My Mom

There were plenty of times in my relationship with my mother that I would have wished for the pause button.  My mom was a special person.  She grew up during the Great Depression, the oldest daughter of 14 children in a hard working German household.  Her childhood was not easy but the stories that she told were so much fun.  She came from a generation where the entertainment was to tell each other stories and laugh.  They didn't have television and were so poor that a radio was an extravagance.  Everything they did they had to think about how they could save.  They didn't waste anything, but she made it sound fun, it was a way of life - not a hardship.  She talked about how much she loved a coat that her mother had made from another coat by taking it apart and cutting it and re-sewing it.

My mom was the best cook-I'm not talking the most healthful, but everything she made tasted good and she didn't waste anything.  She cooked everything from scratch and I would sit in the kitchen and watch and ask her questions about her childhood and younger years.  I wish now that I had had a pause button so that I could have enjoyed and appreciated those times more. 

She was tough and independent.  She only went to school through the seventh grade but you would have never known it by the way she talked and held herself.  She had to stop going to school to start working and helping her family with the younger children.  She always wished that she had been able to finish her education.  But, she educated herself, she was a prolific reader and was knowledgable about a multitude of subjects.  She told us that being poor didn't mean that you had to sound poor.  She had an amazing vocabulary and made sure we spoke properly. 

I think that is what hurt the most when she started showing signs of Alzheimers.  She would forget the things she had learned about vitamins and health.  Her stories that she had told all of her life, that we had heard over and over, started to change.  She didn't remember how to cook family dishes that she had cooked through the years.  Watching that happen to her was probably one of the most difficult things that I have ever had to experience.  I wish that I could have paused her life before she started that phase.

I miss my mom so much, she was my best friend.  But, I do have my memories and that will sustain me.  She lives on in her children and grandchildren.