Glimpse

As Mothers Day rolls around each year my thoughts seem to linger on my mother a little more than usual. I miss her a bit more, I wonder about her a lot, and I often feel a little sorry for myself.

I really don't know too much about her, how much do you know about your mother? I know generalized stories, what others have told, and what seems like a sparse amount of memories that are floating around in my head. It bothers me a little that while I had her I didn't grasp on to every second. But how could I? How would I have known what would be coming in my life? The time when she was alive feels quite unreal. I'm an adult now, I have children of my own, so in that aspect it was a whole different life.

Somehow I inherited a small red journal of my mothers, with only about 3 pages written on. The first has an article pasted in it from the Family Circle magazine 10/20/87.

"So what is there to say when you know you don't have much time left? Or, rather, what is most important to say since you can't say it all? I wrote this partly to find out what I might have to say. And in the doing I have discovered how absolutely madly in love I am with life, and with all the people I was given-yes, given-to love.

I am grateful to have learned so much of life: of the steadiness of personalities, the constancy of love, the preciousness of the moment, the power of the imagination, the strength of that vital life-force that enables us to hold each other up when our wings get broken. And perhaps above all, I've learned that pain and joy are inextricably mingled, and that out of suffering does come love. It is a great mystery to me why this should be so.

But I know that there will be angels in the next underpass as well, and so I am content." Editors note: Jane Vonnegut Yarmolinsky died in 1986, shortly after finishing this memoir.

In that aspect I know a lot about my mother. She was a beautiful person, inside and out. She was nurturing and loving. She had a great talent of making people at peace when they were around her. She worked for many years at a junior college helping abused women attend school and better their life, a few showed up at the funeral and expressed to us what a difference she made in their lives. She was giving, she would do anything she could for you. She was a crafty women and had a little boutique of her own to help ends meet. She made beautiful pine cone wreaths and fun little pins and do-dads and I could tell she found joy in creating. She passed that on to me, I love to make something out of nothing. She was a thoughtful soul, I never heard her say a bad thing about a person, ever. Maybe she was smart enough not to say it in front of me, but I will forever admire her for that attribute.

My mother was a spiritual person, she loved the gospel, in her main journal, through out the years of hardship and joy alike, she talks about her blessings she has received, how lucky she is to receive them and how much she loves our Heavenly Father. It frequently mentions temple trips, worries about having enough time to read scriptures and church callings and I am so grateful for the example my parents always were to me when it came to being a stalwart member of the church.

Most of all my mother was a mother. She had the responsibility in life to raise 8 children. What a daunting task and what a beautiful job she did. You would think that with 8 children, one would feel excluded or forgotten, but each one has always felt loved from my mother. She made you feel important and valued your worth. even at a young age I felt truly important around her. We were her jewels in this mine of a life and she treasured each and everyone of us.

On the day of my birth in her journal it is recorded.

November 6th, 1980:

"I truly believe that Heavenly Father answers our prayers. I have prayed the last couple of days that I would have the baby this weekend because all the kids would be home. (They have off Monday and Tuesday the 10th and 11th) The baby was due on the 11th.

Went to the doctor this morning and had lunch with Noel. Came home and took a nap. I've been having labor for the last couple of days. By four o'clock they started getting harder. So many other times I've gone to the hospital with these pains and been sent home. so I was determined not to let that happen again. By seven o'clock they were harder so I washed my hair, cut it and set it. By eight o'clock I was ready to go. Noel told me on the way that he'd known I was going to have the baby because he'd seen me in a vision in labor that morning. To say that I was scared-this being my eighth baby should have been easy-but I was. Noel gave me a blessing that everything would be fine and an easy delivery before we got out of the car. And it was. I had an understanding doctor. We got to the hospital at 9:00 and at 11:30 we had a beautiful baby girl, Jolene Celeste Rentz, 7 pounds, 9 ounces 19 1/2 inches long. What a blessing to have the priesthood in our home."

She was an exceptionally beautiful mother and on her gravestone the following quote is engraved, I feel like it captures her perfectly:

"Our mother a saintly soul and spiritual soul whose example and teachings were Christlike."

I am blessed to have had such a beautiful mother.