My mother is still living, mild Altzeimers.

She is and was the most wonderful women.

She taught me how to be a mother and how to be a strong woman.

She was there for all the neighbours and all the pets.

She nurtured my love of nature and animals .

She had times when I wore her out and tried her patience .

I am proud of her and proud that she is my mother.

i have many 'mother figures' in my life... my biological mother is but one woman who 'mothered' me.

this mothers day will be my first without my grandmothers... and i mourn their loss more than words can say. they were strong women, they lived through terrible times, and they showed me courage, strength, and how to just grit your teeth and carry on. i am the woman i am today because of their example.

may they both rest in peace.

Wow, how lucky you are to have grown up with grandmothers. Mine all died when I was 2 or 3 and I would have loved to have them.
It is a good time to remember them and the mothering they did in your life for sure.

I'll re post it

here here!!

I think of all of the women who have been mentors in my life. They were (are) all women who were a little older than me and who took the time to share their wisdom, experience and love. My life wouldn't have been the same without them.

If it's OK I'd like to say thank you to those woman out there who may not be "official" moms, but who make a big difference and who are very special.

sorry lastpoint - I reworded my post after your response!!

lol Lastpointe! Thanks :-)

My mom is smart and funny...and a great hoot to go on a trip with. That would be enough to gain my gratitude for my good luck, but she is also a loving friend that could never be convinced that I was pond scum...even when I've truly been pond scum...you rock, mom!

My grammas were so different from each other...I learned how to shoot gophers from one and how to set a tea table from the other...I still miss them both.

My mom is... well, my mom.

For many years mental illness robbed me of a mother I never really knew and only saw glimpses of. I saw mother potential that never seemed to blossom in the darkness of mental illness. For many other years my being gay denied me the mother I desperately needed.

She started medication and her self-healing in her late 40's. She began her journey of self-awareness and becoming who she wanted to be. She started being everything she secretly wanted to be and never was. She struggled to quit being everything she was and did not want to be. She set up dreams and goals and she started putting away shame and regrets. She soon thereafter set about healing others. She started to go about the very hard and very unselfish process of helping to heal the children she knew she had hurt. She made herself vulnerable to try to help the grown children she felt she failed. I can never forget a day I stuggled to find words for my childhood and they were words I never wanted to say in her presence. My mom gave the words in my place. That gift involved saying she was abusive and uncorking all my years of never saying what hurt. Without her strength in saying who she was, I do not think I could be who I am now.

My mom has been to parenting classes, to learn what she should have done and how she can re-parent us and that she does not fail her grandchildren. She has gone to anger management classes, where we joked that she was s the only person not there on court order or to try to look good for a judge. She became involved with PFLAG, although I live another country away.

My mom taught me that it is never too late. That as long as your lungs draw air it is in you. She has taught me, not as a child, but more difficultly perhaps, as an adult the selflessness of motherhood.

Ok, off to cry dignified and discreetly =)

Both my mother and my father had atrocious childhoods. Both had fathers who were bad men who came out of very good families. My mother's mother was a severe alcoholic: My father's mother was barely there due to illness and injury. I could go on and on and on ...

What I'll say in a thread like this is that both my parents did surprisingly well, given the starts they had in life.

I can say nothing good about either of my parents: BUT! But I can say nothing bad either.

I will say:

My mother is a better genealogist than I.
My mother is not an alcoholic.
My mother, in spite of her love of speed, has had no car wrecks.
My mother is one of those infuriating people who thinks she's always right on her facts and IS usually right.
My mother, somehow, seems to know so VERY many people.

I'm a lot like my mother, in very many ways we're similar people.

Hi jw...and you and your mom are ticking along, doing the best you can with your life experiences, and what you know...just like the rest of us slobs...

my mom died three years ago, she suffered from Alzheimer's disease, before this robbed her of her mind, she was a amazing women who raised 7 kids mostly on her own, while dad was at sea ( in the navy) she worked full time, she was always there when we needed her, i miss her everyday.

my mom was in a generation that stayed at home, raising kids, joined the Women's Institute, made roast beef on Sunday, leftovers Monday, laundry on Tuesday, and so on.

She would nod off at the kitchen table at lunch, sitting reading a book, and pretend she was just closing her eyes.

She loves us enough to let us do what we need to do.

She is kind and caring, and easily hurt. She is fit for a woman her age, and always prided herself on staying healthy.

She is clever, and there is a sense that she wishes she was born at a time, when things were more open for women. She got a job when she wsa in her late 30s and I was in school, only to find she was pregnant at 40, and became a stay at home mom again.

