Tomorrow will be ten years since my mom died. So hard to believe it has been that long.
I’ve been sitting here at the keyboard for a good two hours, starting to write, erasing it.
How to describe my mom to someone who didn’t know her?
I’ll try without getting too deep into my own demons… and so you will only get a very small sliver of who she was…
She had a memorable laugh and a smile and brightened the lives of most of the people around her… often at the expense of her own internal laughter and smiles, and the laughter and smiles of those closest to her.
I don’t ever remember my mother baking cookies but she gave me the cookbook and the ingredients and let me do it, assuming that eventually I would figure it out.
Actually, that is an apt description of how my mother raised me… she gave me the cookbook and the ingredients and let me do it, assuming that eventually I would figure it out…
To sum it up, my mother lived this lyric from a Billy Joel song:
…I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints,
the sinners are much more fun,
you know that only the good die young…
And she was young when she died of acute and chronic alcoholism… only 42.
Mom (02/1953-08/11/1995), Me, and my Grandma (10/1909-06/1996)
at Grandma’s 85th birthday party
I miss them both. Very, very much.