This is for all the mothers who struggled

This is for all the mothers whose lives weren’t all sunshine and roses.

In other words, all mothers.

My mother was the valedictorian of the Class of 1939 at Barlow High School.

She could have gone to college.

But farm girls couldn’t afford college in those days.

Besides, she was in love with my dad and was anxious to get married.

On June 10, 1939, just a few weeks after graduation, they found a justice of the peace and said “I do.”

And they meant it.

She was 17.

He was 21.

Then, in 1943, life took them apart.

He was drafted for World War II.

She wouldn’t see him again until December 1945.

Mom headed to Evansville to help build planes for the war.

She was alone in a strange city.

And she worried about Daddy.

Her diaries are filled with worry.

It would be days — sometimes weeks — before his letters came.

And there was no way of knowing if he was safe.

He was.

But she worried herself to the edge of depression — like so many women then.

He eventually got home and they were together until January 2002, when Parkinson’s took her from him.

He made it another 16 months without her.

Here are a couple of other mothers I’d like to remember.

My mother’s father left one day in 1932 during the depths of the Great Depression.

My grandmother found herself with four kids, an ailing mother and a farm to run.

And she did it at a time when government assistance was still a novelty.

That ailing mother of hers had been orphaned as a child in western Kentucky.

Her stepfather loaded his kids and the family belongings into a wagon and rolled away, leaving her and her little sister alone.

So, she started walking, holding her sister’s hand, back to relatives around Clarksville, Tennessee.

That’s a little over 100 miles.

Eventually, she married her cousin and came back to western Kentucky to reclaim her home place.

Her great-grandson and her great-great-grandson still live on that land.

I’m sure you have your own stories about mothers who struggled.

Some made it.

Some didn’t.

But happy Mother’s Day to them all.