Today it will have been 4 years since my Mom died. I really can't believe that I've gone four long years without seeing her. It just seems strange, even after all this time. I saw her every day for the first 24 years of my life and pretty much once a week or so after that for the rest of her life. The only time we were ever separated was when she and my Dad retired and moved from California to Utah for a couple of years and then we would talk on the phone every week and visit every few months. But then she talked us into moving here to be closer to them and we bought a house less than 5 miles away from them. So four years seems like a really really long time.


My Mom and I were very close and I feel like she was the only person who ever really loved me and supported me 100%. When I was growing up it was pretty much just the two of us. I didn't have my grandparents or aunts and uncles around very much and even my father never even lived with us until I was an adult (long story). So, we were closer than most mothers and daughters. We were also a lot alike, so we got along really well. We're both Libras so we both had that laid-back, accommodating personality. We both feel that family is very important and we are never happier when we have a whole house full of company.


She wasn't great shakes around the house - she wasn't much of a cook and dinners were usually Banquet TV dinners which she thought were the greatest invention known to man. And I definitely get my housekeeping skills from her. She loved her "stuff" and lots of it, particularly furniture and cleaning up was not a huge priority. Her living room alone had about 11 pieces of furniture in it and it wasn't a big room. She had her Egyptian corner, her Chinese pictures, and chicken stuff everywhere else. But she knew how to have fun and how to care about people and make them feel at ease and I think that's a lot more important than cooking or cleaning.


She had a rough life. She was nearly poisoned by a quack doctor at age 21 and spent almost a year in the hospital. It gave her a lifelong mistrust of doctors that basically shortened her life because she was afraid to take the medications she needed. It's funny how something like that can stick with you, even 60 years later. Her parents split up when she was a teenager and she was left to take care of her Dad and her 3 brothers and sisters. My grandfather owned a mine, so at times she had to cook for a whole crew of miners as well. She wasn't ever very lucky in love, so she was on her own for most of her life, although she managed to raise my sister and I pretty well. She worked from a very early age until she was about 70, mostly as an insurance agent, so money wasn't plentiful, but there was always enough, although we lived in some very rough neighborhoods at times.

Books were a big part of our lives - she taught me how to read when I was six and I was never without a book after that. We always had cats and she was always knitting or sewing or painting something, almost always for someone else. She loved to put together big care packages full of all sorts of stuff for anyone who was struggling in any way. She was generous to a fault and always had these crazy ideas for the latest and greatest business idea. I guess that's where I get my entreprenurial spirit from. Her biggest hope for me was that I would become a writer, so she would probably be thrilled that I have this blog. She'd probably have read it every day, although I would have had to print it out for her because she hated computers.



This is the last picture I have of her with my sister and I. It's a terrible picture of her, but I don't have any other digital pictures of her. I need to get busy and scan the paper ones I have. This was in the nursing home on her 80th birthday. We had a dozen or so family members there plus a few of the residents and nurses and she had an absolute ball. It wore her out so much, she never really regained her strength after that, but she had a great time. Her body was failing, but she was sharp as a tack and we were grateful for that. So, here's a mooch for you Mom - we love you and we miss you.