Thinking about my mom today, on the eve of mother’s day weekend especially, but also because she died twelve years ago yesterday at a way too young of an age. Time does make the loss sting less, but it does nothing for feeling that somehow I got cheated, losing a mom just when things were getting exciting.

I am ever grateful for her crazy humor which (most days) I get custody of, for her teaching me how to parallel park like nobody’s business (seriously, if there were an Olympic sport in it, I’d be on the top of the podium every time), for teaching me how to cut in when I paint (only sissies use painter’s tape, Christine, she’d say), for teaching me how to make a mean hollandaise (where a girl from Bayonne, New Jersey learned that, I’ll never know), and for teaching me to be compassionate and (mostly) useful. Back in the days when psychiatric units allowed the nursing staff to bring home patients for the weekend, she often did and I learned then that mental illness shouldn’t be a stigma bestowed on those who were afflicted with it.

My mom was a devout Catholic, a yellow dog Democrat, and a bleached blonde. I am happy to say, she passed on two of those three to me. Not so devout these days, but grateful for the lessons her faith taught me. I miss her bunches and which she were around to bear witness to our lives in which she continues to play no small role.