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My mom...my life bearer


   It is no competition between kids on how they honor their mother best. It is the end result that we honor them. Lately, I have been trying to keep myself from saying, "I am lucky" when I know I should be saying, "I am blessed." So, I am blessed because I have a blessing: my mother.
  When it comes to my mom, my words couldn't guild enough. My words are bleak and grey and completely inadequate. It isn't that they aren't flowery or euphoric to hear, it is that they aren't enough. Let me tell you about my mom...
   My mother married at the age of 20. He was 29. She had her first child, my brother, when she was 24. She had her second child, me, at the age of almost 30. Her husband wasn't the one she always dreamed about in her fantasy life as a young girl. In fact, as much as I love my father, he wasn't the best model of a husband. But, he loved her...and she him. (This is about her btw. ;-) 
   For the next 29 years, my mother raised some damn good kids. Her son was brilliant and her daughter was an entertainment. But, it would be a loss of her son that would push her closer to the edge of perhaps losing all sense of personal identification. However, she fought. She fought hard to get out of the torment that wanted to control her because she knew that she had one more here.
   My mom was stuck. She was stuck with me. The one who is marked by her independence. The one who has a tendency not understand emotional connections. The one who is more of her opposite. However, she fought. She fought hard to break my shell because she knew that the only way for either of us to truly survive the death of her son and my brother was to interlock our souls and become true friends.
   My mom gave me life. But, the more important thing is that she gave me friendship. Life without true friends or someone who will come get you, while you are in the middle of nowhere, with no car, and broken and screaming because of someone else's inability to be kind...that's not living. My mom is my definition of life. She gave it me, but above all: she gave it meaning.

I heard it once said that all kids will think their mother the best at one point in their life...well, for me, my mother is the best at all points.
My mother: my North Star, my compass, my guide through the bog, my one, constant saving grace. I love you, mom--more today than yesterday, more tomorrow than today, more forever and always. -2014
   

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