Be sure to give the gift of time this Mother’s Day

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/05/2018 (3065 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There is only one more sleep until Mother’s Day, and you know what that means, don’t you?

For many of you, it means you should drop whatever you are holding — unless it’s a hot cup of coffee or a baby — hop in your car, drive to the mall and buy your mom (a) chocolates, (b) flowers or (c) fuzzy slippers to show her how much you care.

For some of us, however, it means something completely different.

For me personally, this will mark my first Mother’s Day without my mom.

We lost my mom last year in early November on the West Coast. It wasn’t totally unexpected, but it still felt sudden. One minute, she was there, wreaking havoc at garage sales on Vancouver Island. The next, she was gone.

The loss left a gaping hole in our lives. Almost every day since, something will happen — something silly or stupid or joyful — that makes me think, “Gee, I should call my mom,” and then the cold fist of reality smacks me on the side of the head.

Anyway, I’m not telling you this because I want to be maudlin on the eve of Mother’s Day. If I wrote some self-pitying, tearfully sentimental column, my mom would definitely come back to haunt me.

No, what I want to do is share one of my favourite off-the-wall stories about my mom, and then give you, the faithful newspaper reader, a helpful suggestion on how you can make Sunday an awesome day for your own mom.

I should point out everything about my mom was larger than life, especially her sense of humour. During her 26 years in Winnipeg, mom, whose first name was Evelyn, was handed the affectionate nickname “Big E,” partly a tribute to the fact she was a solid, traditionally built woman, but mostly a recognition of her outsized personality and ability to laugh so hard we feared she’d have an accident on the living room carpet.

My mom had a unique ability to find humour in things that were not, on the surface, all that funny, which brings us to her favourite story, one she shared with me a few years back when I called to wish her a happy Mother’s Day.

When I wrote about this at the time, I was flooded with happy emails from other people’s mothers, who had cut out the column and stuck it to their fridges with fruit-shaped magnets, which is the highest honour any newspaper columnist can hope to receive.

Getting back to the story, what happened was my mom, who moved at the speed of airport luggage, had hobbled into her bathroom to take her morning shower, which involved sitting on one of those small plastic shower chairs.

On this morning, however, the chair shattered under her weight and — WHOOPS! — mom toppled over and became stuck on the floor of her tiny shower, wedged in so tightly she was unable to move her legs, let alone stand up.

Undaunted, mom managed to reach up and turn off the water, then cleverly used a long-handled back brush to push open the shower door and flip over her walker, on which she always rested her mobile phone because, well, you never know.

Using the long brush, she was able to pull the phone into the shower, which enabled her — after failing to reach my brother and anyone else she thought could help — to dial 911 and politely explain her predicament to the dispatcher.

There was my beloved, mostly deaf mom, in her birthday suit, cold and wet, trapped on the floor of her shower, phone in one hand, the other wielding the long-handled brush to pull down a towel, when a team of heroic paramedics and police officers burst into her bathroom.

“There I was,” my mom giggled at the time, warming to her story, “old, fat, naked, stuck on the floor of the shower and surrounded by all these gorgeous young policemen and handsome paramedics.”

In the sort of dramatic rescue you used to see on TV, these plucky paramedics and police removed the shower door, then draped my mom in a towel and carefully hoisted her up off the floor, freeing her from the cramped confines of a watery jail cell.

A few days later, mom made a trip to the local hospital to get checked out, which is where, by sheer accident, she ran into the same paramedics who had come riding to her rescue.

“Hello, Mrs. Speirs,” her rescuers chirped. “You look a lot better today.”

Which is when my mom, one of those relentlessly upbeat people who finds a kernel of joy in any situation, laughed her trademark laugh and replied; “I’m surprised that you recognized me with my clothes on.”

At the time, I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to share that story with readers of this newspaper, but I did for one simple reason — my mom told me to do it.

Which is why today, in memory of the woman who gave me my sense of humour, I’m going to tell you what to give your mom tomorrow, a gift she will enjoy even more than those works of art you whipped up in Grade 1 from a gallon of glue and several pounds of painted elbow macaroni.

Forgive me for sounding like a Hallmark card, but more than anything your mom will enjoy the gift of time, by which I mean time with you, her beloved offspring. Forget how busy your life is and sit down with your mom over a cup of coffee (tea is also acceptable) and share the gift of time.

Because we never know how much of it we have left. Happy Mother’s Day!

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca