One Year Ago, Saying Goodbye to My Mother

One year ago, I was saying good bye, for the last time to my best friend, my mother.  At age 89 she was very fortunate to have lived such a long and prosperous life.  Not everyone gets that chance, but those who do, usually have quite a life story to tell, and I would like to share hers with you.

In 1932, when she was age nine, her and her two sisters lost their mother to breast cancer.  Having spent so much time with my mom, I would say that above all else, this was the greatest loss of her life.  I believe it took her years to grieve, and I think it had a great deal to do with who she became throughout life.  Fortunately, new blessing did eventually come along, as she gained a step mother, another sister and a brother, when her father eventually remarried.  Ultimately, she realized that life must go on, and that she did.

She was born only three years after women gained the right to vote in the US and the end of World War I.  Historically speaking she lived to see plenty.  Here is a list of just a few:

• The invention of television
• The fall of the stock market in 1929 and the Great Depression that followed
• The attack on Pearl Harbor
• World War II
• Rosa Park’s refusal to move to the back of the bus
• The Korean War
• The invention of the computer
• The Civil Rights Movement
• The assassination of John F. Kennedy
• The assassination of Martin Luther King
• The assassination of Robert Kennedy
• Man’s first landing on the moon
• The Viet Nam War
• The invention of the internet
• The invention of the cell phone
• The fall of the Iron Curtain
• The Gulf War
• A new millenium
• The 9/11 attack on the US
• The Iraq War
• The War in Afghanistan She was a prankster

A fashionista

 

And always in the middle of things!!

She was a wife and mother, a grandmother and great grandmother

 She loved to sew

  Play the guitar

 

And DIY our home

She painted, wall-paper-lined, and installed those window shutters herself!

She went gracefully gray

She fulfilled her lifelong dream of visiting France

And she walked for the cure at the age of 88

It may be your neighbor, your uncle, your aunt, your teacher, or maybe your friend,

But if you look, you will find someone out there that knows how to show the rest of us

That life must go on,

Life is too short

It is what you make of it

And it’s not who you know, it’s who you are!

 Dear Mom,

I love you and miss you

I feel so blessed to have known you,

and to have had so much fun with you in your last years!

 

Your daughter,

Amy