Mom's 3 year passing memory...

My Mom unexpectedly died on March 10th, 2009. On the first year anniversary of her passing I flew to Idaho to go to her grave on the 10th of March. I was newly pregnant and just getting into the throes of morning sickness. I had 15 month old Kara with me while dealing with morning sickness. My sister was late picking me up from the airport. We got lost looking for a restaurant and couldn't find our way back to the interstate for over an hour. My sister's car that I was driving overheated while I was driving it en route to my Mom's grave the next morning. We had to nurse the car from tiny Bancroft, Idaho alllllll the way to the bottom of Utah to Cedar City. It took over 11 hours to make a trip that shouldn't have taken us anywhere near that long. I got intensely sicker while I was at my sister's house that week and had an active 15 month old that I still had to chase after and take care of 24/7. When it was time for Kara and I to fly home we hit a horrible snowstorm between Cedar City and Salt Lake and ultimately decided that it was unsafe for us to continue on after I had about 100 coronaries (i have a little ptsd in regards to driving in the snow since our car accident in the snow with newborn kara when she was 9 weeks old) on the blizzarding drive so we turned around and drove back to Cedar City. Delta wouldn't refund my flight or even credit my account because they said that it's not their problem that weather stood in the way of me getting to the airport so I was essentially out that money. So I had to buy a $350 one way ticket to get Kara and I home. All that equaled 1 insanely stressful trip. I figured if I tried to go back the next year that it could only get worse and we'd probably get in a place crash or something. So I opted out and stayed on this side of the mountains for her second year passing anniversary. But that got me thinking about what could I do to honor and remember my Mom that year since I wouldn't be there to talk to her at her grave on March 10th? In a moment of inspiration I had an impression that I needed to write and share a memory of my Mom. Then I took it a step further and decided that I would ask my family to email me any random memory they had of Mom and I would compile them into a 1 email and send the memories out to everyone. So I've done this now for 2 years and I'll continue to do it for the next 50 on the eve of the anniversary of her passing. 

I thought I'd share my memory that I wrote for her 3 year passing anniversary.  You can read her TWO YEAR PASSING ANNIVERSARY MEMORY that I posted by clicking the link.

chelle's Mom memory:

“…tell me, what else should I have done?
doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”

-The Summer Day by Mary Oliver

2,110,233,600 seconds. 

35,170,560 minutes. 

586,176 hours. 

24,424 days.

802 months.

66 years 10 months and 11 days.

They all equal the same time, Mom’s one wild and precious life.

*******************************************

 

I’ve thought for a few months about what memory I wanted to share with you about Mom.  Something sentimental that she did for me? Some comforting words she said to me in a time that I was hurting?  A gift she surprised me with that she knew I had been wanting?  A tender moment that she had with my newborn Kara?  No, none of those felt right.  One day I was cleaning our 3^rd bedroom and all of a sudden I had a memory of Mom randomly pop into my head, and I literally laughed out loud to myself all alone breaking the silence in my house while my babies were napping.  And that’s the one that I knew I should share. 

It was 1995 and Mom and I went to go see the movie Dumb and Dumber in the movie theater together because I was a diehard Jim Carrey fan, and surely this was going to be his finest work in my then 14 year old mind.  We headed to the new movie theater in Federal Way, got our popcorn, and sat in the middle of the theater on the right hand side with Mom sitting in the seat right next to the aisle.

   

The movie got underway, I laughed a ton because it did prove to be Jim Carrey’s finest work thus far, and Mom did a couple chuckles here and there.  The quick and easy of the storyline is that Lloyd (Jim Carrey) was a limo driver and drove a pretty woman to the airport where he sees that she left her briefcase in the middle of the terminal.  He runs and grabs it but she’s already gone and it’s locked so he can’t see what’s in it, but he does remember that she says she’s flying to Aspen, Colorado.  Lloyd and his best friend, Harry (Jeff Daniels), drive across the country in an attempt to find this lady that Lloyd has fallen in love with in the 10 minutes he was driving her to the airport, and he’s convinced that she’ll fall in love with him once she finds he came all that way just to return her briefcase. About ¾ of the way through the movie is a scene where Lloyd and Harry are standing at a phone booth in the middle of freezing Aspen trying to look up this lady in a phone book but the only problem is that Lloyd doesn’t remember her last name, just that it starts with an ‘S’.  Now go watch this youtube link of the exact scene I’m talking about so that you’ll be able to picture what I’m about to write.  Go on.  Go on! Watch it!...........

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4ev-BtPMM8

Done?  Ok, good.  As soon as Lloyd said, “Samsonite! I was way off!”, Mom lost it.  Completely lost it. She proceeded to laugh harder and louder and longer than I’d ever seen her laugh in my entire life. And I’m not talking a 15 second hearty laugh and then she was back to watching the movie, I mean Mom was turning red in the face and gasping for air from laughing and it’s like she didn’t have the power to stop.  As she was laughing I could just see her replaying that scene in her mind and every time she thought of Lloyd saying that line, she laughed harder and harder.  I’m not exaggerating when I say she laughed at full force for probably 4 or 5 minutes and she was getting some evil evil glares from some of the other movie goers who were trying to watch the movie but this 52 year old red headed lady was preventing them from hearing the dialogue because she was guffawing with laughter, and of course I was laughing right along with her because her laughing so hard made me laugh.  It was a perpetual cycle.  I had no clue that Samsonite was a brand and not the lady’s last name so the humor behind it was completely above my head, I was dying because Mom was dying laughing.   

I remember looking and laughing with/at Mom who couldn’t control her laughter, and my heart then took over. My heart took its’ own Polaroid picture of Mom that was exposed and developed and processed on my heart and it’s still there, never having faded or torn, and I can still see her perfectly laughing in it.  Her smile as wide as it could go, her aged skin beet red from laughing so hard, the tears of laughter streaming down her face.  She was beautiful.  While she was sitting there laughing I forgot about my narcissistic teenage self and I was given the very temporary gift of seeing her, I truly saw her as a person, a person with a soul who needs to laugh like this. She was magical as she sat there laughing and she was lovely.  I wanted everyone in the world to see her like I was seeing her right at that moment because I was seeing who mom really was.  She wasn’t yelling at disrespectful kids, she wasn’t depressed, she wasn’t fighting with Dad, she wasn’t stressed about a thing in the world.  She was truly enjoying life 1,000% during those 4 to 5 minutes and I wanted it to go on forever.  She deserved for it to go on forever. 

In Alma 40:12 it says, “And then shall it come to pass, that the spirits of those who are righteous are received into a state of happiness, which is called paradise, a state of rest, a state of peace, where they shall rest from all their troubles and from all care, and sorrow.” 

Mom, I like to think of you as one of the righteous ones, a little rebellious in your own right, but hey, all of us are, but you’re still one of the righteous ones in my book.  I hope that you’re sublimely happy right now.  I hope you fell at our Savior’s feet when you saw Him.  I hope your mind’s eye is enlightened beyond anything you ever experienced here on earth.  I hope you shouted for joy when your earthly burdens of depression were forever lifted off your shoulders.  I hope you know how much you are sorely missed by so many.  I hope that you are peaceful and in a state of rest. We have some catching up to do when I get there, and we’re going to laugh like we did in that theater.   I hope you did enjoy your 1 wild and precious life.