She lives with my Dad, and loves him, despite the tough times, when well, what marriage doesn't have them. Now, their relationship is sweet, as he watches over her, and helps around the house.

She loves to play scrabble, rummoli and her competitve nature comes out. She blew away my nephew once, playing a word that, well, was a 4-letter word, and we all thought was really raunchy..but..it was worth points.

I have already sent my mother a plateful of catnip and a little bit of cream to wash it down with. Mother was always a nip-totaller, but in her later years she has relaxed her beliefs.

Of course, my Aunt Calico told me that mother used to "dip into the nip" on a fairly regular basis.

One thing I should have added to my earlier post: Both my mother and my wife's mother are dating. Both now act more like giggly teens than women in their late 70's. Neither my wife nor I know what to make of them.

abpenny: Do the best we can, that's all anyone can expect.

My mother is totally psychotic, a compulsive liar and someone who has just enough smarts to avoid having been institutionalized. She was also a loving mother, if somewhat (euphemism) over the top. I absolutely love her completely and am much the richer for having known her and having had her as my mother. In my heart, I feel that SHE is the type of mother for whom Mothers' Day was created. She and my sister are blessed for having had her in our lives.

jw...my mom has been a widow for a few years and we have seen lots of "suitable" suitors inviting her for supper, coffee, etc. She attracts them and then drops them flat...they don't know how to hunt, fish, build stuff...all of the things she thought dad spent too much time doing..go figure. We WANT her to find another partner who makes her swoon!!

My mom died a little over a year ago at the age of 79. She was a hard-working person all her life, and did the best she could raising my sister and I despite a drunken, philandering husband (who, with all his faults, was a warm, caring, intelligent person when he sobered up, which wasn't very often unfortunately)

She never liked Mother's Day--thought it was just sentimental garbage started by Hallmark to make money. She wasn't what you would call sentimental--but not exactly cold, either. None the less, she was a good mother and not mean spirited. She never yelled or swore or hit, accept once--I can remember being slapped once as a young child, and being totally shocked and appalled. However, she tended to nag. She would go on and on for what seemed like hours repeating the same things.

She was not an outgoing person, and tended to keep to herself--but she seemed to like socializing if people happened along. She just wouldn't do anything to initialize contact with anyone--even my sister and I. She was fiercly independent. At the end, she really had very few aquaintences. She is someone who would have benefited greatly from having a church family to draw her out--but my dad convinced her to be an atheist early in their relationship (she had been raised Anglican). I remember she and my dad would often say that believing in a Christian God made no more sense then believing in Greek or Roman gods. Maybe this is why Dawkin's God Delusion book annoys me so much. Dawkins and his followers seem to think it contain amazing new idea that only someone really clever such as Dawkins could think up. Well my parents were telling me the very same stuff more than 40 years ago. ...yawn...

She had her eccentricities, to be sure. She was a bit of a pack rat, and liked accumulating stuff. She tried her best to keep all the stuff neat and organized, but it was uphill work. She loved to shop, but in her last year or two was quite weak and frail. It was difficult to pursuade her to use a walker, since she felt she would be stigmatized, but eventually she did use a walker. I offered to rent a wheel chair and take her downtown (she lived next to the seabus in North Vancouver for her last years). But she didn't want to be seen in a wheelchair. I guess she must have worried about what people thought, right to the end.

She did not have particularly strong mothering instincts--not the way I do, anyway. She was never interested in her grandchildren, and sometimes that was very hurtful for me.

When I was a child I pursuaded her to let me have dogs and cats, and she became quite attached to them, but after I grew up she didn't want any pets. I know I will always want pets, and have a horror of being someday forced to live somewhere where I can't have pets. My first grandbaby is due in about 6 weeks. I hope I will be a better grandparent than she was...but I feel bad saying this now that she is gone.

But she wasn't an alcoholic.
She wasn't dishonest in any way
She wasn't violent or abusive
She wasn't stingy or grasping
She wasn't closed minded

All in all, I'm not complaining.

Recently a new store opened in our town--Homesense. For some reason the first few times I went to that store all I could think about was my mom, and how much fun she would have had shopping there. It made me very sad that I couldn't take her to that store and let her pick out pretty stuff for her home. She was a good mother, and I miss her.

My mother was of another generation, something we spoke of from time to time in her later years.

She was a well educated woman. When she married in 1950, her husband (my father-to-be) insisted she stop working. He thought it would look bad if she worked, as if he was unable to support his wife. She had no idea - ever - what his income was - he would not disclose that. But there was always enough money.

