My Mom

A Mother’s Day can’t go by without me missing my mother.

I would like to pay tribute to her today.

I am sad to say, the last five years of my mother’s life were so heartbreaking, they often overshadow memories I have of the wonderful person I knew growing up. Unfortunately when I was only twenty-one years old, my mother had a brain aneurism. She had just turned sixty-five years old. The person I had known as “Mom” disappeared that day and fragments of her, along with her frail body, stayed and fought a five-year-battle of dibilitating health problems.

Ahhh, enough of the sad, and on with the happy.

(Below, left to right: my grandmother, my uncle, my mother, and my grandfather.)

My mother was born in the heart of one of the most sparsely populated regions of the United States, Fredonia, Arizona.
(Below: my uncle, and my mother)

The tiny little town is located in the high desert plateau considered the Northern gateway to the Grand Canyon.
(My mother and her family outside their home in Fredonia, Arizona.)

She had four amazing sisters, and one brilliant brother.
They were all very close. They were taught the value of an education.
(My aunt who was an RN, my uncle who was a psychiatrist, and my mother had a teaching degree.)

My mother was one of the few women of her time to get a college degree. She graduated from Brigham Young University.

After graduating and teaching school for one year
she married my father.
(Below: My mother and father with my oldest brother.)

My parents had five children, of which I was the youngest--
--and an “oops”.

You see, my mother was 45 when she had me, and my father 50.
So, my appearance in their lives came as quite a surprise!
She was a very petite woman, and her motto was, “Diamonds and dynamite come in small packages!” She was a mixture of both :-)
(Below: on the left is my Aunt Ella, on the right is my mother.)

My mother filled her time with hard work, service towards others, and a love of God.

(Photo above and below: My mother with her sister Ella.)

She was employed for twenty-five years as the town's City Recorder. She was very active in the church and served others whenever she was given an opportunity. She loved to laugh, and had a witty sense of humor.

I have never met a person who worked harder or could fit more into a day than she could.
She believed that “Everything worth doing was worth doing well!”

I wish I could have shared more of my life with her.

I miss her terribly.

I celebrate this day in her honor.

Love you Mom!