Get Out of Your Funk and Call Your Mother

"Get out of your funk, and call your mother!"

This is what I had to tell myself when my sister informed me that our mother was feeling particularly down and could use some encouragement from her children. I had not called her in longer than I felt good about and immediately felt guilty for my self-absorption. I have been fighting my own battles of late, and this is not always the best time to call my mother.

...But she needed me, and as I recall from times past, some of the best "medicine" for my depression and overall crappy moods has been reaching out and helping others. I discovered this a little bit over ten years ago when I was immersed in deep depression. I was cutting regularly and was sometimes suicidal. Only two reasons coaxed me out of bed: my obligation to show up at work, and my need to be a mother to my son.

He was then at the age when community service hours needed to be logged, and I needed to discover, provide the transportation to and often participate in the events that would satisfy this hungry log.

One cold dark night we had the opportunity to serve dinner to homeless families at a local soup kitchen. The assignment required that I look beyond my own pain and my own despair long enough to minister to someone else's brokenness or just plain misfortune. For my son I said yes.

Very few times have I been changed by an event like I was during that evening.  What I learned was that my will to live could be restored, not so much by feeling more fortunate than others, but by feeling like I did something to make a concrete difference in somebody's life.

Today I called my mother. She sounded happy to hear from me, and I was certainly glad to hear her voice. She told me that her spirits had been low and that it was good that I called. We chatted about nonsense (as usual) and told each other of our plans for Friday night and for the weekend. We connected and lifted each other out of our respective purgatories by allowing the other to feel fundamentally useful and needed.

Sometime during our conversation she related that my father (a man she has been divorced form for practically my entire life) has been withdrawn and despondent, refusing visits or phone calls. She suggested that I try to call him and offer him a kind word of hope and that she would do the same.

Wouldn't you know it...she rises from her own depths to shine a light on another.

Maybe I learned it from her.