My Mom would be 84 Today

    Happy birthday, Mom! Ahh, she would be pretty far along if she were alive still. But she is not.

    She got sick, or diagnosed, with liver cancer in 2012; she lasted or endured another year plus to pass away March 4, 2014. Her life was longer than many; I am grateful for her presence throughout my life till then, and the graces of her life lived and those left behind associated with her have blessed me since.

    She had us three children, all still living and getting it done in 2024, all having raised our own children, her grandchildren, doing pretty well as the generations begat of her. Her genes still going, some of her traits, social and personal. She did some really cool things in her life, some of the highlights being a volunteer service person in foreign lands. 

    She had her pet peeves and a few habits or what some would call vices, but she made those around her happy and made life better for those that she interacted with.

    Another life lived in the United States, or at times West Africa or Southeast Asia, another mother and wife and sister and daughter and worker and helper. Another church member, neighbor, friend and loved one.

    We miss you still. Your oldest sister just joined your heavenly throng a couple weeks ago, she was 89. Your other sister joined you a few short years ago.

    You are with your parents and other family passed on.

    We will all join you soon enough! Cannot say the time, but this will happen. We will all be together once again, so we celebrate you and remember and cherish your person in my life and others; I run thorough a litany or legacy of thoughts, feelings, memories, sentiments, experiences, places in my family, with her, around her, since her, my own children or nieces and nephews and spouse (and her family and partners) and others not knowing her since then, or me representing her thorough my memories of during the 73 years lived that was a part of. I shared mine, some 43 years. Not bad.

    I think I have been really blessed by such a person, one of my closest supporters and friends.

    Happy birthday, ma.