Goodbye Mom

 

        We have come to the end of another year and some of us will be celebrating the end of this year and the beginning of a new one. Yesterday brought another ending for me and our family, my mother passed away.

        Mom and I had a complicated relationship starting in junior high. I was the strange middle child, bookish, shy and socially inept. The only thing I did that pleased her was to make the honor roll consistently. 

        She hoped that I would go to a liberal arts private college and become a professional writer or become an interpreter. I was of a more practical bent and chose a career that paid well and would allow me to be help people. For many years she made sure to let me know that she did not approve of my career in "the sciences" even though she knew I liked it and was good at it.

        That is not what I want to write about though. She was a really good mother to me in all the ways that really counted. I'm grateful for the fact that I came to know this and told her before she passed away.

        Mom worked most of her life as my Dad's profession paid enough for the basics and Mom wanted us to have more than that. When she was in her late 30s, she realized that if something happened to Dad, she did not have the skills to get a job that would pay well enough to support herself and her children. She went to college taking night classes and summer classes eventually graduating with a degree in  elementary education. Unfortunately, this did not mean she was able to get a job as a teacher. School districts were unwilling to hire a woman in her 40s as anything more than a substitute or something very part time. She never really had opportunity to use the degree that she worked so hard for.

        She took massage therapy classes from a woman she knew. This grew from simple massage to becoming a muscle therapist. She learned and became certified in many techniques to help relieve pain and to move better. She battled motion sickness and flew to various parts of the country to become better educated and better able to help her clients. She had many of them from high powered executives to cloistered nuns.

        She never pressured me to get married and to have children. These were decisions she left up to me. It's another thing she did that made her a good mother to me. While she may have disagreed with my choices in both cases, she never made criticized me. (although she may not have been the easiest mother-in law)

         Once they moved closer, she began to enjoy doing creative things. I never knew her to enjoy crafting although I knew she knitted and did a little quilting. One of the things she enjoyed was diamond art. She made me a picture of a cat and gave it to me. She didn't necessarily follow the recommended colours. It was her own creation. I had an amateur artist friend come to visit and she and Mom painted pictures. My friend would mix the colours and direct her. Mom enjoyed this and created some nice pictures. I have two of them.

        We had fun those few years cooking, baking, taking walks and going on a few lunch outings. I'm grateful for that time before the Alzheimer's destroyed much of her brain. 

        Sometimes when someone dies, there can be some regrets. In this case there are none. We did the best we could for her and in the end, she was comfortable and loved. That is all anyone can ask for.

Love you Mom, see you later.

MHGB

1943-2025