MOM

Well....5 years ago today on a sunny Sunday afternoon my dear mother Joy McLaws passed away after enduring 6 difficult months in the last stages of breast cancer. She found out that she had cancer when it was really too late to do much about it. Each year, my dear friend Hopie Clyde and I go to lunch (her treat) to remember my mom together. Hope knew my mom in a very personal way, practically like a daughter, so I enjoy this time we spend together sharing things. Since it fell on Sunday this year, we went to lunch yesterday. Hope always gets me a gift as a reminder of my mom. She's given me a bracelet, an ornament, a shirt, and other things usually related to breast cancer...and she always puts a lot of thought into it. This year, she again got the perfect thing and donated money to the Huntsman Cancer Foundation (yes I cried). I know she does this to honor my mom, but it is such a display of her great capacity to love others and care about them. Thanks Hopie! As I have reflected today on my mom's life and influence I have had my heart warmed by the fact that I truly had an amazing mother who taught me so much. Some of the many things she taught me were: how to be graceful when I need to be, how to laugh at myself, how to love and be loved, to enjoy beautiful music and experiences, to allow myself the opportunity to do better...hopefully I've encorporated some of this to my life. My mom really was an amazing woman to me in so many ways....talented, graceful, funny, forgiving, beautiful. I really could go on and on about her. Truly I was a blessed daughter to have her and my dad. When I asked her one day while taking care of her needs towards the end what she would do differently in life, she simply told me that she would worry less and that she would have spent more time playing with her children and not washing walls. I've tried to remind myself of these things often....hence, my home is often in disarray....but hopefully for the right reasons. I miss her being accessable, I miss her wisdom, but I know she is still very much a part of my life. One of my favorite memories of my mom was when she discovered the "butt bread" one night and how she started laughing so hard that she nearly fell to the floor....and then how she kept that piece of bread that resembled a butt and promised to preserve it and display it somehow as a funny reminder. She never got that far, but she did keep it and I found it preserved in a box of stuff while going through things one day....oh how I laughed. My mom brought such Joy into everyone's life....her name said it all.