Mother is one of the sweetest names I know.
One always remembers that name wherever he may be,
no matter what the circumstances may be.
So children look into those eyes, listen to that dear voice.
Notice the feeling of even a single touch that is bestowed upon you by that gentle hand:
Make much of it while yet you have the most precious of all good gifts, a loving mother.
Read the unfathomable love of those eyes.
The kind anxiety of that tone and look, however alight your pain.
A man never sees how much his mother has been to him till it is too late to let her know that he sees it.
In afterlife you may have friends, fond, dear friends, but never will you again the inexpressible love and gentleness lavished upon you which none other but a mother bestows.
I’m not saying it will happen to you, but a father may turn his back upon a child,
brothers and sisters may become inveterate enemies,
husbands may desert their wives and vice versa;
but a mother’s love endures through all; in good repute, in bad repute,
in the face of the world’s condemnations a mother still loves on,
and still hopes that her child may turn from his evil ways and repent.
Still she remembers the infant smiles that once filled her bosom with rapture,
the merry laugh of childhood, the joyful shout of early youth, and the opening promise of manhood.
And she can never be brought to think him unworthy.
The loss of a mother is always severely felt, even though her health may incapacitate her from taking any active part in the care of her family –
still she is a sweet rallying point around which affection and obedience and a thousand tender endeavors to please, concentrate.
And dreary is the blank when such a point is withdrawn.
A mother’s love is the golden link that binds youth to age;
and he is still but a child, however time may have furrowed his cheek or silvered his brow,
who can yet recall, with a softened heart, the fond devotion,
or gentle chidings of the best friend that God ever gives us.
No language can express the power and the beauty and heroism and majesty of a mother’s love.
It shrinks not where man cowers, and grows stronger where man faints.
And over the wastes of the worldly fortune sends the radiance of its quenchless fidelity like a star in Heaven.
Even He who died for us upon the cross, in the last hour, in the inutterable agony of death,
was mindful of His mother, as if to teach us that this Holy love should be our last worldly thought;
the last point of earth from which the soul should take its flight for Heaven.
"In memory of our dear mother"
Clarence J. Beahm
August 3, 1964
