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Contest: For my mom
Bigshizza
Posts: 15,652 ✭✭✭✭✭
If you remember the great contest Royln had for his father, I have asked his permission to copy and got the o.k. So, my mother was born February 8th 1928. She grew up in New Jersey and then Pennsylvania and graduated with a degree in social work from Westminster University. She worked in the early 1950's in Los Angeles with pregnant unwed teen mothers. She was a trailblazer, strong willed and passionate about helping people. She eventually went to work assisting Downs Syndrome children, severely disabled children and disabled adults. Many Thanksgivings were spent with a client she brought home, helping us to accept others that were different than we were.
I am the oldest of 3 and presently I am the same age she was when she got cancer. At the time, I was 21 my brother was 19 and sister was 17. First it was *** cancer then became pancreatic and she died at home on June 23 1983. She was a single mother of three for many years and worked 2 jobs to support us. She's my hero, has been and always will be.
Now onto the contest: It will run until January 15th. Please submit through PM...how your mother effected your life. They will be judged by my wife and I. If you don't want it posted on here, please let me know. There will be a nice thank-you to the winner. Thanks for participating!!
Lois Anne Tellin Scott
I am the oldest of 3 and presently I am the same age she was when she got cancer. At the time, I was 21 my brother was 19 and sister was 17. First it was *** cancer then became pancreatic and she died at home on June 23 1983. She was a single mother of three for many years and worked 2 jobs to support us. She's my hero, has been and always will be.
Now onto the contest: It will run until January 15th. Please submit through PM...how your mother effected your life. They will be judged by my wife and I. If you don't want it posted on here, please let me know. There will be a nice thank-you to the winner. Thanks for participating!!
Lois Anne Tellin Scott
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Life is too short to smoke bad cigars!!!
Oh when the Blues, Oh when the Blues, Oh when the Blues go marching in!
I think most here know I too lost my mom to cancer a few years ago, actually it will be 5 years in a few days. I dont think a day goes by where I dont think of her.
I like Oliva and Quesada (including Regius) a lot. I will smoke anything, though.
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At an early age I realized I was in for a wild ride.
My Dad was an alcoholic and my Mom had serious mental illness.
My Mother in so much that she was violent to the point she beat us kids, not knowing any better.
I remember thinking , why me, why my Mother.
She went through some medical therapy, once she was committed, but neither helped.
Now I realized why My Father was a drunk, he was self medicating just to try to make the family work somehow.
I didnt realize just how much he loved her until later in my life.
From Mom, there was never any real love.
She just out the the blue would blow up and get mean and began talking and screaming to people that were not there.
I left home at 13 just to get out of the madness.
Years passed , I was in my 30's now.
I got a call that Mom had been to the hospital because of bad headaches.
The diagnosis was a cancerous tumor,it was not curable .
They opted for surgery and she came out of it reasonably well considering.
Then something amazing happened.
She began to smile, laugh, and become this person I wished I had as a kid.
I spent more time wife my mother over the next 6 months than anytime in my life.
What a gentle spirit she now was.
I now knew the real mother I never had.
Then again the phone call.
I remember going to the hospital and she was lying on the table in the ER.
There she laid, with this big smile on her face as if to say, I'm now at peace with everything.
So heres to all the Mothers and to a Mothers love.
It was the best 6 months of my life !
Jim, you were very lucky to have such a great Mother !
I can see your making her proud all the time with your big old heart !
And thanks everyone for letting me share, had to back out a few times while writing.
Thanks for sharing !
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My grandma, on the other hand, who actually raised me as an adolescent, taught me most of what I know as a human being. Here are some of the things she taught me:
She taught me to cook. To make tea. To mix a mean vodka gimlet.
She taught me that integrity is much more than a virtue but necessity.
She taught me that that empty part of my soul that I tried my best to ignore most of my life was shaped just like God; and she taught me that only God could fill it.
She taught me, contrary to popular opinion, that respect is not something you earn but something that every living being is endowed with at birth.
She taught me to have faith in myself and in others.
She taught me that no matter how hard I tried to screw up my life there would always be at least one person who would continue to love me unconditionally.
She taught me that love is a verb. Its not something your in, or you have, its something you do.
She taught me that you dont need to travel to world to find beauty, you just have to open your eyes.
She taught me forgiveness.
She taught me to hug. Not that stiff armed, pat-on-the-back kind of hug that reeks of discomfort but the kind of hug that requires a commitment. The kind where you melt into one another and, at least for a moment, become one, in love.
She taught me to swear: *** and damn mostly, not any of the really bad words.
She taught me compassion and to care about others whether they lived across the street or across the world.
She taught me what Luciano De Crescenzo meant when he said We are, each of us, angels with one wing and we can only fly by embracing one another.
She taught me that I neednt be ashamed of things that I couldnt control.
She taught me to live with grace and in the end, the consummate teacher that she was, she taught me to die with grace.
She taught me to honor the living and she taught me to honor the dead.
She taught me the importance of family.
She taught me, by her example, what it means to aspire and achieve greatness of character. A decade ago I had the chance to meet Archbishop Desmond Tutu who was introduced as one of the great men of the century for his role in ending Apartheid in South Africa. As he took the podium he responded to his introduction with a kind of honesty and humility too rare today, with these words (borrowed, I think from Mother Theresa:
Please dont call me a great man. The great men and women of the world are not those who do a few great things in their lifetime. The great men and women [and here is where was talking about my grandmother] are those that do everyday things with a great amount of love.
My grandmother died 8 years ago, two days after my 40th birthday. I had planned on taking my birthday off anyway but when I heard she had a stroke the night before I drove down to spend the day with her. At not even 5 feet tall she was the biggest person I ever met but today she looked so small, in her hospital bed, and a little scared. Someone told her it was my birthday so she sang "Happy Birthday" to me one last time.
I was lucky in so many ways because I got to say goodbye to her. But birthdays nowadays? Meh....
For years, my brothers, sisters and I thought the movie "Mommy Dearest" was a documentary about our mother.
When she was sober, she was vicious, when she was drunk, she was evil and vicious.
When she was dying, I kept my brothers and sisters out of it, to protect them from her.
For those with caring mothers, appreciate it them.
My wife is a great mother to our boys.
Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy cigars and that's close enough.