Mother Love

In recent years my mother has developed a series of complicated heart problems, the least of which has been heart disease. She's had many many procedures and tests as well as a cardiac defibrilator implanted. It goes without saying that all of these things have had a dramatic impact on her daily functions and quality of life. For years my mother has run circles around my sisters and I. She could always accomplish things, she always got things done! And for the last four years it seems as though her life has become one long list of things she'd like to get done.

Tomorrow morning at 8:00 am she'll have open heart, valve replacement surgery. It's made us more than a little bit nervous but we're very hopeful that it will be what she needs in order to resume a somewhat normal existence again.

With that being said, this post is in loving tribute to my always loving, less than normal, extremely wonderful and mostly adorable mother, Jennie.

My earliest memories of my mother begin when I was about 18 months old. (These are not recovered, associative memories, they're real. I have an almost photographic, uncanny long term memory that quite literally begins when I was a year and a half old). My memories are distinct and clear. My mother was always there. She held my hand, styled my hair, polished my nails, read stories to me, played games with me, held me in her lap, carried me in her arms, and administered more love and compassion than any child could have asked for. She has taught school for 30 years and is in my opinion, the only reason that my overly ADD ass made it through school. She taught me how to find main ideas, important points in texts, she taught me how to count dots on numbers and multiply without memorizing. She is the reason I love Valentine's Day and Easter. And she's been my greatest supporter for all of my life. She never bragged on me or critiqued me. She watched me with loving kindness and never stood in judgement. She didn't put me up to competition, enter me in beauty pageants or demand that I ever win at anything. She always told me that she didn't have to win anyone's approval of me. She loved me entirely for who I was - and I'll be damned if that didn't turn out to be enough! She's the reason I'm not sitting here today at 32 years old, wondering what I have to do to gain my mother's respect or love. I knew all of my life that I was loved... I've never had to look further than my mother to find all of the guidance, reassurance and protection that I've ever needed.

I am lucky to not only be her daughter but to be one of the three Gariepy girls who will know complete misery and misfortune when she leaves this Earth. I can't conceive that there is another woman who may be as mourned or as missed as she will be (years and years from now) when she leaves. How lucky am I that I get to love her so?