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My Mother

My mother has died.

That somber fact has me processing thoughts of guilt, love, and my own mortality. I am officially an orphan.

My mother was one of the “Railway Children,” those Liverpool kids sent to the countryside to escape the bombing during World War II. She and her sister were sent to Wales and were bounced from household to household, relative to relative, and finally to an orphanage.

Dad moved to Canada in 1960 to forge a better a life for us. Before my mum took my sister and I to join him, the family held an “American wake,” a mournful goodbye, as if a loved one had died. Mum left everything and everybody she ever knew to join her husband in the new world.

My mother and father worked hard to give us a good life. There were tough times, money was scarce, and there was tension between my parents. Hell, let me be honest, my father hit my mother, I saw it.

My mum was sixty when she left my dad. She just walked out with the clothes on her back. That was my mum. Tough. When she made up her mind, nothing could stop her. They didn’t divorce.  They were seperated. Crazy as it sounds, they loved each other. And then my dad died.

It took many years to heal the rift in our family. This was compounded by my own divorce and especially by my father’s death in ninety-four.

Mum was self-taught. She had an artist’s eye and was a good tailor, knitter, and pottery maker. She loved music, my mum. Mozart was her favourite. She sang in choirs and was an avid reader.

My mum lived her life to the fullest and on her own terms. She grew. She consciously set out to improve herself and her outlook. I noticed.

I moved to the states because of my domestic situation. Being estranged from the family including my own children was immensely painful. There were times I couldn’t bear the pain. I wondered if my mum felt like that.

I read in her journal that she had times of doubt, times of depression and times of regret. But she never waivered about what she wanted which was the right to live her own life.

Mum was diagnosed with cancer. She wrote how she spent her days. It was very Zen like. She put aside the pain she was experiencing to focus on the birds singing and the glorious colour of the flowers on her meager patio. She wondered what lives people lived as she watched them pass in front of her apartment on the way to work and then again on their way home in the late afternoon. Her thoughts of how to improve the look of her tiny apartment and how best to decorate with photos, were all written down in her journal, despite her pain.

The day she died, in a brief moment of lucidity, after lying non-responsive for many hours, she spoke her last words.

“I love you all so very much,” she said. And through tears, we told her how much we loved her.

My mother’s death taught me that love conquers all, natural beauty should be appreciated, and living your life on your own terms is hard but ultimately necessary if you are to be true to yourself.

My mother is dead and I am sad. I miss our long philosophical conversations.

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