Something About Moms

Something About A Mom

I understand moms and dads are equally important in the world we live in.

In a perfect world, a child grows up with both.

My mom is one of the few people who truly understood me.

She told me once, “Ricky, you aren’t everyone’s cup of tea.”

She wasn’t setting me up; she just knew the path I would take would not be an easy one.

The last time I saw my mom alive, I had just been diagnosed with cancer.

I was up in Portland near where she lived.

I had told her in a phone call a month prior about the diagnosis, but had not seen her face-to-face.

I remember getting to her place and breaking down in tears.

At that moment, I needed my mom.

She hugged me as we talked for hours about the past and the present.

Nothing monumental, just a mom and her only son, being together.

As I got up to leave, she said: “You know, Rick, you’ll be fine.”

When other people told me I’d be fine irritated me.

It’s easy to tell someone with cancer they’ll be fine when you don’t have it.

You get to walk away and forget that something in your body is trying to kill you.

But from my mom, fine, was….fine.

Fine was a lifeline.

I turned to walk out the door, looked back for a moment, and my mom smiled, waved, and said, “Goodbye, Rick.”

Even at the time if felt somehow final, but I pushed the feeling away.

A week or so later, my mom fell asleep watching a Blazers basketball game and never woke up on this earth again.

Moms are so important.

My wife sees things in our boys I’m unable to unravel.

She is there for them in ways I can never be.

Someday, they will be looking back at her with stories and memories that last a lifetime.

For me, Mother’s Day is a day to be a little sad.

It’s nice to know you can love someone so much that years after their passing, it still stings.

Here’s to mom’s.

Enjoy them while you have them.

Happy Mother’s Day.