A sad anniversary

This week is the anniversary of my mum’s death. She was such a lovely woman, with a beau­ti­ful smile, and always so wel­com­ing! My friends enjoyed com­ing over to our house because they were always made to feel at home and cared for. She genu­inely loved tutor­ing dys­lex­ic kids, did that for 25 years, and helped more than one young per­son find suc­cess in life.

She wrote down sev­er­al stor­ies of her childhood–maybe I’ll read them here one day. My favour­ite was of the time she and her cous­in Deanna were Gramma sit­ting, and they went around the house and moved all the clocks ahead an hour so they could put Gramma to bed early, and then they poured them­selves each an entire bowl of maple syr­up and drank it through straws. Umm… they might have been kinda sick after that! She was quite an enthu­si­ast­ic talk­er, and I remem­ber walk­ing into the depart­ment store at the mall one day with her, and she was chat­ting away blah blah blah about whatever, and look­ing all around. For kicks I turned a corner and let her keep walk­ing through the ladies wear and talk­ing out loud all by her­self until she noticed I was­n’t there. She saw me sev­er­al paces away head­ing into men’s wear and of course I’m totally straight faced. She stood still and was prac­tic­ally pee­ing her­self laugh­ing. She had this way of laugh­ing so hard without mak­ing a sound…

When I had my first baby and my hus­band was work­ing nights in the theatre, she drove over, loaned me her car and babys­at so I could go to choir prac­tice. She said it was import­ant for me to keep doing things that were just for me. She was always there for me like that. She adored her grandkids, and would be so proud of them.

I took her to chemo treat­ments and kept her gig­gling to keep her spir­its up. I gave her the cross­word clues, she would tell me the word and I’d write it in. I asked all the ques­tions of the doc­tors and made all the notes, because with my back­ground, I knew that we were allowed to ask ques­tions, and which ones to ask. I frickin adored her. I was there for her when she needed me, and would do it again in heart­beat, des­pite everything. I miss her every day.