Letter to my mother

Dear Mom:

Tomorrow I’ll make the trip to Anderson to celebrate Mother’s Day with you. I’ll come bearing a card and an inexpensive gift, and, as you always do, you’ll receive them as if they were purchased at the most exclusive shop in Beverly Hills. What I’ll have a more difficult time giving you is a proper expression of what you mean to me. I’ve never been good at conveying those kinds of feelings verbally, so I’m doing it in this letter instead.

My mother, Betty Leer Engle

For 51 years your influence, example, support and love have carried me. I would be hard-pressed to name another person who has had a greater impact on my life, although you would be quick to redirect the credit to others with more education and longer resumes.

Yours has been a life devoted to giving. Time after time I’ve watched you deny yourself to meet the needs of someone else -- acts of kindness done with no fanfare and often met with little or no gratitude. I’m ashamed to say I’ve been one of those benefactors who sometimes took your generosity for granted. On those occasions it wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate what you did, mom. My attention was focused on something else or, most likely, I was embarrassed by your loving deed. I’ve always felt a sense of inadequacy in your presence. How could I -- or anyone else -- ever measure up to your compassion and care?

The evidence is overwhelming. You raised five children, a stepson and two grandkids. To help put us through a private Christian school you first drove a school van then, when dad died, you went to work at a local automotive components plant. Somehow you kept the household operating efficiently, made sure we got to ball games and church youth activities, and always had a hot meal on the table at dinner. I still don’t know how you pulled it off.

When I headed to college you were right there with me. Although I earned money and received a couple of small scholarships to help pay for tuition and housing, it was really your financial support that pushed me across the finish line. There probably was not a prouder parent at that 1986 Liberty University commencement than you, and certainly none that had worked harder and overcome such incredible obstacles to put a child through school. The Liberty degree bears my name, but it really belongs to you.

You’ve accomplished so much despite having to overcome incredible hardships. Few outside our immediate family know what you’ve been through. Often I’ve asked God why He would allow so much pain and suffering to be heaped on one of His children, especially one who has never complained, never asked why and never stopped believing in His goodness.

There was the poor upbringing in Temple, Texas, and the humiliation of having to wear hand-me-down clothes and drop out of the high school band because you couldn’t afford the rental fees for your clarinet. There was the first marriage that ended almost as quickly as it started when the older man who made you his wife left you and never returned. There was the stomach cancer that claimed your second husband -- my father -- on Valentine’s Day 1976, just four months after the diagnosis. There was that awful news on Labor Day weekend 1992 that my younger sister Pam had been brutally stabbed to death by her estranged husband. And then one final kick in the teeth when Pam’s killer’s attorney worked out a plea bargain for him to serve a reduced prison sentence on a manslaughter charge.

Through experiences that would have destroyed most people and left them bitter and disillusioned, you remained a pillar of strength, steadfast in your faith. I remember watching you stand for hours beside the caskets of my dad and sister, greeting every last visitor who came to pay respects. I don’t know if I could have summoned the courage to do the same.

And yet, even in the darkest of days, you exhibited joy and thankfulness. You refused to feel sorry for yourself, when by anyone’s accounting you had ever reason to do so. Would that I had just one-tenth of your optimism.

Mom's name on a donor's plaque at Liberty University

Even today, with the kids leaving the nest and having retired from the factory, you continue to reach out to help others. You work part time as a caregiver for an elderly woman. The pay doesn’t come close to reflecting the time you spend cleaning her house, preparing her meals and serving as her listening board. But you really don’t do it for the money, do you? You do it because of who you are: a sweet, humble woman who thinks about others far more than she thinks about herself.

I don’t know how many more Mother’s Days I’ll have to spend with you. You’re getting up there in years and I can see that age is starting to take its toll. But if we had a hundred more Mother’s Days together they wouldn’t be enough for me to tell you how blessed I’ve been to call you mom.

So please accept the card and gift, and these simple words: I love you. Thanks for giving me life and teaching me how to live it.

I owe you more than I can ever repay.

With much affection,

Your son Steve