Today Is My Mother's Birthday

Today is my mother’s birthday.

Her name is Delia. Someone somewhere accidentally changed her name on some governmental paperwork and from about the age of 17 on, people called her Celia. That is not her name.

Mom was born Delia Berumen Gonzalez in Jerez, Zacatecas, Mexico, on November 7, 1934. Today would have been her 90th birthday. She died on April 29th, 2024, on my father’s birthday and the month of her 70th wedding anniversary. 

Death is a horrible thing. 
It is not kind. 
It is not gentle. 
It is not patient.

It is a hollowed darkness that weighs heavy arms on your shoulders, and grief comes in unforgiving waves, leaving you gasping for breath or forgetting how to breathe.

There’s a special kind of hollowed hurt that swallows those left in life when there is loss. It scars the heart and scatters the mind. And the only good that remains is knowing that it too will pass with time.

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When my mother was 13, she met my father. There were no words, as my father tells the story. They noticed each other. No swiping to the left or to the right. It was a long dedicated courtship. It took him maybe three years before he stood close enough to hand her a single gardenia in a garden that she loved. 

On her 19th birthday, she married my father. El Santuario de Nuestra Señora de la Soledad is a beautifully ornate Catholic church built with a pink marble altar in the early 1800s in Jerez, Zacatecas, Mexico. 

My uncle, her younger brother, walked her down the aisle because my grandfather could not—or would not. Maybe he truly fell ill that day, or maybe he was simply stricken with sadness. Life is filled with highs and lows, and sometimes they happen all at once.

From there, it seems her life takes flight and passes in a flash, much faster than expected. Life and love, with all of their intentionality, can be swift. Loving is forever, but the opportunities for attention and intention are not. It’s much easier to busy oneself with things that don’t matter.

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I was the last of her six children, the youngest, “the baby.” “Un accidente,” my mom would describe undoubtedly and playfully when I asked. 

Every year, on my birthday, she called to break into “Las mañanitas” as soon as I answered—until the year she couldn’t. I keep her last song close, recorded on my phone. The gift of her voice is a carefully guarded treasure I carry with me everywhere. 

My mother loved people. She loved to sing. She loved to pray. She loved her church. She loved… living. She also had a stinging stubbornness about her. And if you didn’t accept the way that things were done, she simply wouldn’t share the things with you again. It was a simple fix. I miss that too.

I loved her fully before she died. I love her fully now, and I think of her often. Her face crosses my memories like a record on repeat. The sound of her voice echoes in my mind at unexpected times. She visits my dreams during my sleep and visits my dreams during the day. 

There are moments I forget she’s gone. These brief fractions of time are seconds long enough to fuel a flashing impulse to call her. But then reality kicks in and knocks the urgency out from under me.

I seen her in a cloud one day. Sometimes everything reminds me of her… a glass of water she would or would not have to drink, a flower she would or would not have loved, or a song she sang or would have hummed. 

Someone hums a tune and I’m pulled back into her kitchen watching her, water running, dishes gently  clattering, listening to her hum some familiar church song, opposite the song that plays on the radio, until it fades away again. 

I miss her. 
I miss her embrace and blessings.
I miss her hands and holding them. 
I miss the smell of her perfume. 

“Mi corazón… mi amor…mi princesa…” She’d answer my calls this way more often than I deserved. And I miss more about her than I could list. 

The world is different. And it should be. After a life that has loved is lost, the world around should change. When we are left feeling gutted by loss, love still remains. It is a new and different world, shaped by tragedy and miracle.

My mother’s love remains. And one day, not this day, it will ease my heart with having only that. She gifted each of us, her children, with her love. Unconditional love. It’s the reason we take the chance on life and take the risk of loss. Like rebellious warriors, we risk with all we have so that we may love and be loved.  

In my new world, her love resides many, many places. It waits in the quiet of a glass of water, the petals of a rose, the melodies of distant songs humming through the air, and the clouds in blue skies that gather in her memory and in my mind.