Today is our "we miss you mom" celebration (can it really be 16 years since she died) and our "we love you Makenzie sealing" celebration (can it really be 11 years ago?)
At dinner we shared our favorite things about Makenzie and I had lunch my Jenn and my dad today and started thinking about great things about my mom. Since this blog post can't be 1000 pages, I can't really write all of the great things about her -- but just a few things random memories came to mind.
1. I love that my mom never got mad about water fights at dinner and how many plates/crystal glasses Scott broke over the years.
2. I love that my mom always made everyone feel special and important -- and that I'm pretty sure every boy that dated me secretly was just dating me because of her and praying I'd be like her someday.
3. I loved the fact she and I could talk and talk and talk and talk. While at BYU in the pre-cell phone days it was not uncommon for her phone bill to be over $100 a month with most of the calls going to me. My mom told my dad to never say anything to me about it because she didn't want me to stop calling.
4. I loved all of our Nordstrom shopping trips when we would sit in the dressing room for a few hours trying on outfit after outfit and our friend Becky that worked there would bring us OJ and cookies and hang out with us all afternoon. I’ll never forget our first post mastectomy shopping trip. She wouldn’t buy anything new for a long, long time and it was really traumatic for her to take the first steps to believing she could make it and go on and love her body again someday. And it still makes me laugh that the first time I went to Nordstrom after she died I cried and had to leave ... fortunately and unfortunately her dying ruined my love for shopping and now one of my most favorite past times and things to spend money is no longer shopping.
5. I love that when she and my dad and I went anywhere together (and it was a lot since I was the last at home for several years) we would share the front seat because she didn't want me to have to sit in back alone. (Seriously... we drove 100s of miles with me tilted on my left hip and my bum 1/2 way on her lap!)
6. I love that we shared clothes and look a heck of a lot alike from the waist down. Yes I still laugh about the time I was walking behind Dave and I watched him go up behind my mom -- about to pinch her bum... thinking it was me. In hindsight (no pun intended) I shouldn't have yelled to stop him!
7. I love that when we would go out to dinner on the weekends she would have my dad stop about a mile away from home and she and I would walk the rest of the way home (and that Val will now walk with me on a Saturday nights at 10:00 pm because my body can’t stand to go to be on a super full stomach).
8. I love that she told me to always take the stairs and to this day I still feel guilty if I take an elevator. I also love that she took me to "Jazzercise" classes when I turned 12... I still remember the moves to the song 9 to 5.
9. I love the fact she could never, ever tell and joke and get it right... and since she taught elementary school her jokes were always usually really short/lame and she still couldn't remember them.
10. I love that right up until she died (and even one day in the hospital) she would always tell me to come in and lay on her bed in our jammies on Saturday mornings and we would have a great time just chatting and being together. I will never forget just a few days before she died when she was in the hospital and she asked me to come and snuggle with her. She was so fragile and I was afraid I'd break her but I layed by her in her bed -- and I slept peacefully without a nightmare for the first time in several weeks.
Ok... as I said earlier I could go on and on and on ... I love you mom!!
4 comments:
Thank you for sharing those beautiful thoughts. From what you wrote, you are your mother's daughter. You are a wonderful mom too. Thanks for your example! Love you!
Thanks for always writing about Grandma! I wish I could've met her, but I appreciate that you share your memories with us, because I can see through your words what kind of person she was.
Oh man, Steph...you make me cry :) That was very sweet! I love reading about your experiences with grandma! I was just 8 when she died, so I do remember some, but not much.
Oh man Steph made me cry too :).. I was looking at Tara's blog about Emma and came and looked at your blog. Came across this one. This is amazing, I always wish I knew Grandma more, like Tara said she only remembers a little and thats the same with me, wish I remembered more. When ever my dad talks about her its always amazing! We Love you Grandma!
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