Happy Mother’s Day

Well, its been another year and I have a new grandchild that I wish my mom would have met, and I know she would have loved playing and spending time with him. I still miss her terribly and I wish that I had one more day with her.  Mothers Day is coming around again, I find myself, wishing it away.  I need to keep in my mind that my children deserve for me to be present and not to wish away any of our days together.  I hope your Mother’s Day is filled with joy and laughter and reminders of all of the great things about being a mom.  Enjoy everyone! 

I remember a day when I really did not like my mother. I was about 12 or 13 and she had recently started menopause and it was horrible to live with her, and I am sure now looking back that it was horrible to live with me. Hormones, going up or down are not an easy thing.

I also remember the day I fell in love with her all over again. I was a new mother, had just came home from the hospital, and she was there. Every day, morning, noon and night, and she was there not just to gush over her new grandson, she was there for me. She was my mom.

We were pretty much best friends from that day on. I was 19, and she was in her 40’s and we did everything together. I could not have done my job as a young mother and wife without her help, she made it all work.

My mom was a great cook, an awesome wife, a wonderful daughter, a fantastic friend and a generally just a exceptional person. I never met anyone who did not have something nice to say about her. Of course, I am sure they would not have told me any bad stuff, although in all honestly I don’t really think there was much.
My mom was an amazing cook. If she made something in the kitchen, it was the best of the best; everybody talked about her spaghetti sauce, her potato salad, her awesome applesauce cakes at Christmas time. I don’t know if it was a special ingredient, method, or if she is just that special but nothing tastes the way she made it, even following her recipes. She even cooked for thousands of kids, working in a real cooking kitchen in the school district, she cooked for those kids like she was cooking for family I am sure they tasted the special ingredient too. Mom cooked everything with love.
My mom never wore much make up, never dressed too fancy, and I don’t remember but a few times where she spent a lot of money on something for herself. People around her always meant more to her than any amount of money or fancy things.

My dad of course spoiled her and bought her pretty much anything she wanted, and they traveled and enjoyed each other’s company for many years. They were married for 49 years. They would have been married 50 years this coming November, but it was not to be. My mothers passed away peacefully after a very long battle with FTD, frontal temporal lobe degeneration, 6 days before her 68th birthday.

This is my first mothers day without her. I am not really sure how to do it this year. I am a mother of three, a grandmother of one, and expecting a new grandson in June, but I don’t know what to do for mother’s day this year. I want to crawl up next to my mom and give her a little card I made or a flower I picked up and just lay in her arms, feel her scratch my back and love and cuddle me back, but that wont happen.

Instead I am writing this. A little story about her. She taught me so many things. How to be a good wife, how to be a good mom, how to not care what others thought, but only care about those who mattered, and to care about God and His view on us. She taught me how to leave my first husband who was terrible for me. She brought sunshine into my life when it was darkest and loved me no matter what I did.

I feel sorry for people who did not have her as a mom, or have this kind of mom in their lives, she truly molded me to be the person I am today.

I often catch myself, sounding like her, moving like her, and acting like her and instead of being horrified, it makes me so happy, it is a part of her that will always be with me.

Losing my mom in such an awful way was probably one of the most difficult things I ever lived through, but even she taught me how to get through that.

I hope everyone has a good Mother’s Day and I really hope everyone has a great mom and best friend like I did, every day.