Confessing My Love to Mom

My mother is ninety-three years old. As I grow older, my love for her grows even deeper. How someone so small—barely forty kilograms—have raised seven children? That thought alone makes her seem all the more remarkable and noble to me.

As her youngest daughter, all I can do for my elderly mother is simple—call her every day, visit her often as I can, go to Zion with her to receive blessings, and pray for her wholeheartedly.

Whenever she calls, I find little glimpses of joy in the familiar things she tells me.

“When will you come?” she asks.

“How about tomorrow?” I reply.

“Come with your husband!” she says excitedly.

Even if I can’t visit the next day, to her, “tomorrow” is always the day her child will return home healthy. That simple promise—“tomorrow”—is what she holds onto, and it fills her with joy.

When I tell her, “Mom, I love you!” she replies with a bright, radiant smile, “Okay!”

Seeing how delighted she is, I can’t help but wish I had expressed my love a little sooner. I had always felt it, but shyness kept me from saying the words. I first told her, “I love you,” over the phone more than ten years ago. Our voices trembled, our eyes filled with tears, and our hearts overflowed with emotion.

Though I had once been too busy with my own life to express my love, since then I’ve naturally told her “I love you” and received her joyful laughter in return. Knowing that such expressions give my ninety-three-year-old mother both strength and happiness, I now share my love freely every day—and she responds with her warm, effortless “Okay!”

I also resolve to offer my love to our Heavenly Mother just as freely and wholeheartedly.

“Heavenly Mother, I love You!”