Last Friday we celebrated my moms amazing life. On Friday, April 9th my dad and I spent a lovely morning with her. She looked beautiful, she was happy and involved in our conversations. She needed help eating her treats (Mocha and cream brûlée) and really didn't say much but she was, good. Really good. Saturday morning while at Colt's Lacrosse game, we got a call that would change everything. We needed to get to her as soon as possible. It was her time to go. My dad, sister and I were able to stay with her and hold her hand the whole day. Zak and Glenda were even allowed to come in and say their goodbyes. We sat with her and talked to her. I prayed over her and cried. She passed quickly and peacefully at 5:42pm.
She was everything to me. Over the past years, as her health declined even more, she and I spent a lot of time together. Those times weren’t always easy but they were so worth it. They are my most vivid memories. It’s amazing how your mind pulls the good to the forefront in the bad times. This awful disease took so much from her, and us. But, I am so thankful we had so much time together. Just the two of us. I have so many memories of the time we’ve spent together in the last years. Shopping, going for lunch and coffee, pedicures, taking selfie’s, dinners at my house, sitting together, just being together. The last year though, that was so tough and so heart breaking. Not being with her through her toughest year, her last year, was awful.
In the mid 90s she suffered from and survived a brain aneurysm. Something many people don’t survive. One of her closest friends recently told me that after she had that aneurysm my mom told her, “I want to see my girls grow up.” Well, she did! She saw her girls become wives and mothers. I couldn’t have had a better role model for what I want to be as a mother. I never remember her being mad at me. Except maybe when I ran around outside in my socks. I remember her cutting carrots in the kitchen while I laid on the living room floor watching Mr Rogers. She comforted and spoiled me every time I got sick or needed a little extra attention. We traveled and lived all over the world as a family, from England to Ireland to Italy to Japan to Singapore and all over the United States. I remember ice skating practice where I’d look up to the stands and always see her and my dad sitting there, freezing through hours of practice. She never missed a game I danced at, she never missed a school event. She volunteered at everything she could have ever volunteered at from being a Girl Scout Leader to the PTO to volunteering at the library in Jr high and volunteering her artistic abilities to help put together things for drill team and project prom. She woke up every single morning for 13 years, before school, and made me breakfast. I cried the day she dropped me off at college. She encouraged me in everything I ever did. She was with me through the days while I set up my first classroom as a first time teacher. She was there on my wedding day, the day I moved into mine and Zaks first home, the day my babies were born. She called to check in almost every day, she talked me through cooking for my family, she baby sat my boys, She was at the boys school events and sport, she baked cookies with my boys and let them cover them in all the sprinkles their hearts desired. She colored pillows at her kitchen table with them as her memory started to fade but she lit up just being with her “best boys”. She always put on her best jewelry to go out or even just sit around the house. She anxiously grabbed her purse and almost ran out the door when I picked her up from her care taker, Angie’s house, on our days together. She played basketball with the boys and my dad in her memory care facility. She struggled through face time calls when we couldn’t be with her and she whispered, “I love you” when it was one of the few things she’d say to us.
I know she loved us with everything she had.
You’d never know how strong she was by talking with her with her soft British accent and her gentle tone, she was a fighter.
This awful awful disease took her away from us way too soon.
If she could have survived, she would have.
I could go on for days and days about how special she was to me. To us. To everyone she knew. And I’m sure over the coming days, weeks, months, years, I’ll share more. There’s just so much to share.
Thank you to everyone for the outpouring of love for my family and me in our darkest, saddest, most painful days.
We feel so loved.
I know my mom is smiling down on us. I know she saw the hundreds of flowers at her service and said “How lovely!”. Oh how she loved fresh flowers.
I know she saw Colton’s Lacrosse team play the most exciting game of the season on Saturday and Chase play his absolute best game ever on Sunday.
It helps my heart to think she’s up there, with our loved ones who went before us, looking down on us, sending us the comfort we need in the coming days, weeks and years.
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