A Mother's Love Story
By Mrs. Darien Cope

“How will I know you’re still with me, Mom?”

“I’ll throw money,” she whispered.

Within the hour, she passed away.

That was 1994, and ever since I have been finding coins on sidewalks, driveways, in elevators, while walking in crosswalks and pretty much anywhere I look down briefly, often unexpectedly, and in various circumstances.

Then, each time, looking up to the heavens, I speak to her with a smile of course, into that great silence which is eternity, “Thanks, I love you, Mom.”

I celebrate with my Mom by sharing the smile she gives me (and the pennies from Heaven she promised) each time I pick up more small change.

Her love is still as constant as the light of day and will be with me always. I am sixty years old now and am still playing her lottery numbers and kissing those tickets “for luck” too, just as she instructed!

“One never really knows, does one?” She would remark with a twinkle and shrugging her shoulders, “just do it.” It was her motto at the little. That was long before Nike® had the slogan nailed!

And so I have been kissing lottery tickets and saying “bless me” when I sneeze and “bless you more” since I learned that one from TV, and I keep reaching for an optimistic outcome in all things affecting this small and happy life of which I have been blessed.

But the money thing, the coin in the parking lot when I go around and around perhaps looking “a better” spot on a rainy day, and opening my umbrella when I have practically already reached the entrance anyway, there I look and I see a penny. I just stand there out of everybody’s way, fold the umbrella down, experience the beautiful rain, look up and say “thanks, Mom. I know you’re here.” Of course I pick up the cash and save it too.

A man once asked me if I was “ok” when he saw me talking to myself. “Oh yes,” I replied, and smiling I added, “my Mom just threw me some money.” And as he walked away, hands in his pockets, head askew, he disappeared into the revolving door at the mall. I noticed he did look up for a moment at the sky. Well, I should hope so! Be thankful! Be happy!

This weekend is Mother’s Day Sunday and I shall be trekking to Royal Oak Burial Park (sounds much more civilized than cemetery, almost as though we shall be sitting upright drinking tea and having gluten-free cookies together, she and I) to visit her gravesite, where she and her mother and father rest together. Visiting her Island home is a ritual which helps me complete the year’s cycle, the remembering part that she is there, and I am here, just on the other side of life’s veil as it were, the other side of the coin.

She told me not to “plant” her near any tree where it would be too dry in the shade. My Mom loved the rain, a real West Coaster! She would remind me that she wanted forever to hear heaven’s rain, like little heartbeats, and always have the light.

Metphorically, of course I know now what she wanted me to understand. Her love has never left me.

Like most “treasures” I put and keep these particularly valuable coins in a box, or shall I say boxes? Within four of Birks’ finest, rest my little coin collection. There has been the occasional quarter and I even found a Loonie the other day! Generous Mom! Finding an American copper indicates to me that she has been across the border and is back now to watch over me and her beloved grand-daughter, Nevada, christened by the word loosely translated as “from the land of the snow-capped mountains,” but also thrilling to my Mom, as Nevada was her favourite state! (Hint: it’s to do with coins.)

Likewise I have found the occasional Canadian penny in the United States! Sure it was in the Seattle Zoo, and maybe tossed out by a monkey into the on-lookers, but “it’s all good” as we say, eh? I am comforted and reminded of that expression, “We are never alone.”

On the pink cell my daughter gave me last Mother’s Day, I have kept one text in my saved messages and it reads: “I just found 4 pennies on the street (insert smiley face).” With all her heart, she too believes that her Nana, my mother, is watching over us. Without them, I would not be celebrating Mother’s Day the way I do.

I continue to love the phrase we all heard so much at the beginning of 2010: “Do you believe?”

Well, do you?

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