Pure joy
Originally uploaded by jcgr.

A quick tribute here to three precious, wonderful people with whom I’ve shared my life. They are, left to right, my mother, our daughter, Anne, when she was about four, and my dad. We were taking a holiday picture in San Francisco’s Union Square.

These two days right in here – July 23 and July 24 – are anniversaries on which we honor one of these three wonderful people, in particular. These are the anniversaries of the bookends of my mother’s life. She was born on July 23, and died on July 24 a few years ago. It is, every year, a very hard couple of days for us, still.

She was a wonderful, wise, intelligent, quiet but deeply loving woman who demonstrated her love in actions more than words. Hers was a can-do spirit, and her way was gentle, but fiercely dedicated to those she loved (you can have both…gentleness and fierceness). And Mom was a lady…always a lady, though that’s an "old-fashioned" term perhaps, now. But she was. To the core.

"We’re always good for an adventure!" she said on many occasions.

"Do you want to do it right or not?" she said to me when I was learning to sew and did NOT want to redo the seam I’d just incorrectly sewn. My choice, either way, she was letting me know, but I also owned the result.

"If you don’t like someone, they probably don’t like you either." That was advice during the elementary school years. Probably high school, too, now that I think about it.

There are many more "momisms" and a few legendary tales I could share. For now, that’s enough.

Perhaps one thing that summarizes her especially well is that my sister-in-law said of her in an e-mail to me last night as we leaned into these two difficult tribute days to this dear woman, "I had the BEST mother-in-law in the world!"

How many women have that, about them, said?