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May 9, 2010

Kathy Gibbons: Moms carry on

By KATHY GIBBONS Local Columnist

There were three of us, side by side, at the wedding shower.

The bride-to-be is the daughter of one of my closest friends. She died six years ago of cancer.

But as we all know, life goes on. Her husband remarried the following year, finding love and comfort with a woman who had just lost her husband in similar circumstances.

His then-new wife embraced the role of stepmother to their two children. Shoulder to shoulder, they saw the younger one through his last year of high school and into college, at the same time providing support and guidance to his older sister, now about to be married.

Their stepmom has been as involved in the wedding planning as my friend would have been. In fact, through these last five years, she's been all that any mother who is dying could hope for, for her children, from the woman her husband would later marry.

And so she helped plan a wonderful bridal shower. It was a happy occasion, with friends and family surrounding the couple with affection and gifts. I was sitting next to two women who had also been close friends with the bride-to-be's mother. Noticing their profiles as they watched the presents being opened, I was sure each of us was thinking about how much our friend would have reveled in it all. She loved her kids more than anything, as she also loved family, friends and celebrations.

While there is acceptance, and you can get used to someone you love like that being gone, times like a wedding can shine a glaring light on their absence. Still, you look around and see the people who have stepped in to fill the void. You see the healing, and new families, and you marvel at the resilience of the human spirit.

Meanwhile, moms like us — her friends — take it all in and are grateful to be there even as she can't be — at least, not physically.

Because while It may be cliché to say, I realized our friend was there at the shower as she will be at the wedding. She is there in her children. In her loving husband and family. I feel she's with their stepmother, who has done all she can to be a mother to them. And she's with us other moms, whose hearts are in both places — in our history with her, and in our gladness at seeing how this family has been able to go on with the care and concern of a woman our friend never met.

Glancing again at the other two women, I thought how fortunate we are to be able to experience these events. It is with pride and honor that we continue to be a part of her family — to participate in such milestone occasions in the lives of her children, possibly even quietly representing her in our own way.

And that is how it always will be, for as long as we can.

Kathy Gibbons can be reached at gibbonskath@yahoo.com. For more of Kathy's columns, log on to record-eagle.com/kathygibbons.

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