Going home today. Going to be a long day, a full day. Lots of sadness and lots of joy. I’ll get home about midnight, and probably up at my normal 5:30 or 6 tomorrow. I thought I’d post here what I wrote to say at Mom’s service today. Love and light to everyone.

For My Mother

I really don’t know where to begin, when thinking about the gifts Mom gave us. Yes, a love of reading and books, and writing, for sure. People always say you are blessed if your mother read to you as a child. Well, we were blessed. I still read every night until I fall asleep, a habit formed as a young child snuggled up against my mother in bed. I know that my sisters also experienced this.

There is so much more to that act, the act of reading to us at bedtime, though, than just the reading and the stories. It was such an act of love, for Mom to take time out of her busy busy day, to just be with us, to give us that time with her. I don’t know of any other act that made me feel more loved and secure and safe, than being snuggled up to her, listening to her read, and talking, and being tucked in. I remember playing that game, hugging her at night, in which which we would say “I love you.” “I love you more.” “No, I love YOU more.” Hugging tighter with each back and forth.

I am happy to remember that I played that same game with my own son when he was small. (Well as small as he ever was, lol)

Mom and Dad created a family of the 5 of us. Mom would plan vacations, family time on the boat every weekend, dinners around the kitchen or dining room table together every night. (I don’t want to leave out Dad’s contributions to this. He was always the quiet one doing the work in the background, getting the boat ready, or finding the best route, and doing the bulk of the driving.) At night, she would be grading papers, baking, sewing a new dress for one of us for a semi-formal dance in high-school. Yet still finding the time to put her daughters to bed, and read to us. All of these things were taken for granted by us. That we would go on vacation, that there would be food to eat when we got to the island on the Mississippi, that any time we needed her she would be there. Mom knew the importance of family, because as she said on her 80^th birthday celebration when we all gathered (sisters, kids, grandkids, and great grandkids) at the cabin, “you can’t imagine how wonderful this is for me to see you all here, because I never had a family of my own.”

Well, she made one. And in doing so she gave us all one. She created a family, and she created it on a basis of unconditional love. None of us ever went to bed wondering if either of our parents loved us. Never. What a blessing I have come to find out that that is, as I grew into an adult. If I have but one gift to pass on from Mom to my own son, I hope it is the safety and security of knowing that he has value just because he exists. I hope he knows, like I knew, that his mothers love was earned the day he was created.

I love that at the end of her life, during the last difficult 18 months, she still recognized our voices on the phone. She still laughed when we talked to her, even though her life was anything but joyful then. I loved that she could still say “I love you” to us, because it was one of those things she didn’t have to think about.

I’m kind of afraid I could just rattle on here, talking about Mom. Because she was so remarkable, she made such a success of a very difficult life. Her life reminds me of the book The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, because everything that happened to her, that could have pulled her under, she turned into a positive, and taught us all how to find the good in all things, and forgive all things, and to just love.

So, let us just say that we are all blessed to have had her in our lives. I’m happy that she’s at peace now, with Dad, and my niece. I feel her presence all the time. Anytime I just feel safe, happy, and feel that warm embrace of love, I know Mom is with me. As she is all of us.