Happy Birthday, Mother!

My mother at 8 years old

Today is my mother's birthday. She would have been 92 if she were still with us. My mother was one of those people whose birthday was always lumped with Christmas. I don't remember her complaining about that, but when we were in college, she declared that her new birthday would be March 26, (the same day but a different month), so she could actually have a birthday celebration separate from Christmas. She chose March because that was usually when we were home for spring break. She didn't ask for any gifts. She always said that she just wanted to look at us and that was gift enough. I always thought that was weird until my children were no longer living at home. However, that's not to say that my mother didn't enjoy opening a gift as much as the next person.

So today, to remember my mother and to celebrate her actual birthday, my sisters and I are having Andes mints, a favorite candy of hers.

Happy Birthday, Mother! You are greatly missed and lovingly remembered.

The celebratory mints 

A Patient Mother

 Today is my birthday, so it's time to rerun a birthday post from the past. 

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I am thankful that I had a patient mother.

Today is my birthday which has me thinking about when I was a baby. Of course, I don't remember anything about my first year, but I have the stories I've been told.

Apparently, I was late in arriving. Very late. My mother had to wait three weeks past her due date for me to be born.  My parents sent my older sisters to stay with my grandmother in the next town when the event was eminent or so they thought. My sisters were there so long that my parents visited them on the weekends. My mother had made them a box of surprises for their stay with ribbons attached to a trinket that they got to choose everyday. However, the box emptied before they were back home. During what must have been a very miserable extra three weeks, I am thankful for my mother's patience for my arrival.

Me at 4 months. True to form, I had a cold in
one eye for this appointment.

My mother said that before I came she had time to clean the entire house and she even waxed the kitchen floor. She thought things would go smoothly with me. The house was in order and this was her third child, so she knew what she was doing. But then I came. And I cried. And cried. And cried. For the first six months, I cried so much that I burst a tear duct and herniated my naval. The neighbors used to take me in the car with them while they were delivering groceries to try to calm me. I am thankful for my mother's patience during the very noisy, exhausting time of when I was trying to settle into the world.

Soon after there was finally some quiet in the house (as much as you can have with a baby and two small children), I got pneumonia and was in the hospital for two weeks. The hospital was in another town and my mother spent all of her time with me while the rest managed somehow at home. Once I was back home, my oldest sister remembers the extra care that I still required. For my mother's patience while taking care of a sick baby, I am thankful.

Throughout the years, I have heard various stories about when I was a baby, but never did the stories come with any guilt or resentment. Just another story from my mother like the one when they had to call the fire department to get my sister's foot out of a drain. So for having had a very patient mother who gave me a great start to life despite how hard I made it for her, I am very thankful.

Thankful Sunday, September 8, 2019

I am thankful for my sisters.

My mother and father
with my oldest sister.

At the end of August was the first anniversary of my mother's death. It was also my sister's birthday. My mother died on the same date that she gave birth to her first child many years earlier. That may or may not mean something depending on how you feel about the cosmic connection of things. I feel like it was a coincidence. Maybe.

What I do know is I didn't want my sister's birthday to forever be overshadowed with the sorrowful day of our mother's passing. So I told her to start thinking ahead on how she wanted to celebrate. We couldn't ignore our mother's passing but that day needed to have more to it than the sorrow we were feeling.

My sister thought about it for a while and came up with the following. We should each say a prayer of thanksgiving for our mother's life and how well she lived it. And then have a hot dog with everything on it to celebrate my sister's birthday. So amid the tears, we each said a prayer of thanksgiving for our mother and then had a really good hot dog. Because of the distance between us, we weren't actually able to be together for this experience but we shared pictures of our special meal, some of them complete with birthday candles. We had a fun time seeing what each of us chose to make our perfect hot dog and wishing my sister happy birthday.

Here are all four of us,
ten years after the above picture.

So for shared experiences with my sisters, I am thankful.

The rest of the story:

I am not sharing the picture of the hot dog I had because I put candles on it with my sister's age. She may not want me to share that for 50+ various reasons.

Also, sharing common things from a distance is something my sisters and I have started to do. On my father's birthday, we have ice cream to remember him because that was something he loved. We all share what we did whether it was a trip to the Dairy Queen or a big bowl of ice cream with chocolate sauce at home. 

Christmas Smiles

My mother, last Christmas

Tears flow easily these days. I miss my mother. I have always heard that the holidays are especially hard when you have lost someone, but I've never really experienced it like this. It's taken me by surprise because in my logical mind, I thought that I would be thinking about all of the special Christmas times I had with her and be sad. But logic is not necessarily at work here. It's not the Christmases I miss. I miss the emotional connection.

My mother had dementia and slowly left us over the years in many ways. It was discouraging and sad to watch, but no matter what her outward appearance was, I always felt a connection between us during my visits. Towards the end, she was usually quiet, often with a distant stare. But then I'd say something and there would be a little glint in her eye or a slight smile and I knew that she was communicating in the way that was available to her at that point in her life.  We were connecting and it made me happy. Before I experienced the last couple of years with my mother, I never would have thought that those difficult times would be the ones I missed the most. But for now, they are.

However life goes on no matter what the circumstances and this grief is not consuming my life. It's just a part of it. I am happily preparing for Christmas. I am ahead this year in many things and feeling more relaxed than normal. I am enjoying the Christmas lights and the Christmas music. I am having good times with my sisters and friends. Ward and I are having long talks and making fun plans.

With all of those things, I'm trying to live what my mother taught me up until the end of her life. She kept living even when it seemed to the outside world life wasn't worth it. So as I think of her little smiles, I smile, too. Through the tears.

The Service

My mother died last Monday. It was time. An infection had taken over her body and she died peacefully in her sleep. Since then it's been a whirlwind of activities and emotions filling every minute. I will be processing this for a long time, but today I've been thinking about one thing in particular. My mother gave us the final gift of letting us have a service for her.

It seems that it is becoming more the trend these days to not have a funeral or memorial service for the deceased. I can understand some of the reasons for this: expense, privacy, emotion, etc. But that was not my mother's request. Funerals were a part of her entire life and in death we honored her with one.

My mother did not have a service planned as some people do, but we knew what she wanted from comments over the years along with the things she chose for our father. We planned a short service that was lead by one of her friends from church. Each song had a meaning as well as each reading. I gave a 10 minute eulogy of her life that I actually made it through.

The service was upbeat, positive, and was about her. Just what we wanted and just what she would have wanted. So among the tears, I think back on her send off and I smile. Thank you, Mother, for letting us honor you in this one final way.