I received two Valentine cards today. One from my number one Valentine, my dearest Lori, who has filled my life with love and fun and so much else. The other one came from an unexpected source…it came from my late mother. 

My Mom passed away last February at age 89…or 92…or 86. No one really knows how old she actually was as her birth records were burned in a fire at the Hall of Records in Cambridge Massachusetts sometime in the 1930’s…or 1920’s…no one really knows about that either…and of course no one really cares. 

The Valentine came by way of an email from my sister. She sent a video that two of my nieces had put together for Mom’s funeral, a kind of pictorial eulogy. The photos were chosen from the hundreds of pictures Mom had kept in her tall stack of albums, starting from her early teen years in Montreal right through to the end. There are no photos of her as a child. She was an orphan and was raised by an elderly widow who ran a small hotel in Cambridge. That hotel also went up in smoke and any childhood pictures with it. 

But from those early days in Montreal, where she had gone with another escapee from a Boston convent after the death of her guardian, she happily posed for the camera, stylishly dressed in the garb of the early 40’s. That’s where the video starts, with solo shots of her taken by girlfriends. 

She was just thirteen and had been in Montreal only a few months when she met my Dad, a Saskatchewan soldier on his way to war. Two weeks later they were married; shortly after that he shipped out. 

A few months later she was to discover her true calling, her reason for being, her life’s work. She was to be a mother. The lonely days of her childhood were over; she was to become the founder and steadfast anchor for the great enterprise of her life… her family. 

From the birth of my older brother on, the pictures almost always included her children. There would be six of us eventually. She bore a seventh but he died shortly after his birth so there are no photos…just a small baby-doll, still in it’s packaging with his name written on it, which I discovered in her ‘trunk of treasures’ years later. 

So the pictorial journey through Mom’s life, as I viewed it this morning, is also a journey through my life and the lives of my siblings and everyone else in her family… and and a large family it has become. Grandchildren in the 70’s, and great-grandchildren in the 90’s. I can’t think of any great-greats yet, but surely it won’t be long. 

This morning I was treated to a Valentine’s trip through an entire lifetime of love. There are grainy black and whites of a young girl posing in front of an ancient automobile, of a young woman sitting on a rugged porch wearing short-shorts that must have given the neighbours something to talk about, of the same young woman with a swollen belly standing in a field of tall grass. There are color photos of a mother decorating  dozens of heart-shaped Valentine cookies, of a new grandmother holding her first grand-baby, of a mature woman in a huge hat holding a glass of wine and looking mischievously into the camera, and finally a little video of an ancient woman kissing a dog on the forehead and telling it “I love you”. 

So I am feeling very full today…full of love and gratitude. 

Thank you Lori, my beautiful wife, light of my life and eternal Valentine. 

And thank you Mom for your Valentine, it is of course, a Valentine from us to you as well. 

Valentine’s Day is all about love. 

LOVE! 

It’s what we write about, sing about, cry about and endlessly seek. 

Love, ultimately, is the only thing in the world that has value. 

Because ultimately, love is not of the world. 

It is the definition of the eternal. 

So…Here’s to Valentine’s Day.