Morbid on Mother's Day

My mother died last November.

It's all a blur now, one day she was doing ok and seemingly the next my father was telling me, 'no heroic lifesaving measures'.

I sat in the hospital room thinking about my mother, drudging up childhood memories and such. For some reason I've always remembered laying on the family room floor, age 5 or so, making a mother's day card while my mother smoked and told me how to spell words.

Her death was entirely preventable and due to lung cancer and unreasonable expectations about family longevity. I've worked hard at not being bitter.

Mrs. Stroock lost her mother in 2002.  Mother-in-law jokes aside, had it not occurred to Jen to name our oldest for Meriam I would have insisted.

Meriam Moyer died seventeen years ago, today.