On September 11, 2013, my Mom passed away at the age of 81. She died very peacefully here at home surrounded by my husband, son, her cat, and myself. My Mom was a wonderful person. She was strong, dedicated to her family and friends, funny, loving and could massacre the English language like no other person I have ever known. LOL! She was an animal lover and loved to shop. My Mom was born in Brooklyn in 1931, and no matter how far she lived from Brooklyn, you knew that was where she came from. Most of all, she was devoted to my son. I swear he was her reason for living.
She beat several heart attacks, a triple by-pass, kidney failure, emphysema and she almost beat Alzheimer's. She was also dealing with a broken hip since last February. We had pins put in, but I know the hip still gave her trouble.
She came to live with us 11 years ago. She had a heart attack and the doctor who treated her in North Jersey said she needed a by-pass, but they wouldn't do it because they discovered she had emphysema. Instead, they used stents to unblock her arteries. Since she lived by herself, I said she needed to come to stay with us to recuperate. I picked her up from the hospital September 11, 2002. She was supposed to stay for 4-6 weeks. she stayed until September 11, 2013. Life has a habit of coming full circle, doesn't it? We were lucky to have had her with us.
So since September 11, I have been wandering through a hazy life. Not sure of who I am anymore. I have always been my son's caretaker, but even with the Autism, he has been growing more independent each day. I am so proud of him. I gave up my job when my Mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease about 5 years ago. I became her caretaker. It was a full time job. There were doctor's visits, taking her to her senior groups, taking her shopping, watching old movies with her and just spending time with her, It was a wonderful and sometimes difficult 11 years. We had dinner together every night until she became bedridden in May. My husband would tell her a joke every night and the four of us would laugh. I cherished our family meals. Towards the end, I would eat dinner with my Mom and my husband would come in to tell her the joke of the day. She may not have understood them, but she still laughed. She adored my husband.
We have been trying to move on. My son is non-verbal, so we have been trying mostly to help him cope. We have been seeing an increase in his self-injurious behaviors and he loses his patience quicker than usual. I know this is because he misses my Mom so much. He would tuck her in at night and blow her kisses. He did this almost every night. It was beautiful.
I miss her. I have been crafting and will share some of my projects that I have made over the next few weeks. I am considering using her old room as my craft room. Right now, it is still Nana's room. We are trying to maintain as typical a life as we can for our son. We put up the decorations for Halloween, although not as much on the inside of the house as we usually do, and we continued in our tradition of watching the classic horror movies in the week leading up to Halloween. My mom loved Halloween, she would get such a kick out of seeing the little children all dressed up in their costumes and coming up the leaf covered walkway to our door for candy. She was still young at heart, even dressing up for parties at her senior groups.
I love this picture of my Mom and one of her dearest friends, Betty. I used my October Afternoon Witch Hazel stash. It was odd for me not to use any Cricut cuts on a project. It is bittersweet to finish a layout or project and not bring it to my Mom to look at. She started me down this road of paper crafting and supported me right until she died. I have to believe that she is still cheering my artistic endeavours on from above and that one day, we will all be together telling corny jokes.
Nice to be back again.
Happy Crafting!
Colleen
I am so sorry for your loss. I'm sure your mom Is still cheering you on!
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