Four years ago today I lost my best friend, confidant, partner in mischief and most of all mom. She was such an amazing woman. I just wish I had realized that a lot sooner than I did. Having her live here with us for her last 5 years was something I wouldn't trade for all the riches in this world. We always went Black Friday shopping. Up at 3:00 got in lines and rushed the crowds to get what we could. It was an all day experience. I will never forget taking her to the Riverchase Galleria shortly after it opened. Now I hadn't been there but a couple of times and my mom never really had been in a large mall at all so this was a true experience for her. Word of advice here, when deciding on taking an older person shopping in a very large mall on Black Friday, always get one of those child leashes and attach yourselves together. Yep you got it I lost my mom in the crowd. She was looking all around in amazement at how huge the place was and all the decorations and got caught in the human traffic going in the opposite direction. I was looking in a store window with her one minute the next she was gone. POOF! Calling her name out loud and jumping up and down looking in both directions (yes my mother was short) I finally noticed human traffic parting around a stationary object and yep it was mom. She realized she had wandered away by accident and figured stopping right where she was and not budging gave her the best chance of being found alive. What can I say? It worked. We survived to shop many other Black Fridays but she would never again let me take her to the Galleria.
My mom always had a sneaky sense of humor. I mean this is a lady that taught a cat to play hide and seek with her. I wish we had smart phones and youtube back then. Anyway to understand the last few years while she lived with us you have to know that we live in a two story house that has 4 exit doors and two sets of stairs in different areas of the house. When you get upstairs there are 3 bedrooms and a bath. One set of stairs leads into what was mother's room. It is a large bonus type room and worked out great to give her privacy and a small apartment type area. All of the rooms are connected upstairs so you could go up mom's stairs and into a bedroom then the hallway and down the other stairs. Now I am telling you all of this so you will understand how we lost my mother in our own home. Mother could move around like a cat. You never heard her coming or going and many times when we would turn around and get startled because she was right behind us we threatened to put a collar with a bell on her. She always found it funnier than we did when she made one of us jump. We hadn't been living here but a few days and we had all been sick when we were moving. Everyone had been busy unpacking and shuffling boxes and I realized I hadn't bumped into mother in a while so I started asking where she was. No one had seen her in a little while so we started calling her name and running up and down stairways and all we did was pass each other but no mom. We did look out of the windows onto the front and back porches but that was where we made our mistake. Like I said my mom was a petite woman. After I started to panic we decided to go out in the neighborhood and look to see if she had met up with a new neighbor cause mom was a people person. That is when I found her sitting on the bottom step on the back porch relaxed and acting like nothing could be farther from her mind than we would be looking for her. We laughed about that for years. She was so quiet that we wouldn't know she was outside and until we got used to her sitting out on the porch there were times we would lock her outside at night. Not on purpose and she didn't jump up and yell she would just get ready to come in and ring the doorbell. Then laugh when she saw the look on our faces as we opened the door and she was on the other side. We finally started checking her location before locking up around the house. Especially when we asked her what she would do if we didn't hear her at the door. She told us she would walk next door and tell the neighbors that we locked her out for the night and she needed a place to sleep. I asked if she would lie to the neighbors like that and her reply was, "it's not a lie, you did lock me out and I did need a place to sleep." This is the type of woman that raised me. Is there any wonder I torture my kids with the same kind of humor?
I could tell you many, many stories of my mom. It would take me a lifetime. I still miss her like crazy. She passed away on Black Friday 2010. We still shopped that day but it was for her final resting place. She was a fighter and stayed on this earth long after she was tired and ready to go to her heavenly home. I have been asked how I deal with living here now that she is gone. It has its moments, but there are so many amazing memories everywhere I turn I think I am really lucky.
If there was one thing I would have changed I would have taken more pictures of my mom. She hated having her picture made so there aren't many of her. She let us take more as her time grew shorter here on earth and if you think about it that is sad in a way. We always seem to find the need to take every picture and make every memory possible at the end of our time together. I don't know why. Mom still taught me something even after she passed. I never liked having my picture made either, but now I take pictures every chance I get with friends and family. I want them to look back and see me happy, healthy, smiling and having funny or being goofy. We always worry about how our hair looks or how we are dressed. Hey, these are the people that live with you and have seen you drag out of the bed with your hair standing on end. They will just look back and say, yep that's how she looked when...
Be blessed, be a blessing, take lots and lots of pictures every chance you get and let people know you love them. Always give hugs and kisses when leaving each others company because you never know what will happen. We aren't guaranteed a next time or tomorrow. I still can feel the last time I had my mom put her arms around me and hug me. She kissed me on the cheek and told me she loved me. I just want you to know that out of all the lifetime of memories that one is the sweetest and best of all. Her lips on my cheek were like satin and she felt so tiny in my arms. I still hear the um-uh sound she would make so that her hugs would sound like the were tighter than she could squeeze.
So um-uh mom...hope you could feel that. I love you.
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