Mom and 4 of her grandchildren
On my last post I celebrated my daughter’s birthday. Tonight I’m celebrating Mom’s. Tomorrow, the 16th of March, is Mom’s birthday. This is the eighth time I’ve remembered her special day when I couldn’t celebrate in person with her. She passed on in July 2015 and I still miss her. But I think we always miss our moms. I know many of you who’ve had to see your mothers off to heaven know what I mean and those of you who still have your mother with you, then enjoy the precious times you have together.
These are a few of the pictures I shared of Mom on her first birthday the year after she died . Those first special days – birthdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, whatever special days you always spent together – are hard. But they are also good as you can bring up those wonderful memories of times you shared.
When I was a young married woman with my first babies, I visited Mom every week, usually on Sunday and often on a day during the week too. It was a good break for me. My kids loved it because they thought their granny was the best. I thought my mom was the best. She was always ready to help in the sweetest possible way. She never made me feel like I was too young to be a good mother. She always believed I could be the mother I needed to be. Her middle name could have been Encourager.
She was that encourager all through my younger years too. She helped me believe I could do whatever I wanted even if that was something crazy like thinking a little farm girl like me could actually someday write books that people wanted to read. Sometimes I still wonder how that ever happened, but I’m thankful for every story the Lord has let me write.
Some of those books were all about four sisters in Rosey Corner. Especially the first one, Angel Sister, was inspired by the stories my mother shared about her growing up years with her three sisters during the Great Depression. Here’s a picture of my mother and two of those sisters. Mom is the one on the right. She and her sisters had such great memories of their young lives. Things were hard but they were always there for one another. That didn’t change as they got older and married and started their own families. They were still always there for each other and loved being together to remember those young years and to enjoy all their times together. Mom was the second oldest but she lived the longest. I think she missed her sisters most of all during her last years when her memory started fading.
She had a hard way to go those last few years after dementia stole her ability to remember. That’s not something I’d wish on anybody. And certainly nothing I wanted my mother or us, her family, to go through. My mother was a very determined woman. So, when dementia made her think she was still a young woman who needed to be taking care of her children or cooking for her husband or sometimes being so young that she needed to be home with her parents, then she could not accept that she couldn’t go out the door and do what she thought she needed to be doing. It was a sad few years for her and for us, her daughters and her grandchildren.
But she still loved seeing those grandchildren and great grandchildren even if she might not remember the family connections. She did love kids.
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Now I can push those last unhappy years aside and remember how Mom loved life and how much she loved her family. She was a beautiful woman inside and out. And I was very fortunate to be her daughter. What a blessing to have a mother like her!
In her more aware moments in those last years she would say she was tired and ready to give up living except she didn’t want to leave us. Family meant so much to her. She meant so much to me. I miss her!
I know many of you have had to say goodbye to your own mothers or fathers. You’ve told me how much you miss them. How you wish you could have a few more days to walk beside them and hear some of the old family stories again. You’ve told me how you carry them with you in your hearts. Our mother’s voice is the first voice we heard and her words will forever whisper in our thoughts.
So happy birthday to my mom. I won’t get to give her a hug on her birthday or buy her a pretty hanging basket of flowers that might draw the hummingbirds she loved to watch. But I can remember all the beautiful things in life, her love, and the joy she gave me.
Do you have or did you have a wonderful mother like that?
Comments 24
Happy Heavenly Birthday to Your sweet Mother. My Mother was such a sweet and caring Mother she was my hero! Always there when I needed her she has been gone since 1995!
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I’m so glad you had such a wonderful mother that you remember her as your hero, Sarah. Good mothers should be remembered in that way. Always there and even now when they have moved up to heaven, in many ways they are still there with us as we remember the things they taught us and how they loved us and how we loved them.
My mother was just like yours. I never could not have asked for a better one. She, too, will have a birthday this month. My sister and I talked a long time this week about our parents and things we remember from childhood. We were so blessed ♡
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It’s so good to be able to share those kind of memories with a sister or brother, Loretta. They have experienced the same love, the same fun times, the same hard times perhaps. Such a blessing to be able to reminisce together.
This will be my second birthday without my precious mama on Tuesday. Happiest of Birthdays to our wonderful mamas in heaven.
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I’m not sure if this Tuesday is your birthday or was your mother’s birthday. But if it was yours, I hope you have a sweet birthday, Lucy. I think your own birthday is always hard after you lose your loving mother. Mom always made sure to celebrate with me in some way. If it was your mom’s I hope you celebrate with wonderful memories of times with her.
Thank you for sharing your precious memories of your mother. I, too, had a wonderful mother whose birthday on March 25 we still celebrate 14 years after her Homegoing. She lived to the age of 97 and was always a special blessing to her family, even when some of her memories began to fade.
