My Mom

Yesterday I was cleaning out a drawer, and I ran across a photo of my mother and me. By the looks of my hair style and dress, I'm thinking it was taken in the mid  '80s, just before my mom had her first brain aneurysm. 

Sometimes it's very hard for me to remember my mom the way she looked in that photo. Still young and vibrant. She was not much older than I am right now when she first got sick. Funny, but at the time she didn't seem that young. Looking at that picture today, she does. 

This leaves me with a myriad of feelings. 

It makes me want to take better care of myself so I can live longer, and have a better quality of life than my mom had....It makes me mad that she could not, and would not lay down the cigarettes that would ultimately kill her....It makes me feel for my dad, who had to spend so much time caring for her instead of traveling and doing what he wanted to do....It makes me very sad, because I miss her terribly. 

I just paused for one quick moment that day, so my dad could snap our picture. I didn't know how much all our lives were about to change.  I wasn't  thinking how 30 years later, that one little photograph at the bottom of a drawer full of junk could bring out so many feelings.