The Sharpened Spoon: In Honor of My Mother, Janett Sue Morton Morris 1948-1998

This is the eulogy I wrote for my Grandmother, Jessie Lucille Price Morton.

There is a way that a mother looks at you. You probably cannot even recognize it until it is gone, but there is a subtle knowledge that all she really sees is the best of that tiny baby she once cradled in her arms. It is as if you were the innocent child, incapable of wrong that she first held. No one in this life can ever really see you like that.

It is a function of viewing a part of one’s own being in its purest state, as if the separation between you and her that occurred at birth had never happened. She is seeing the best of her, and can only see the best of you. It is this, pure, unfiltered love that leads a mother to make any sacrifice for the well being of her child, even if she must lay down the rest of her to achieve it.

That look, that glance that does not pass from eye to brain, but straight from your heart to hers is a very powerful thing. If you are truly blessed there is one other who might possess that knowledge of the real you, who sees only your potential, your mother’s mother. I was that fortunate.

My mother seemed never to have noticed even the most grievous offenses that we committed against her, but let us wrong each other and there would be no stopping her in her quest for justice. Because although she saw in me the thing that God had placed there, that mirror of his image, she also saw it in the others that had shared her womb.

She passed from this life early, three months to the day shy of her fiftieth birthday, not able to complete her course. Until recently the memory of her full life still lingered on this earth, in the woman that she was carbon copied from, my grandmother. With her passing from this life so passed the human knowledge of the real me in my perfect newborn state.

No one will ever look on me with that knowledge again. As I said you never realize that the look exists until it is gone, and then the emptiness of knowing you will never be seen in those terms again in this life is indescribable. The void that that connection with my history having been broken has opened seems unfathomable.

I now understand just a little of what my wife feels when her babies cry, it is this love, a love that a Father can never feel. It is in that intimacy of the womb, and only there, that this love can be born.

A Father’s love is always a measurement, of pride, of achievement, of ownership. And while a Father can strive for unconditional love his knowledge of us is incomplete. He is incapable of that knowledge. God’s creation of man was to be in his own image, Adam was created with the knowledge of the womb, that gift was given to Eve in their physical separation.

I wonder in seeking the Father’s heart if it is not this innate Mother’s knowing look we really seek. At the risk of sounding politically correct my heart longs for that mother’s gaze from my creator. To be known in my created state, the way only God sees me now.

The Sharpened Spoon

Everyone's entitled to my opinion

In Honor of My Mother, Janett Sue Morton Morris 1948-1998

0 comments:

Block

My Writing site

My other Blogs

My first Novel

Report Abuse

About Me

Search This Blog

Blog Archive

Labels

Must Read

Pages

I wrote a Book, here it is!