The greatest gifts in my life to this day was having an adult relationship with my mother where she was more than mom, she was a flawed, imperfect yet beautiful woman. I miss her so very, very much.

When I was a child I only really knew my mother from afar. You see, I was the 7th of 8 children (my mother’s nickname was Bunny) and my mother had little time to spend with me. As a teenager she was emotionally and sometimes physically unavailable because of illness, both physical and mental. But I will say one thing. I know regardless of the circumstances that she loved me. I’ve never doubted that.

As a teenager I got involved with alcohol and drugs and there really wasn’t a parent there to reign me in. In my early 20s I hit bottom and got professional help. Part of that help was therapy. During therapy I went back in my childhood to examine and then heal the hurt, the wounds. It was hard work and I went through a time where I felt the pain of not having my mother available during my childhhod. My therapist guided me through that time and brought me to a place where I began to see my mother as more than just mom, she was a person, a woman who had been through some horrible things in her life both as a child and an adult.

I saw the pain she suffered when her oldest son was in a car accident and spent 6 months in the hospital with a broken back. Then almost 5 years later, when I was 11, that same son was killed in a motorcycle accident. To this day I can’t even imagine the pain she felt. Her world fell apart. My mother did her best to be mom but there were times she just couldn’t. As a child it was hard to understand that. As an adult it I saw how difficult it was for her just to get out of bed some days to try to live when she hurt so much inside.

Seeing my mother as a person changed our relationship greatly. We would talk about everything like best friends. In my 20s and early 30s we would take weekend trips down to New York City. During those years our bond grew to something much greater than mother-daughter and even best friends. It was a combination of those two things that I believed allowed her to share with me her guilt, her sorrow as well as her joy and pride in the children she had. I miss talking with her. As I write this my eyes swell with tears.

In many ways I am my mother’s daughter and I say that with pride. I live with chronic illness and depression just as my mother did and yet that is what brought us so close during my early 40s. What I thought were horrible things in my life turned out to be blessings in disguise because without them I wouldn’t have known my mother so deeply, so lovingly.

I was truly blessed to be my mother’s confidant. She died 3 years ago from ALS. Because I saw my mother as a person, not just “mommie”, we could talk about death and dying. We laughed and we cried. My mother had a morbid sense of humor that she could only really share with me mainly because I share that trait. I smile remembering how she shared with me that she wanted us to all have a party for her after she died. We did just that and it was a big bash.

Ah, memories. Writing this post has made me both cry and laugh. Thank you mom, Bunny.