My Mom passed over sometime in her sleep, between the hours of 9pm November 1 and 1pm November 2, 2002.

I was the last person to speak to her, but I had No Idea it would be our last phone call.  It was just a check-in phone call, for my mama expected to be called Every Day and fussed loudly if you went too long without calling or coming by.  She said nothing much was up, that she was feeling fine.  We closed that Last Conversation as we always did:  I Love you, Mom.  Love you, too, Sweet-Pea.

The following afternoon, I received a frantic phone call from my sister:  Mom is dead!  Mom is dead!

We drove the mile between my house and hers.  I ran past the ambulance and firetrucks, through the throng of EMT’s and Paramedics standing with their eyes averted to my panic, into Mom’s bedroom where she lay as if in sleep…curled on her side with her hands under her ear.

No, Mom!  No!  I screamed.  No!  I knelt by her bed and held her lifeless body and cried.

I cried for days…months…  I’m crying now…  I miss her Always…

My Dad had died 5 years earlier.  My birth family had been clearly divided for a decade before that.  When Mom died, that was the end.  My siblings and I were courteous and fair when dealing with the inheritance, but that was all she wrote for those relationships.  We walk very different paths.

I often wonder (as does anyone who has lost a loved one) what she would have thought about all the changes, especially how she would have Loved her Great-Grandchildren.  I wonder what she would have thought about the smartphones and facebook.  I Fear what she would have thought about Politics!

Last night we lit a bonfire and I burned some rosemary to remember both Mom and Dad.

They live in my heart and in my head, in my music and in my Home.  Hardly perfect, their example of what Not to Do was often my inspiration.

I wish they could have had more peace in their lives, more happiness.  So I take the Happy Memories.   I tell their Stories and Sing their Songs to my grandchildren.   Smiling, they live on…

Peace