Happy Birthday...April Fools Day!

My whole life I thought my mom's birthday was April 1. It was only after she passed away that I saw her birth certificate and found out her birth day was actually April 3. That should tell you something about my mom, Dorothy. She was a kidder alright.

She never talked about the tough times but she liked to think of herself as tough. She worked hard, joked, smoked, cooked amazing food without recipes, wore pants, had her own car in the Fifties, called herself a "butcher-girl". I like to think of her as a cross between Lucy Ricardo and Katherine Hepburn.

We lived in the suburbs but there was nothing suburban about her. She often said the least politically correct thing in an era when that term didn't exist. And it just got worse as she got older. God Bless her.

I would take her to the Dr and if she didn't like what he said she would threaten to kick him in the @##. One day we were sure she had had a mini stroke. I wanted to take her to emerg. She wanted to go for ice cream. I thought I was smarter so I said I would take her for ice cream but planned to actually go to the hospital. When she saw the direction I drove she started screaming out the window "HELP!" and didn't stop until I turned the car around. And picked up ice cream.

Later, while in the hospital and not agreeing with the Dr or the nurses, she snuck out to the phone and called 911 asking for an ambulance...to take her to a different hospital.

I could tell you lots of stories like that. At times, it seemed like public humiliation for me.

I was a rather sensitive child. A book worm, church going kinda girl. I think it must be true that we learn our hardest lessons in our family of origin. Getting along with my mom was a challenge. She was more competent than I was at all the domestic stuff. She was fast too. And she made fun of everything and that included her children. Kind of hard when you're a kid. It's much easier to see her perspective now. Don't take life so seriously!

So that day in June of 1997 Dorothy was in the hospital with respiratory distress. She wanted a cup of tea and some "soda biscuits" as she called crackers. And she kept calling me Irene. My childhood nickname was Sandy. But not today. She called me Irene every 2nd sentence. Irene is her niece, my cousin. So I told my mom "I'm not Irene, I'm Sandy. Irene's coming soon."

I hunted down a cup of tea and crackers, made sure she was comfortable and then prepared to leave. She said "OK Irene". I gave up and said "I love you mom" and gave her a kiss. After she said she loved me too she responded with :

I knew who you were.

Those were the last words she said to me.

She could hardly breath, could barely talk but she had been kidding me. Pulling my leg. Through the night she had a stroke, a heart attack and slipped into a coma. She died 7 days later.

It took me a while to process those words. I was in shock for a long time having just lost my husband 9 months earlier. In fact I don't think I really grieved for my mother until 9/11. The collective grieving we all did seemed to trigger buried grief that I felt for Dorothy.

And I realized those last words I knew who you were, were a validation and affirmation. These were the five words that healed our relationship. I could be myself, be who I really was. And that all her life she was just being who she was; not trying to make my life difficult.

I think she is giving me strength to continue discovering who I am, to dream dreams and live to make them reality.

And April 1st will always be her birthday to me. So Happy Birthday...April Fools Day!