She kept a tidy house, tidy kids, an orderly life at home and in the community. She waited on my Dad, entertained his guests, put up with his moodiness. She was a "good wife".

She was full of grace and goodwill to others., but was no push-over. She taught us compassion & challenged us to be the best we could be, She made sure we had lots of opportunities to learn and grow. She loved us well.

She persuaded my Dad to buy a cottage - so we adult kids would come with our children and all spend time together as a family - which we did for many years. Whenever the little kids arrived, Grannie would have a tiny surprise waiting on their pillow for them. She was a wonderful grandmother, endlessly playing games , admiring frogs & fish, displaying artwork, laughing and cuddling up for stories.

She often spoke to us, her children, about how proud she was of all of us, and how she admired our open relationships and the ways we spent so much time with our kids. It was so different from what she had perceived her own life to be - and yet she was such a great model for us.

Eight years ago, on my birthday, my father called me - she wasn't well, he was worried. I drove an hour to their home, found her extremely ill as a result of her final chemotherapy trerapy treatment she'd had a few days earlier. She spent the next two weeks in the ICU and died, gracefully and peacefully at sunrise one morning, with all of us around her. Her ashes are scattered at the cottage.

I miss her still - Happy Mother's Day Mom.

My mother in law died two years ago. She was a gracious and loving woman who was a wonderful mother in law.

She had her masters in Chemical Engineering from Zagreb.

She immigrated here , found work and while working full time, raising two kids and an annoying husband who needed to be waited on hand and foot, she still attended UWO part time to get her canadian Masters of Chemical Engineering.

She was smart, elegant.

She didn't have natural grandmother skills and i think was a bit frightened of her 4 grandchildren but they loved her.

she died of Alzeimers.

StephenGordon Your post was beautiful - I have had a little cry myself. My mother has a violent temper and really had way too much baggage of her own to be much of a mother to us when we were children, but she loved us and she did the best she could. I am not saying it was okay - but she is not a bad person either and in my adult life I enjoy our relationship very much. I don't ask her to babysit, but without the stresses of motherhood she is an exceptional grandmother. We have never made it to the point your mother went to where we could heal and reconcile the past, and I am not sure she will ever be there but I love her dearly as she does me.

My mother passed away almost 10 years ago and Mother's Day is still hard for me. My hubby and kids are great and give me a little time that day to greive. My mother was a war-bride from Scotland and this year I wrote her story for a soon to be published book about war-brides in the UK. I found this to be a good healing tool for me and I would recommend to other 'motherless daughters' to tell their mother's stories, whatever they may be

Here we are again at Mother's Day weekend, i wanted to revive this and I enjoyed rereading about your mothers.

mine is still alive and still in pretty much the smae condition as last year.

taht is something to be very thankful for this year.

I wish all mothers a happy mothers day.

I'm thrilled and relieved to report that my mother is recovering from a serious blood disorder and stroke that few expected her to survive. Happy Mother's Day, Mom!

wonderful news

Good idea to revive this thread lastpointe. My mother just turned 78 last week. She is a strong person, active, generous, fair, reliable, solid, stable, organized, practical, neat ..... I have much respect for who she is and for the things she has done in her life. I am someone who long(s) for being held and for physical connection - and although my mother hugged (and hugs) me it isn't a natural place for her it seems. My mother is also particular about how things 'should' be done which comes across as being a rather critical, judgmental person. She is not someone I wish to curl up with for comfort or share very openly with - but I recognize that as my stuff - I love and admire my mother.

This past year I have had many long discussions with my son, who is away at school , about his girl friend. I really felt like he wasn't listening at all.

And yet when he broke up with her a few weeks ago he talked about things i had said last summer. He actually listened.

It felt good. I felt like as his mother i had passed on advice that helped.

I know I didn't often listen to my mom, and yet remember her words now. I guess she must have felt the same way.

Those little lines from our mothers seem to run in the back of our heads.

( my son is also looking forward to getting home and being pampered and I am looking forward to doing the pampering)

Thanks for reviving this thread, Lastpointe.
I missed it first time around.

These stories have brought a tear or two.
I'll post a bit more later.

My mother died over fifty years ago, at the age of 40 (I was 14). I still miss her.

