Refections on Mother's Day

It 's a Hallmark holiday, right? Still, we are such brainwashed consumers that we take it seriously. Especially us mothers. Imagine how we would feel if our kids tossed it off and didn't make some kind of contact.
Lord knows my primary feeling that pops up when my mother is mentioned is guilt. It is especially present now as I have yet to make the trip to the cemetery with this years offering of plastic flowers (they're in the car though) as I promised to her as she was dying. She didn't really want them for herself, but for her beloved David lying next to her. I will spare you my thoughts on that.
Why the guilt on my part? I treated her badly; felt no respect for her; was embarrassed by
her; did the minimal in attending to her when she was alone; felt mostly relief when she died.
The older I get the more I realize she was a product of her parents; her intellectual level was not something she could change; she was a sad co-dependent non-achiever because she just was.
I judged her harshly, rejected her as a model and always felt that I was more mature and smarter than she was. Which was probably true.

Now that I've made my share of mistakes as a mother and bad choices as a woman, I wonder how my sons judge me. I know they love me. And I don''t need Mother's Day to know that.

But I wonder how they will describe me when I'm gone.