A Day to Remember

Mother would have been 94 years old today. She was born January 5th, 1915. She died of cancer 40 years ago at the age of 54. Trying to imagine her at 94 is simply impossible. Her family and friends remember her as a beautiful, gentle and soft-spoken woman. She was all of those things. She was a lady in the finest sense of the word. Mother was also very intelligent and curious, a reader and a thinker. When our high school friends would come to our house she would engage them in conversations through which we learned more about them than they had ever confided in us. She was charming.

Like the three blind men and the elephant, my two sisters and I seem to remember different mothers, and after having had four children of my own, I think that difference in remembrance is because she made a distinct effort to become the mother she needed to be for each of us. Not an easy task, for you would be hard put to find any three sisters more different than we are. I've often told people that each of my four children came from a different planet, so I recognize and appreciate the challenge Mother faced. I never got the impression that she particularly enjoyed being a parent, but she certainly did a good job of it in the short time she was alive and able to influence our thinking, beliefs and behavior. We all turned out okay.

I will never stop missing her.