My daughter’s blog has a header that says “It’s my blog and I can blog if I wanna”.  And, this is my blog and sometimes, I wanna get personal. Like today.

On Friday, my 81 year old mother passed away.  She outlived my grandparents, my dad and cousins and aunts and uncles and she was my mom.  Wasn’t she supposed to live forever?

She was born in little ol’ Grenada Mississippi and was raised there in her first few years by her grandmother.  She was poor, dirt poor.  This is something I only recently learned about her because she never really talked about her childhood.  Nor did my dad who grew up in a different kind of poor, an urban poor in a northern city during the Depression.  They both learned how to make due and how to take care of family but, they never let us kids know about their childhood.  Instead, they gave us a middle class upbringing in Catholic schools and college educations.  Even though I was grown and gone, they were still there for me through a divorce, large and small calamities with my children and all major life events.  Mom believed firmly in marriage and that all women needed men to care for them, but she managed to raise daughters who were confident and independent.  And, she and my dad raised a son who cherishes his wife and is responsible to his family.  Through their example, they taught us all how to be there to raise our children.   No, they weren’t perfect but they were my parents and I am so glad, so proud, so honored to have had them.  Notice how I can’t even talk about my mom without talking about my dad?  They would fuss with each other and had issues of their own to deal with, but to their dying day, they gave whatever they could to their children and their grandchildren.

We’ll be going back home, back to Toledo for final services.  This is one trip I do not want to make.