She was intelligent - recently a cousin of her's (now in her 90s) described my mother as 'the smartest girl to ever attend the local school'.
My mother was well educated for her time and place - she completed grade 8 in a one-room rural school, took a one-year preparatory, and then wrote exams to be admitted to Teachers' College at the age of 15 1/2. The next year she began teaching.
Limited education you might think - she continued to read, to think and to learn all her life.
She could sew - she made most of our clothes - beautiful dresses for Sunday school.
She could cook, and make good meals out of very little - she could stretch a roast of beef to feed a family of six over three days
She grew vegetables in the little garden in the backyard, preserved berries that we kids picked from the fields and forests, made mincemeat from the deer dad shot in the fall. Bakers' bread was so rare in our house that we considered it a treat.
She understood the value in nourishing meals and provided - we had hot oatmeal every morning before leaving for school - and cod liver oil in the winter months.
She took an interest in our schooling - supervised our homework - discussed what we were learning and (as we grew older) read our text books.
She took us to church and Sunday School, and sent us when she became to sick to go herself. But she encouraged us to think for ourselves and to ask questions.
She was open minded - in a small community and a different time, she encouraged us to accept people with different religions, backgrounds (French, Italian, Jewish), languages. (Sexual orientation wasn't talked about back then but I can imagine that she would be equally open and accepting of gays as well).
She taught us how to knit and sew, how to cook, and how to play cards and other table games.
Our friends were always welcome at our house.
She was also sick a lot - sometimes when she was sick she would be impatient, sometimes she struck out and hit us. She expected a lot from us - while still in elementary school we were expected to do housework. (We didn't realize then that she wasn't able to do it all, and that she was preparing us for when we would have to take over running the household.)
She faced death with courage and dignity - only sorry that she didn't live to see her children grow up and to see her grandchildren.
I only hope that she would be proud of us.

I am once again reviving this thread for this years Mothers Day.

this year i have lost my mother.  Two months now and i miss her terribly.  She was such an important part of my life.  Even with her Alzeimers, we never totally "lost" her.  She chatted and laughed and shared with us.

The last afternoon, after i had sat all day with her, I leaned over to say goodbye.

I gave her a kiss and said good bye.  I thought she was asleep but she opened her eyes and clearly looked at me.  She smiled and asked  When would I be back.  I said tomorrow ( I was driving to London daily from toronto)  She smiled, said I love you and went back to sleep

She died that night.

This is our first mothers day with out her and the first with no grandparents at all for our kids. 

 to those of you who have mothers still, Happy Mothers Day. 

To those of you who are mothers, Happy Mothers Day. 

To those of you who arent' biological mothers but are important women in someones life, Happy Mothers Day.

(((((lastpointe))))) - thinking of you and all your family this first Mother's Day without your Mom.

But, you know, we never are  "without mom". I think of her and what she did and taught me all the time. The physical mom is somewhere else but the life lessons are still around.

So true Crazyheart.

That little voice in yoru head .

Mine is always saying

"if you can't say some thing nice about someone say nothing at all"  :)

To mom's and women everywhere, cheers

OMG - I've got a Canadian  sister! 

Seriously, it will be one of those tough first year anniversaries -  howzabout being nice to everyone you meet on Sunday as a form of living memory?

(Sheesh, what am I saying? With all that training I'm sure you're as nice as pie.)

Thinking about you Lastpointe and others who instead of wrapping a present for their Mother this year, will be wrapping memories around themselves.  Share those memories proudly....she sounds like a wonderful woman.

This morning I delivered a bouquet of flowers to the local diner.  The woman who cheerfully serves others coffee, breakfasts, lunch and dinners is having a really tough week.  Her mom (aged 57) who died at Christmas time was buried on Wednesday.  And now she faces her first Mother's Day without her mom.  I just wanted her to know that people still remembered, and care very much.  Lastpointe, if I lived close by I would drop a bouquet of flowers off to you. 

(((Lastpointe)))

My mother is fantastic. Through a family crisis this year involving my father and his serious emotional problems, I have learned just how much so ... the years of putting her children's needs ahead of her own, and attempting to support someone who could barely handle his own issues ... looking after her aging parents ... managing to straddle the fine line between honest bluntness/tough love and sensitivity and caring all at once ... my hubby always teases me about my Sainted Mother, but she truly, truly is. And while I'm sad I won't be able to be with her this mother's day (she's now 5 hours away since we moved to Ottawa last year), I'm so glad my brother will be able to be ... and that I'll get to see her next mother's day, as she moves to Cornwall, just an hour away.

((((((lastpointe)))))))

((((((somegirl)))))))

I think I'm missing someone else who lost their mother recently. Hugs to all of you for whom Mother's Day is difficult.

And Happy Mother's Day to the mothers here.

