MRS. ‘X’ is old and tired, but at a time when she should be the centre of her family’s life as the respected matriarch, she is sitting alone and lonely in a home for old people. Yes, she does have children and grandchildren, and they are all doing very well, and they do remember her on Mother’s Day because the gifts are plentiful, but they have been delivered by chauffeurs and delivery boys.

The tears welled up in her eyes and silently ran down her seamed face as she looked at the delicious food that she could not force down her throat.  “I have grandchildren that I have never seen, and I do not get to see the ones that I know, some who were born into my hands.”

Her children are well-known in the upper echelons of Guyanese society.  Her daughters and daughters-in-law belong to several organizations and are famous for doing good deeds and making pronouncements on social issues, but one good work they cannot do is provide a home for their mother.

Of course, she is housed and fed, but not at home, surrounded by loved ones, where she can cuddle babies, read to tots, and dispense advice and love to all?  Well, that is too much to ask of the busy do-gooders who comprise her family.

Ram beats and starves his wife and children, and when his mother intervenes, he uses her as a punching bag every time he is drunk.  He cusses her out using the ugliest of expletives, and puts her out of her own house if she annoys him.

One day, when the food she had cooked did not please him, he threw the pot at her, causing her to sustain a deep cut above her eye.

She joins with her daughter-in-law to cultivate a kitchen garden to maintain the family, because all his income goes to purchasing alcohol.  But he demands the proceeds from the sale of their produce, so they are forced to hide part to buy groceries, because if they do not provide food for him on demand, he beats and throws them out of the home, whatever the time or weather.

Robin was a model son, working with his abandoned mother to help to provide for and educate his younger siblings… until he got married.  Thereafter, he refused to speak to his mother and siblings, all of whom idolized him.  His mother grieved at his indifference and hostility to his family. He lived in front, and they lived in a house behind his.  His mother took ill, and when his sisters were taking her to a taxi waiting to take her to the doctor, he passed them without a glance or a word.

His mother has since died and was cremated on Mother’s Day a few years ago. Today, he cries for his mother every Mother’s Day and spends lavishly on religious ceremonies to appease her soul, when he had starved her of his love and some of his time when she was alive.

Patty’s entire life was one of abuse, first from her father, then her husband, so she concentrated all her love, and spent all her income on her son and her daughter.  They grew up, and their ne’er do well father, who never in their lives provided anything for them, has convinced them that he was the victim in the marriage, although all the evidence, and even their own experience, prove otherwise.  Today, they are one big happy family, and they all treat her like an outcast, except when they need her help.

Today is Mother’s Day, and the cash boxes at stores rang out all last week and before with purchases of gift items for mothers the world over, but a mother is not a seasonal item, to be lavished with material things on one day so as to appease one’s conscience.

The horrifying stories about the treatment meted out to mothers by children of both sexes are legion.  Some humiliate their mothers, some beat their mothers, some deprive their mothers of the most basic of necessities.  There were stories of men raping their mothers.  But a mother is the only person in the world who would love you unconditionally.  Many mothers in the world have been both mother and father to their children, only to be treated with scorn and disdain by the children she has borne and nurtured to adulthood.

The child who shows ingratitude to a mother is damned forever, because every religion teaches that a child should honour and love his parents.  Below are some quotes relevant to every day for a mother, because motherhood is not a seasonal phenomenon.

*To a child’s ear, ‘mother’ is magic in any language
-Arlene Benedict, For Mother with Love

*God sees us through our Mothers’ eyes and rewards us for our virtues
-Ganeshan Venkatarman, Indian philosopher

*Life began with waking up and loving my mother’s face
-George Elliot, English novelist

*Mother is the name of God on the lips and hearts of children
-William Makepeace Thackeray, English novelist

*A mother is she who can take the place of all others
-Cardinal Mermillod

*A mother’s love is instinctual, unconditional, and forever
-Anon

*Mother is the bank where we deposit all our hurts and worries
-Anon

*For mother’s sake the child was dear,
and dearer was the mother for the child.
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English poet

*My mother’s love for me was so great I have worked hard to justify it
-Marc Chagall

No influence is so powerful as that of the mother
-Sarah Josepha Hale

*The strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws
-Barbara Kingsolver

*Mothers are instinctive philosophers
-Harriet Beecher Stowe

*She’s my teacher, adviser, and greatest inspiration
-Whitney Houston

*A good mother is worth hundreds of schoolmasters
-George Herbert

*A mother loves her children even when they least deserve to be loved
-Kate Samperi, ‘Mothers’

*There is no substitute for mother
-Anon

*Mother is the one we count on for the things that matter most of all
-Katherine Butler Hathaway

*When it comes to love, Mom’s the word
For all the ways you’ve helped me grow
I want to say I love you so
-Renaissance® Greeting Cards, a div. of FTD Inc.

*Who ran to help me when I fell,
Or kissed the place to make it well?
….My mother.
-Ann Taylor

*A mother understands what a child does not say.
– Jewish proverb