Hug Me

Below is the second picture from my Mom's memorial.  Chosen by my sister Sabrina and followed by what she said.  Sabrina and I did not share beforehand what we would say at Mom's memorial.  I think hearing my sister's love and grief for our mother was one of the hardest things I dealt with that day.  My sister lives across the street from my parents.  She was there for Mom day in and day out.  My sister is a wonderful person.

How does a child sum up the life of a mother? Sweet, cuddly, mushy, charming, cute, these are not words to describe my mother. My mother was stoic, sedulous, proud, classy, and intelligent.

We did not hug much in our family. This never bothered me, though my sister and I made a conscious decision to start hugging more when we got together.  I didn’t need a hug to know my mother loved me. 

My mother’s hugs were when my mom would sit with me after bathtime and work the tangles out of my fine hair, letting me stay up past my bedtime with the family watching tv together as I very slowly sipped the glass of water I needed as if I’d been on a desert island for weeks, wrapping my sister and I up in blankets and her fur coat one winter night because the furnace had gone out, watching her work so hard to get a college degree even though she had been told by her teachers in Germany that she was not smart, coming to my house to clean it when I was a new mother, making oxtail soup every Christmas Eve even though it took all day and it was not my fathers’ favorite, letting me see her cry when she lost her own mother, calling me in my young adulthood when life got too busy to tell me she forgot what I looked like so I would go visit her, sitting with her countless times at the kitchen table and just talking, about anything and everything, making sure I learned about God and how to live a spiritual life that is not defined by religion, getting together for family dinner night, walking together with her hand holding the crook of my arm, letting me care for her as she became ill. 

These are some of the hugs my mother gave me.