My mother was, at first, a 'reluctant' mother.  She came from a conservative, western European family in which the father ran the family with an iron fist.  She was the yougest of 10 children and his emotional abuse carried over into her adult life and in the raising of her own children, myself included.  (He even slugged me once as a child.  My dad, a former boxer who wasn't physically abusive, set him straight in no uncertain terms).  Even years after her father died, she was still afraid of him.  I came to understand that her violent rages and verbal humiliation were a reaction against her father.  AFter my sister was born, she mellowed out quite a bit and started acting more like a mother to the rest of us.  Physical health issues also intensified the situation.  I considered leaving home at 16 but i didn't want to hurt my father's feelings.  I forgave the physical abuse and verbal assaults years ago.  Unfortunately, I ended up marrying a person who was even worse and was much more abusive to me and my sons.  I have nothing against Mother's Day; I think it's a great idea to honour one's parents in at least some token way.  I will take both Mother's and Father's as a reminder of the importance of being a responsible and loving parent.

It is important to be reminded that Mothers day is hard for many people.

Those who don't have mothers they love

those who have lost mothers

Those who have been unable to become mothers

those who wonder who their biological mothers are

Those mothers who know they have issues

the list is long

But it is a good time to also rejoice in our mothers while remembering the struggles they had, the loss they suffered, the fears they had

So many of that generation of mothers lost their daad in WW1, their husbands or brothers in WW2. 

I was blessed to have my mother and the life lessons she taught.

Very sad day in the Some household.  My aunt died yesterday.  She was diagnosed about 5 months after my mom and she died almost 5 months after my mom.  She was like a second grandma to my son.  We are very sad.

(((Somegirl))) - you need some flowers too - a double batch.

And a bunch for (((Serena))) also...

Aw Somegirl.  You're having such a tough year.  So sorry to hear about your aunt.

My mom is very complicated, difficult to understand and for years was just so obtuse and emotionally exempt from my life that I gave up ever believing her intelligence could ever consider anything thad didnt' focus on herself.   She is 76 and still full of herself.  Generally, this is now an interesting facet of her personality.  Recently, she gave her ol' pipes a workout and wowed the locals with some Brahms.   really worked it.

She is quite smart, sometimes outwits her own intelligence with cleverness and cuteness  or bitchi curmudgeoness, but in the end always seems to have more intellect than social cuteness, blast away bitchiness or just class custom.  A lot of her personality was formed  from the guilt, grace, social justice aims and anger at being raised by a Quaker.  I think she loves me more than she is able to express most of the time.

She taught me to honour all women despite how effed up they are and I don't have a problem doing this but  I find that many women are not yet prepared for instant respect nor do they want it.  It is my experience that many women aren't ready for equality and  need to prove they are superior and therefore worthy of respect, either by competing with  or dominating others.  Merely, understanding that this is a demarcation of patriarchy is not always helpful, just another reason why feminism is so hard, but I know that my mother is 100% correct, regardless.  That is also hard for a lot of women to take.  But, if my mother hadn't opened my eyes to feminism, I couldn't know the spiritual peace of alone that I have been given a quick access to.  That was likely the Quaker. 

She did well at school, skipped a grade, raised a family, was married to 2 incredibly different but equally interesting  men;   got an M.Ed psych and then became an afro-headed, granny glasses, maxi-wearing psychotherapist with a hand in Berkeley.  A little too intellectually weird for uptight , sexually competative and conservative Saskatoon who likes weird people only if they aren't educated and   from which fortunately, she retired, even though she had attained a form of guru status .  She was thankful to give that up, she remarked several times after moving out here, though she has missed her closeness with her feminist coven.  But, it was beginning to give her the chain link fence on her intelligence that only a conservative little university town can.  Now, a certified old lady, she is happy to guilt trip us about her impending death ( she is in near perfect health which is amazing for an asthmatic, overweight grandma) when she feels there isn't enough drama in her life. 

Another interesting thing about my mom is that she still doesn't have grey hair.  It has just begun to fade in the past few years, and that's about it.  I seem to have inherited this genetic abnormality from her.   Peace mom.

Thinking of you and your family in the loss of your aunt, Somegirl - sorry for your loss.

so sorry to hear about your loss(es) Somegirl.  That's a lot to go through is such a short time.  Prayers and thoughts are with you and Somefamily.

Ah, somegirl. More hugs from me. Such a tough time for all of you again. Peace.

Lastpointe, thank-you for in your time of remembering and  missing, that you opened this thread.   Not many words this morning, just a thinkin'g of you being expressed...and to somegirl..and others who have lost mothers.

Thinking of all those who have lost their moms recently ... lastpointe, somegirl, ...

I like to think that a part of my mother is still alive in me as she taught me so very much.

**blowing a kiss to the cafemom's that are now lovely bits of spirit...still watching over their pups**