Dear Mom, Thank You

Dear Mom,

Where to start. I guess when I was young? That's how most key memories about a parent start out, when the kids are younger and they slowly start to realize what life is really all about.

I want to say my earliest memory of being able to thank my mother was when my brother and I dropped a massive rock on his hand in the backyard, earlier endeavored on a quest to see what kinds of bugs and crawling critters were underneath said rock. In the end of it, the fire department arrived in our driveway and ended up putting a Band-Aid on it if I remember correctly. Then my brother told the department chief "I thought all firemen were supposed to be handsome."

Little brother- 1

Fire department- 0

One of my best memories with my mother was when I graduated high school and started the journey that was college. My parents bought me a MacBook Air laptop that is now sitting just next to this computer, still working and covered in the various stickers I acquired for it over the years.

Wow it's hard to actually sit back and remember everything that my mother did for me. Like making sure I tucked my shirt in when I went to school, or ensuring that I didn't have some goofy smile on for a family photo. The later did become an incident where I had on to big a grin for a photo, which my mother called out in writing that wound up in some photo album somewhere.

But when I look back, I see everything she ever did for me. Making sure I went to school, making sure I ate three square meals a day. Everything a mother should do for her children, and about a galaxies worth of "even more."

As I write this out even now, I'm writing with her eyes watching me. She was the habitual note taker in the family, not me. She wrote everything down, especially later in life after my father passed away. What she wanted for dinner, how she was feeling, what she watched on TV that evening.

Once when I got into some kind of trouble in college, just academical trouble not legal trouble mind you, there was mom. She taught for years on a college campus, and whenever my own brain decided to stump me, she was the answer I didn't know I needed. Growing up even, I knew it was fated for me to go to that same college, owing to the countless days I spent in her office while she was working on grading papers or checking work-related emails. There was a paper weight with the motto:

"What would you attempt do if you knew you could not fail?" etched onto it. What would you attempt indeed. If I was given the chance to do something with the knowledge I wouldn't fail, I would have told my mother that I planned to marry my now-wife, instead of calling her on the way home from already having been married. I think the fact that my mother may have harbored some small resentment from a woman taking away one of her precious baby boys might have had something to do with it. I like to think that my mother knew I was happy, and being taken care of. I think her heart, she did know.

My mother was always the decision maker in the family, and ever the planner. She had calendars for everything, and as mentioned above took notes meticulously about said events and plans. No tasks or simple outing to the grocery store was undertaken without a list of what we needed, carefully held in place by a clipboard that fit into her purse. After my father passed, the larger purses slowly gave way to clutches and mini handbags, as the needed items for my mothers life began to dwindle.

Was my mother my hero? Well yes, and no.

She was my hero in the sense that she took care of me, provided for me as her son. She made sure I survived my life as best I could, and did her damn best to ensure that no harm came to befoul me.

The only thing was that she was a drinker. I've had drinks in my life time and paid for it in the following morning. But my mother was different. She drank frequently, and although I won't linger on this topic, it would later become a problem for her in life, and ultimately lead to her cause of death. It would be in extremally poor taste of me to harbor any resentment for my mother for being a drinker, because sometimes you can't change people if they won't allow you to do so.

If I could have told you that I wanted you to stop drinking and hope that would help you live a better life and a longer life, I would have. But a fear of losing the one woman who would ever truly understand me was cause enough for me to hold my tongue. So I'm sorry, Mom. If I could go back and tell you, I would.

Ever the adventurous spirit, however, my mother would do well to stay cooped up at home and watch TV or read, if we were out at the mall or go window shopping around for furniture and the like. Books upon books decorated more than one bookcase in our home, and I read quite a few of them myself. A collection of fantasy creatures and mythological oddities was a favorite of mine, and I now have in for all time to peruse at my leisure.

I could write a book about my mother life, thought that would be more of an undertaking than participating in this challenge. She was a kind woman with a energetic spirit, never one to be held down or frowned upon by anyone else who didn't see things her way.

Mom always had an aura about her person that seemed to say:

"I've got places to be, get the fuck out of my way." Not in a threatening sense, but in a very bold sense. She would tell you what was on her mind, whether you liked it or not.

With her strong personally and care-free attitude, my mother took life by the reins and steered it wherever it needed to go to best suit her mood. We had many vacations and cruises as my brother and I grew up, because my mother asked for it, and life willed it so.

That was what made mom truly special, was that she cared. Anything to help her and help others around her was always in the cards of life, and my mother took pride in making sure life was good. For herself, for the students she taught, for her husband, and for her children.

A close friend of mine told me write from the heart, after I talked with him about my mothers passing. That's what this is, and I'll have to remember to thank him for those words.

If given the chance to tell my mother one thing, I would simply tell her,

"Thank you. Thank you for being you, and for taking care of Garrett, my brother, and Tristan, myself. Your sons, who didn't always do the best job at keeping in touch with you as they got older and their lives began to take shape. The sons who did however remember to call you on your birthday, and answer your texts when you asked us how we were doing.

"Thank you for not berating my decision to move in with the woman I would one day marry, even if it did change the plans you had for us moving out of our apartment, and you living on your own. Nothing was ever set in stone, and I think in your heart you understood that.

"Thank you for understanding, I think you did, that I was and still am married to wonderful woman with a loving stepson, who takes care of me, and understands me almost as well as you did. She knows I'm not the smartest cookie sometimes, and she helps me whenever I'm struggling to pick up on the simplest concepts.

"Thank you, Mom, for raising not sons, but warriors. Warriors who take life by the balls, and don't take no for an answer even what that's the only option available. You always told us life wasn't meant to be easy, and that gives us cause to not go easy on life right back."

Thank you, Mom. For everything. When my time comes and I finally see you and dad again, I think I'll finally understand everything you never got the chance to teach me. Until then, I love you.

I always will.

Your loving and devoted son.