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I’m glad you enjoyed reading about my mother, Roberta. Your mother almost made it to triple numbers. My mother had 90 good years. The last three or four were a challenge and something she would not have wanted to experience. But sometimes we don’t have choices in what happens to us when it comes to illnesses. Glad you have many wonderful memories of your mother.
Happy Birthday to your sweet adorable Mother!
Yes I had a wonderful Mother! She was a wonderful cook, a loving wife, a hard worker, and a great mom to me and my brother. She has been gone since August 2003, but like you I’m still missing her greatly. Her birthday comes on May 20, so I will be thinking about her especially on that day.
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Thank you for the sweet birthday wishes, Connie. Mom would have loved meeting all of you and finding out about your wonderful mothers. I certainly have. I do hope that my children have great memories of me after I’m gone. But like Mom, I’m not in any hurry since I love being around my family and writing stories and talking to readers and friends.
Thank you for sharing about your mother and I wish her a Happy Birthday. Today is the 10th anniversary of my mother’s passing. I loved my mom with all my heart, I can’t believe it has been 10 years since I heard her voice when I called her on my way home from work or seen her beautiful face except in my memories. Lots of us were so blessed to have been raised by wonderful women. Blessings.
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I hope you had many good memories playing through your mind as you remembered your mom’s going home day, Pamela. The years do add on. Sometimes it feels as if it hasn’t been long since they were here with us and other times it feels as though it’s been forever.
It is a blessing to have a good mother.
Thank you for sharing about your Mom. Precious. I miss my Mama. She went to be with the Lord in 2013.
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That is one of the things about adding on a few years, Melissa. We do often have to say goodbye for now to those we love. But we do keep them in our hearts forever.
Thank you for sharing these memories of your mother. She sounds a lot like my mother. Mom was my biggest encourager and cheerleader. She, along with my grandmother taught me how to be a strong, loving woman and mother. I miss her every day. She went home to heaven 3 years ago this week.
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The good thing about having such a loving and encouraging mother is that you can always remember that cheering you on and know if she was still where you could hear her words they would still be best words for you.
Wishing you joyful memories as you think about her this week, Lavon.
I had a wonderful mother–always caring and sweet. She was industrious and helpful to others in so many ways. In her youth she had taken piano lessons, and she used that skill to earn some extra money when it was time for my sisters and me to go off to college. After all three of us children left home and as an adult, she resumed piano lessons. Playing the piano gave her great joy and a constructive activity after my father died. She moved to a retirement apartment complex and played the piano with a group from her church as well as played for the assisted living residents and the nursing home residents. I have such fond memories of her and miss her. However, God took her home quickly and quietly during the night –before her multiple myeloma could cause great difficulty for her. I am extremely grateful for that!
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She sounds like a wonderful mother, Suzanne. And so great that she enjoyed her talent and enjoyed sharing it with others.
The good memories we treasure of our mothers is a way of keeping them alive in our hearts and minds. They are part of who we are because of how they loved us and tried to raise us to be good people.
An easy death can be a blessing for sure even though we are never ready to give up our loved ones. But what we want is for them to be healthy and well forever.
Happy Heavenly Birthday to your Mom!
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Sweet comment. Thank you, Linda Dianne.
Thank you for sharing the story about your mother.
I enjoyed reading it.
I had a good mother too. She was kind and helpful.
She might have spoiled me a little, since I was raised as an only child. She lost my brother at a very young age.
I didn’t come along until 6 years later.
My parents lived through the great depression too.
They learned how to save, because they had to.
My mother died 24 years ago and I still miss her. I think we will always miss our moms.
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I think you’re right, Marlene. We do always miss our moms, and sounds as if you had a best one. She went through some sad times with losing a child and some hard times during the depression. It is such a blessing to have a loving mother.
My mother spent the last 9 months of her life in a nursing home because breast cancer left her paralized from the chest down. It was a trying time for her and the family, me being the only child I went to see her everyday but three due to a bad snow storm.
she was in so much pain I could hear her as I got off the elevator, that was before all the drugs for pain but we grew closer. She was a Christian lady and she told me we would miss her but she was ready to go. I thanked God her pain was over when she slipped into a coma and then went home to be with her Lord and Savior.
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That had to be a very hard 9 months for you and for your mother. But as you say, good can come out of hard things and did by how you grew close as you were there to support her through such a difficult time. A girl I went to school with had breast cancer that she fought through several remissions but finally she couldn’t defeat it. I still remember her mother telling me how hard it was for her at my friend’s ending because even a touch brought excrutiating pain. So sad.