Mothers--and Their Need to Be Needed

There comes to mind a gentle mingling of many thoughts on mothers, and it would be difficult to consider this subject without an intermixing of tender emotion. As William Goldsmith Brown reminds us: “The sweetest sounds to mortals given / Are heard in Mother, Home, and Heaven.”

There are times when a devoted, understanding mother is needed more than anything else in the world, a need so urgent and obvious as to make difficult its utterance.

Then the years pass, and for mothers there may come a great gap between feeling much needed and being needed less, or feeling needed not at all⎯as Jean Ingelow’s words suggest:

To bear, to nurse, to rear,

To watch and then to lose,

To see my bright ones disappear,

Drawn up like morning dews.

For mothers there is need to know that they are needed, long after the dependence of their children is past⎯long after the time of tender nurturing and nourishing⎯long after children have left the early years of youth, even to the later years of life.

There is need for mothers waiting, watching, often worrying; mothers giving, doing, sharing, caring, and constantly encouraging. Mothers need to know that they are loved, wanted, and appreciated, just as a performer needs approval and applause. As one writer said half a century ago: “A woman can stand anything but being forgotten, not being needed.”

Mothers bless and are blessed by having an essential part in the daily lives of loved ones. And the years should endlessly remind us how much they do, or have done; how much they mean and have meant, how much they now must mean. There is need for all of us to know, as families, how much we need each other always. For the family is forever; and this awareness comes when a loved one leaves, as Temple Bailey has sensitively suggested:

“Where’s Mother?” could be heard through the

hallway. And they stood and watched her as she

went on alone, and the gates closed after her.

And they said: “We cannot see her, but she is

with us still. A mother like ours is more than a

memory. She is a Living Presence.”