Everything I have, everything am I, I owe to my mother. Year after, year passes but it doesn't seem to get easier. A cousin will call and say, "I miss my Aunt Dede." I'll see or talk to her sisters and I'll see the saddest in their eyes because their sister is gone. I think it worse for my middle sister and my middle niece. Neither talk about her very often. It's as if they don't want to remember she's gone. Like if they try hard enough they can pretend she's just a phone call away. I use to think I was a daddy's girl but little did I know. I was just as big of a momma's girl as well. It will be four years on July 17th and each year dulls the ache minutely enough to where I'm able to function, to continue to breath when it feels like my heart has been ripped from my chest.
I miss my mother. Some days its worse than others but when it gets really bad and I can't stop crying, I call my oldest sister and she makes me laughs. She reminds me of all the zany things my mom did. And I feel better. So today's Thursday 13 is dedicated to my mother.
13 gifts my mother gave me...(I settled on 13 but there are so many more)
1. My love of music. My earliest and happiest memories as a child were of music. Of Mozart and The Beatles, my mom's favorite. St. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club will always be a favorite of mine because I can remember being in the house, laying around with my mom listening to it on repeat with her singing along. And encouraging me to sing with her.
2.My love of food. My mother loved to cook. Loved to experiment with new foods. She had no fear. LMAO. If you ever meet my oldest sister ask her about my mother's sushi and tempura phase.
We all remember it fondly, but my poor sister who was pregnant my with neice at the time still gets nauseaus if we remind her. (LMAO! Which I do sometimes for giggles.)
3. My love of adventure. There was nothing my mother didn't believe she could do. She loved fishing. She'd go where ever she heard people were catching. In the middle of the ocean. In a channel where we had to climb done jagged rocks. No place was off limits.
4. My sense of self. To many people my mother was odd. A hippy, a flower child. But there was one thing I could say about her, she felt comfortable in her own skin. She didn't care if people thought she was different or weird, she lived her life and loved every minute of it.
5. My love of animals. From the time I was a child we always had pets. Cats, dogs, bunnies, ducks, turtles, geese, fish, tadpoles, frogs, hamsters and my mom loved and took care of every single one of them. When I was 16 I was doing work study at our local humane society. A litter of kittens a few days old came in. Because the mother was not with them, the pound was going to euthanize them but allowed me to take them home to try to save them by hand feeding them. My mother bottled fed the kittens. Took them to work with her in a little nest she created and carried them with her everywhere. Eventually, they did die because they didn't nurse from their mother the first day and didnt get the much needed colustrum. I remember sobbing and my mom holding me. She helped me bury them and didnt blink twice when I brought home the next ones. (These ones lived thank God)
6. My spirituality. My mother loved God. She would get up in the morning and walk for hours so she could pray. She was a strong believer in pray and she encouraged her children to be the same.
7. My sense of humor. My mother loved to laugh. LOL. Sometimes we (read I) didn't always appreciate her sense of humor. Like the time we were watching The Gate and she laughed so hard she almost cried. What was she laughing at? 1. The little demons cheering when the big demon came out of the ground. 2. Me when I freaked out because the boy (I think the main character) had an eyeball in his hand. *shudders*
8. My love of heritage/ancestry. My mother embraced both of her parents heritage without question. She never specified one race because she wasn't only one. So she'd either pick "other" or fill in more than one bubble. Hehe.
9. My love of books. Saturday mornings without fail, my mother and I (and sometimes neighbor kids or my cousins) would be at the library bright and early. I remember our local library had a childrens section, she'd drop us off on the way in and we'd go and find her later. We'd spend all day at the library.
10. My love of the fine arts. (Dance, Theatre, Etc.) One of my earliest memories was of going to see Fiddler on the Roof. My mom dressed me up in a eggplant purple velvet jumpsuit with pants that hugged and buttoned at my calves and a white satin blouse. I don't remember much about the show but I do know I've loved the theatre every since. Every girl in my family took dance lessons because of my mom. We had a local dance school my mom would take us to where we took jazz, tap and ballet. My mother loved ballet and had studied it for years. She also learned to belly dance.
11. My love of my body. I remember my cousin saying she has a positive body image because of my mother. When my cousin no longer wanted to go to dance school or wear the cute little summer outfits my mother bought her because she had developed a lot younger than the other girls, my mother told her the same thing she told all of us. Your body is a temple. A sacred gift from God. The breasts she was so embarrassed about would one day help her nourish her babies.
12. My irreverance. I think pretty much nothing was off limits to her. (My oldest sister is the same way) My mom used to make jokes about creating new outfits for a certain "group" (Read, the klan) to wear because she thought their normal ones where pretty blah. She thought purple with a little gold stitching would work much better.
13. My loyalty and love of family. My mother loved my father. She loved her children. She loved her mother and father. She loved her sisters and brothers. Her nieces and nephews. Her cousins. Her friends. And if they needed her, she was there for them without question or hesitation. She would fight for you fiercely. There was never a time when I doubted she loved me. I knew it and her family knew it. We mourn just as hard and as deep for her now as we did the day we lost her. And I don't think that will ever, ever, ever change.
Labels: Thursday 13
