Thanks for Being My Mom

Ten years.  How can it be 10 years?!  I still remember the feeling in my heart of not wanting to go another week, and wondering how I could possibly make it a whole year, without you in my life.  Now it’s been ten.  Ten years since I’ve held your hand, put my head in your lap, or badgered you with my silliness until I finally drew a small laugh out of you and you said, “Leave me alone.  You’re a kook.”

You did not laugh easily, but smiling?  Much like Buddy the Elf, smiling was your favorite.  Most remarkably, was how often nurses that cared for you in the hospital commented on that smile.  Who smiles when they are having chemo or bi-pass surgery?  My mom, that’s who.

My mom loved music and she loved to sing. She would hum as she puttered around the house, she sang with my dad in the church choir and in the car. We all loved to Sing Along With Mitch Miller and the Gang. Car favorites were: You Are My Sunshine, Honey by Nat King Cole, and Play a Simple Melody. I admired my parents’ ability to sing a two part harmony – I couldn’t even keep track of my round of Row Row Row Your Boat without plugging my ears.

Babies?  Yes, please.  She loved all of the babies.  Whenever she saw a mom with a crying baby or toddler in the store she would want to help.  “I could hold that baby for her while she finishes putting her groceries on the check-out belt,” Mom would whisper in my ear.  She loved to comfort babies, but unfortunately new moms aren’t looking to hand over their infants to well-meaning strangers.

When her first great grandchild was born, she would hold him for hours.  “Love that baby,” she would say.

Blessed are the peacemakers and she was one of them.  She wanted peace in her personal life, in the personal life of friends and family, and in the world.  She would abruptly end arguments at home with me, or even my dad, by saying “Peace.”  And that was the end of it.

She told me once (when she was in her 70s) that she would like to be a peace demonstrator.  She didn’t understand why all the incredibly smart people in the world couldn’t get together and find a solution for world peace.  “Why can’t people just get along?” she would ask.

I was blessed to be able to spend an ordinary, but wonderful, day with her on her last day on this earth.  She was living at the Chelsea Retirement Community in assisted living.  These were a few notes I jotted down that I always want to remember.

• We talked about her holiday sweater collection; we figured out she had enough of them to wear a different one every day until Christmas.
• We went down to the library and hopped online. We checked her Hotmail account and looked at pictures of her great grandson.
• She asked about whether any of the Dionne quintuplets were still living and so we googled, and I read to her about them.
• After we got her snail mail out of the mailbox, we went to the dining room and I had a cup of coffee and she had a hot chocolate. We looked for her friends, the Lindberg’s. She liked to keep an eye out for them whenever she went to the main dining room.
• She opened Christmas cards from her niece, her sister, and one of my sisters.
• We hung out in her room for a while longer and listened to Christmas music.

When I hugged her goodbye, I told her that I loved her bunches and bunches. She said that she wished she could keep me there forever. We had a giggle thinking about me being a stowaway in her room. Later, I learned that after I left, some girl scouts visited and gave her crafts, cookies, and sang songs. That made me happy. Two of her favorite things… kids and singing.

She died quite suddenly several hours later, and though I was overwhelmed by surprise and grief, I appreciated the swiftness of her passing. It was so her. When she decided it was time to go, she went. Our family often laughed about how, following a gathering, she would be sitting in the car waiting for her traveling companions while we were still in the house saying our goodbyes.

*lyrical credit to Benjamin Levin, Ed Sheeran and Johnny McDaid