March 16th

So today is always a hard day for me. There are times I am jsut fine and for what I think is no apparent reason I break into tears.  March 16, 2004 I lost my mother. She was a very strong and amazing woman. She was a nurse by trade, but her passion was sewing. There was nothing that woman could not sew!! I remember times I would give her 24 hour notice about needing a special item and wouldn't you know it in the morning there it was, like the little elves in the elves and the shoemaker!!
       I was not the best teenager in the world (if you can imagine) and she put up gracefully with everything I brought to her.  When I told her I was getting married just before my 18th birthday she was leary but very supportive. She welcomed Tom into our family with open arms, sometimes I think they liked him better than me!! LOL  Three months later, when I found out I was pregnant (and not going into the service, oops). When I found out my second daughter had a birth defect and was not going to make it, she was the one there for me. And when I spent 10 days in the pediatric ICU with my, 5 day old, third daughter she called every day to check up.
      Her last years of life were trying. She was diagnosed with a rare disease and given 18 months. She showed them!! That was Jan of 1997!! 7 years she fought. Her body failed, but her spirit never did!! She made it through the births of my 3rd and 4th children, in 2000 and 2001, and that was all borrowed time!! Through it all she did what she enjoyed most. She spent time with her family, and she sewed. In 1998 my husband and I moved in with her (and my Dad) and it was a full house! But she was there for special times with my oldest. There for PT and OT with my Middle. And there to clean outwash my sons dirty, dirty hands (that boy produced dirt!!). She bought the big beast of a sewing machine (a Memory craft something or another) and my brother drove her to the lessons an hour and a half away on the weekend to learn how to use it!! We each took a little more time and I think we all learned to appreciate the time we had.
   

I know this is off the quilting path, but thank you for letting me pass a little of my mother on to you if only for a moment!!
Getting through today,
J