Celebrating Mom's life

It is so easy to be drawn into the sadness that prevails when you lose someone you love, but I am determined to celebrate my Mother's life a year on rather than dwell on how cancer robbed her of a long life & a dignified end.

Last year, a day before she passed I posted this  for the special women in my family  .

Then as she 'slipped the surly bonds of earth .... to touch the face of God',  a friend, Sarah, sent me this:

The Significant Hours of our Life

"One other thing stirs me when I look back at my youthful days...  The fact that so many people gave me something or were something to me without knowing it. Such people, with whom I never perhaps exchanged a word, yes, and others about whom I merely heard things by report, had a decisive influence on me; they entered into my life and became powers within me.

Much that I should otherwise not have felt so clearly or done so effectively was felt or done as it was, because I stand, as it were, under the sway of these people.  Hence I always think that we all live, spiritually, by what others have given us in the significant hours of our life.

These significant hours do not announce themselves as coming, but arrive unexpected.  Nor do they make a great show of themselves; they pass almost unperceived. Often, indeed, their significance comes home to us first as we look back, just as the beauty of a piece of music or of a landscape often strikes us first in our recollection of it.  

Much that has become our own in gentleness, modesty, kindness, willingness to forgive, in veracity, loyalty, resignation under suffering, we owe to people in whom we have seen or experienced these virtues at work, sometimes in a great matter, sometimes in a small.  A thought which had become an act sprang into us like a spark, and lighted a new flame within us.....

If we had before us those who have thus been a blessing to us, and could tell them how it came about, they would be amazed to learn what passed over from their life into ours."

                                                         Albert Schweitzer (1875 – 1965)

So I choose to celebrate my Mother's life well lived because I  will not let her be defined by her last months of treatment which she faced so bravely. My Dad, her lifelong rock, at her side through it all, giving her the strength to be strong.

What legacy would you like to leave?

How would you like to be remembered? 

So make those calls, write those letters, spoil your Mom while you can - tomorrow is never promised!

Rest peacefully Mom,
Dee ~♥~