August 27th, 2013, at 12:50 pm

That is the day and time that the woman who brought me into this world, left it.

It has taken some time to come to grips with it. Even today, it doesn't feel like it is real. Just this summer, my mother came here to Ottawa to visit with me. She was so alive, so much herself. Yet I could see the years had worn her down. She no longer could walk as long, and had a huge bag of pills to maintain various health conditions.

And I was never under any delusions that she would be around for all of my life. I am the youngest child, one had later in her life, so I knew this day would come. And yet, my mother seemed to be invincible. I guess that’s how most children feel about their mother. But I had good reason.

My home life wasn’t the greatest when my parents were together. My father was a poor drunk, and free with his fists where it concerned my mother. When my mother needed to have dentures put in (rather early in life), my dad had taken her to the dentist to remove her teeth. He only removed half and told her to wait for that to heal. My mom, fearing my dad would not take her back, decided that was a wrong answer.

With a pair of pliers, my mother removed her own teeth. Re-read that. She removed her own teeth. This is the stuff my mother was made of. She was iron, larger than life, and twice as strong as anyone I’ve ever known.

As a child, the tip of her little toe was smashed off, leaving bone exposed. What did mom do? Trimmed it like a toenail. Even at a young age, she had strength enough to do what needed doing, and without sadness or misery.

My mom walked to the gallows that was her life with a sneer and a quip. She laughed often once she was on her own, and had a perverse sense of dark humour I fully inherited. There was little that intimidated or scared my mom. My mom left my dad when I was just 5, but when I was just finishing 4^th grade, I wanted to go to live with her.

I remember our little apartment. It wasn’t much. It was cold in the winters, hot in the summers, and the wind cut straight through it all year round. We did our best to combat it. At first my mom made sure I was warm under a blanket she hand-crocheted herself. Then, later, when we went to a larger apartment in the same drafty house, she got me a sleeping bag to help keep me warm.

She always bought me cupcakes when I asked. She baked cookies when I didn’t, so we always had something nice to nibble on. She did her best to always have good food for my lunches, and make nice meals for our dinner, even if I was a finicky eater back then. She worked a job she hated, and was far from our home just to make ends meet. And she always made sure that I knew I was loved.

She wasn’t perfect. She smoked, which in the end help speed her death. But beyond that, she was just human. She had her flaws, but she always tried to do her best for my siblings and me. She didn’t let life beat her, she kept fighting.

When I left there, Mom actually picked up and moved south, sick of the winters in New York State. She moved down south, and of all things became a security guard. My tiny, just over 5 foot mom, a security guard. I somehow find that thought both frightening and funny. Frightening mainly because my mom could be quite intimidating for a short little thing.

She kept working down there, eventually shifting from guard work to a packing plant. And it was on her way home from that one night that she lost control of her car, and slammed into a guard rail.

She impressed the doctors by surviving the initial crash, one they said that would have killed people a third her age. But then, her smoking came back to haunt her. Her heart was ravaged from years of a bad diet and smoking. It wound up being the true cause of her demise. A bitter irony, a heart that suffered and gave to others didn’t have enough to save herself.

She will never see me remarried. She will not see if I have any children. She never got to physically meet my fiancée, or see how happy she makes me. She will not be there for me ask advice from. And never again will I be able to hug her and tell her I love her.

When I was flying back to Canada, I was sitting by a window looking out where the plane would come. On the floor, I found a bobby pin, like my mom always used to put up her hair. I’d like to think it was there for a reason.

Thank you Mom, I miss you. You will live on in my heart.