I was blessed with a wonderful mother. She was simple, selfless, sensitive and she loved with her whole heart. I am the oldest of five. We grew up with homemade dinner on the table every night. My Dad sat and she served him. No matter if she was sick or had a long day, she stood in the kitchen and made her family something to eat. I have very few memories of take out meals or visits to a restaurant. Mom put all five of us in the station wagon and went grocery shopping. I can’t imagine five kids in tow while trying to grocery shop. She sewed. She made me new clothes for dates, prom and even created my wedding dress, bridesmaid dresses, flower girl and train bearers’ dresses. She mowed the yards. Clean laundry hung from a clothesline out back.  She taught Sunday School to three year olds. She was a good wife and mother.

We have our favorite foods she made. Even my kids talk about Grandma’s cooking to this day. For the life of me, I’m not so sure what it was about her food. She didn’t make fancy dishes…….I wonder if it was the love that was served in her meals that everyone ate up and remembers.

One of the traditions we had growing up was making sugar cookies with Mom. They were not too sweet, fluffy not hard, just right. We rolled the dough out with flour and a rolling pin. We used cookie cutters, pressed them into the dough and placed them on a cookie sheet. We ate the remnants of the dough. She told us not to, we still did it. We decorated the cookies with her homemade icing and then we ate them. She continued the sugar cookie tradition with her grandchildren. I can picture my children, nieces and nephews up on bar stools covered in flour making sugar cookies with Grandma like it was just yesterday.

My mom died six years ago today. The call from my Dad, the feeling of Mom suddenly gone still runs through me. It was unexpected. Mom was young. She went to sleep and did not wake up. The sting of the loss of my mother remains. I still think to tell her things today as if she is a phone call away. I was the first to give her grand kids and what an amazing grandmother she was. She did not spoil them with gifts, but she gave them knowledge like how to sew, and cook. Just as Dad taught my boys to build things and fix things. Mom taught by being an example of her faith and her trust in God in all situations. She was always there when I needed her. I can’t think of a time that she wasn’t while she was alive.

Mom had planned to make sugar cookies with her youngest granddaughter at the time the morning that she died. The dough was made and waiting in the refrigerator.  With the loss of Riley so fresh, I had a serious desire to make her sugar cookies this year at Christmas. I found two teenagers to make them with me here in Kentucky. To have that feeling, that mess, that pride in the finished product of an iced sugar cookie just like Mom gave her kids and her grand kids made me feel closer to her and Riley. I also made sugar cookies and sent them to Bria and Braden so that they had Grandma memories close to them this year. It was a hard holiday for all of us-our first without Riley.

The pain I feel from the loss of my mother is as instinctive as you can imagine. It does not even compare to the pain I feel from the loss of Riley, my sweet baby boy, my son, my love. I am glad that Mom wasn’t around to experience losing Riley. It would have devastated her. Parents are supposed to die before us. Our children are not. Riley had many years of making sugar cookies with Grandma and I. A comforting thought for me is that he is with Grandma now.

I wish that I could tell Mom, “Thank you for all that you did for me and for my children.”

Mom was sweet and fluffy and just right just like her sugar cookies.

I love you, Mom. Give Riley a hug and a kiss for me. Hold him tight.

 

I love you, Riley.