Smiling Through

Slowly, bit by bit, mom got her strength back. She had good days and bad days, but overall she seemed to be recovering from the aneurism attack, and I had to wonder if she had really had an aneurism in her neck at all.

“I think I will go to church tomorrow,” mom surprised me by saying three weeks after her attack. “I won't stay for Sunday School or Relief Society, but I think I can make it to Sacrament Meeting.”

I was pleased, and a little wary. The actual going part didn't worry me so much, but the effort of getting ready might be too much for mom. Still, I was proud of her for wanting to go. She just plain wanted to do what was right.

Going to church really did wear her out, and Monday mom paid for it.

“I don't know what's wrong with me,” she sighed when I brought her breakfast into her bedroom. “I just can't get myself up today.”

It was no wonder. She was tired and discouraged all day, and I felt bad for her, but didn't know how to help. The following day, though, mom did better. She even came out to help me make supper that evening, the first time she'd been in the kitchen for weeks. It tired her out, of course, but I think it made her feel good to just be doing something!

That night the girls and I watched an old movie with mom in her bedroom. It was called “Smiling Through.” All my life I'd heard about this story. Mom was in a local theater production of it when she was a young adult, and she had a black and white photo of her in the play, wearing a wedding dress, dying in her husband's arms on her wedding day. I'd always loved that picture, but I'd never known what the play was about until I saw the movie. It was wonderful.

It's funny, isn't it, how things we do when we are young influence the rest of our lives. Mom was in this play about a man who learned how to “smile through” a terrible tragedy, and now here she was, sixty years later, smiling through her own adversity. How proud I was of her!