20 years and its still not fair...

Twenty years ago today I woke up and began my day as usual. I was nineteen and going to school and working. I had plans. I was doing things the "right" way, and surely they would turn out as I had intended.
I headed to the dental office where I would work until the evening, then I would go to school at night and take courses to get me to where I needed to be so I could apply to the dental program.

Plans were working.

Until I got a phone call that day at work, saying my mom had been taken to the local hospital.

She had a heart attack. She was 42 years old. Within two days mom was gone.

Don't heart attacks only affect overweight, old people who don't eat right and smoke cigarettes? That wasn't mom.

That nineteen year old saw all too quickly how the best laid plans could be blown to pieces in the blink of an eye. Or a phone call at work.

Fast forward twenty years later and as I try to keep this a short blog I think of all the things I would have loved to ask my mom, about her life, about her past. Much before nineteen, you don't really realize your mom had a past beyond being...well, your mom. There are no catchy or eloquent phrases I can put here....but one thing just keeps coming to my mind, after 20 years as a motherless daughter.

It's just not fair.

A daughter deserves to have her mom meet her husband to be, and to hear about how giddy her daughter is whenever she is around him.

A mom deserves to sit in the front pew at church sobbing as her daughter takes his hand in marriage.

A baby deserves to be held by his or her grandmother, and spoiled, and fussed over.

A grandmother deserves to be invited to tea parties, school plays, and 499 puppet shows put on by those grandchildren.

My mom would have shown up for all of them.

Not fair.

So now that I am a mother I realize much of what I do, including writing this blog, is to preserve memories for my own children. Because I have been taught, through a hard and painful lesson, that moms should not be taken for granted, they are not guaranteed to be there forever. My own mom never wanted to be in pictures with her children, she always felt her hair wasn't done right or she had a blemish. I have very few faded pictures of her, even fewer of us together. This is a lesson for me as well, because I know my kids wont care what I looked like, the value of that photo and memory is priceless.

Mommy and me. 1974