never heard her complain. That was the life she was given, so she simply dealt with it.
When she was in grade school, my grandparents moved back to Kent County and bought a small farm on the River Road in Dover. By all accounts, my mother was a very good student earning top grades and various awards at nearby S.S. No. 5 Dover.
After elementary school, she followed in her mother's footsteps, went to business college then got a job as a secretary at International Harvester. Very attractive and popular with boys, she married a Dover Township farm boy and immediately started having children.
People who knew her then always comment about her ability to listen and give good advice, and how her eyes were the kindest they'd seen.
Living on a farm on the 3rd concession in Raleigh Township, she had her first child: me. I played a minor role in what would become family lore. Leaving me outside for a few minutes in the shade on a hot summer's day, she returned to find a large snake (probably a milk or fox snake) wrapped around the wheels of my stroller! Calmly, she went to the shed, grabbed a sharp hoe and deftly chopped off the snake's head. I like to picture my mother as a valiant warrior, sword in hand, saving her first born!
My mother, in short order, went on to have three more children, two girls and another boy.
Along the way, she lost a baby after just a month, a husband who died tragically at 70, a grandchild in his 30s, and her only sister in her 60s. Her two boys, between them, would marry and divorce three times.
Through it all, my mother looked after her family, prided herself on a huge garden that grew all sorts of exotic plants and worked as the longtime secretary to the governor (warden) of the Chatham Jail. And there was so much more, but I have already said too much.
My mother died at 97 on a cold January night during the COVID-19 pandemic, in a time that she, like many of us, never really understood. I remember going to see her shortly after she passed, in an empty, dark room with the wind howling outside, I suddenly realized I was truly an orphan and kissed her cheek one last time.
During our recent tours of the abandoned jail. I met retired guards who had worked with my mother. They were anxious to meet me and share fond, treasured memories of my mother, whom they all described as “a sweetheart”.
Another lady I met who had just recently met my mother, told me she knew I was her son because I had "kind eyes just like your mother.” As tears welled in my eyes, I quietly chastised myself for only being half the person my mother was.
I hope my look back at my mother has struck a chord. All mothers in reality are the same, I suppose. They have instilled in all of us the good, the kindness, the care, the affection and personality that we have kept with us throughout our lives.
It is really unfair that Mother's Day only come once a year. I think about her more as each season passes.