My first Mothers Day without my Mom. 

Wish I could still do all the things we were doing. All the simple things, the fun things. I wish I could still take her out shopping. I wish we could still ride in the van and be silly with each other. I wish I could simply watch TV with her, I wish we could call each other multiple times a day. I am lucky to have had such an awesome Mom. 

She printed out a saying I will always carry with me, "Don't cry because it ended, smile because it happened".

 

I love you Mom. 

 

I could care less what our differences are when it comes to things like this.

It is never easy for anyone to lose their parents. I know exactly what you are going through. You never get over it, you simply learn to cope with a new reality.

My Mom and I didn't get along when I was a kid. She always loved me, even back then. But neither of us understood each other back then. She was raised with "things go this way, boys don't cry, buck it up". I was sensitive and did cry and was not physically tough. And it didn't help when my dad died in 81, she had to raise me by herself in my horrible teens. I don't know how she didn't kill me.

But as I got older and got married, and especially since i moved down here in 2005 to help take care of her, we grew closer and had a far better understanding of each other. It would have been nice to have had that understanding growing up, but better late than never. My Mom grew to understand me and even with our differences 

She loved to even hear my arguments with people on line, not just here. She was a Catholic, but still kept her sense of humor with me. We'd go to the dollar store, and of course she knew since the mid 90s that I was an atheist, but would still joke seeing a religious item, like cross or plaque with a biblical quote on it and joke, "Hey you want me to buy that for you?" I'd roll my eyes and say "Yea smartass". 

 

We had a silly game in the van she road in the back because she need the ramp to get into the van. But she never liked the "middle finger", she took that really seriously when I was a teen. But in recent years, we'd have this game in the van where I would lift random fingers and each time, depending on how far up I raised it, would make a silly noise. The least I would raise a random finger, the noise was more quiet, the more I raised a random finger the louder she would get, but if I did the real thing in full extention she would really get loud, in a playfull way. The noises she would make would crack me up to the point of telling her to stop because I couldn't focus on my driving.

 

Those simple fun things I miss. My Mom had a really good sense of humor. I simply think it took her seeing me get others to laugh as an adult she finally realized she didn't have to take me so seriously all the time and she saw others having fun with me. My Mom will always be my hero.