I want my mom!

By Michelle Martin

I was about 9 years old the day my friend and I thought it would be a good idea to jump rope on the top of the concrete stairs leading up to my front door.

The summer evening was warm, and we were enjoying the extended twilight when the inevitable happened—I missed my footing and tumbled down the five or six steps, landing in a crying heap of skinned knees and bruised elbows. As my friend bounced down to make sure I was OK—and really, for the most part, I was—I wailed, “I want my mom!”

My friend quickly found her weeding the backyard garden, and she came and wrapped me in her arms and calmed me down before applying Bactine and Band-Aids, along with some well-chosen words about looking before you leap.

Last week, when our family and our parish unexpectedly lost a very dear friend, the parish secretary who was more godmother-to-all than employee, my instinct was the same.

“Mom, can you come down for a couple of days to stay with the kids so we can all go to the funeral?” I asked. Normally, my husband’s parents, who live downstairs, or his sister, who lives a few minutes away, can be counted on to come on a moments’ notice. But Jean Bovyn meant as much to my in-laws as to my husband and me, and they would want to attend the funeral, too.

And the next day, coming from the next state, my mom was there.

While I was still at work, she dressed the kids for the wake and braided my daughter’s hair. She helped my husband get them out the door to pick me up, have dinner, and pay our respects at the funeral home. She came to the wake too, having known the Bovyns through our family. Jean’s husband, Deacon Paul Bovyn, baptized both our kids and they were frequent guests at family parties.

The next day, my mom got her fill of grandchildren and they got their fill of her. They made two trips to two separate parks on the first real warm day of the year, ate pizza for lunch, stopped for ice cream and even worked on potty-training my 3-year-old.

At the funeral, at the back of a packed church, my tears started to flow as they brought the casket in and the family gathered behind it, filling the vestibule and spilling onto the church steps. Jean Bovyn, mother of seven, grandmother to 13, had gone to her eternal reward, and all of them looked as though they felt as I so often do. They wanted their mom.

At the end of the Mass, the second-oldest grandchild read a letter she had written nearly five years ago that was found in her grandmother’s wallet, a letter explaining why her grandmother and grandfather were her heroes.

Jeannie’s son-in-law spoke about his “mom,” calling her another saint in heaven. Jean, he said, always made him feel such a part of the family, made him feel she loved him so much, with a love so special, she couldn’t possibly love anyone else like that. That’s how everyone felt about their relationship with her, and that feeling, he said, is the love of Christ that Jean brought to her corner of Chicago.

My mom went home after the funeral, with my profound gratitude not just for coming when I needed her this time, but for always being there to pick me up when I fell, to give me a boost when the obstacles in life looked too high.

Life in our parish will go on, too, but from now on, in some way, we all will want our mom.

 

Martin is a staff writer for The Catholic New World.