~when your birthday is in Heaven~

     Today would have been my mom's 95th birthday and with the business of life these days, I had almost forgotten it until this very moment.  Hard to imagine her at 95.  In my mind she is still frozen in time on the day that she passed away at age 87 back in 2007.  Her own mother lived to be over 105, in fact she was pushing her way towards 106 when she too left us.  Mom always said that she never wanted to live to be 100 years old and with failing health, she was more than happy to check out from this life in the wee hours of the morning on that early autumn day of September 25th.  

     We were all there during her very last hours while drifting in and out of consciousness as she headed towards a place way better than this one will ever be.  It was hard to watch her go but there was no way that we would ever have left her alone.  The nursing home bed that she was lying in wasn't very roomy or spacious but I remember about an hour before she finally died that I climbed into bed and laid down beside her.  As I held onto her frail body, I put my head on her chest and cried like a baby.  I knew,  just like all of my other siblings did, that it was now time to let her go.  It doesn't matter how old a person is because one thing remains for sure.

     It is hard to let a parent go.

     In the 8 years since she has now been gone, so much has changed.  She would be surprised (well maybe not) that I am still teaching.  I'm sure mom would really be amazed that I got married and moved away to the mountains of Colorado for two years.  Moving to Texas might have been a bit of shock for her as well but in all things, I think she would remain proud of me.  My mother would still have been encouraging me all the while and telling me not give up, even when things looked nearly impossible to accomplish.  So many times I feel as if she is still around me and I feel her presence, especially in times of sadness or despair.  I miss her and I love her still.

     She was my mom.

This photo was taken in 2003 right before she had to leave to enter long term nursing home care in Hutchinson.  The 4 years that passed between then and her death in 2007 were some of the longest ones that she had to endure.

In much happier days for her, 2001 back in Hutchinson, Kansas.

She would have been happy for me that I no longer had to go through this life alone.  If she could have been at that wedding back in 2013, she'd have been sitting right there on the front row.  Of that young man from "the land of long ago and far, far away", Lois Scott would have approved.