Memory and Mom

Dad took this photo of Mom at Kahana Bay on their last road trip around the island before he passed away.  I don't believe that this was taken in July of 1973.  Dad passed on July 18, 1973.  He had been taken by ambulance from our home earlier that month.  He could no longer walk and Mom couldn't lift him to care for him.

He was admitted to Saint Francis Hospital where he died.

Still, I am sure that he took this picture of Mom when he was still able to travel with her around the island and that in her memory, this was how he would remember her.

Mom and Grandma One Year After

I haven't posted in more than a year. There were certainly things to write about. But should I? We are all still reeling or recovering, in our own ways, from my mother's sudden death last year just before her 85th birthday. I know I've told people how beautiful she was when she died. She was lovely.

I have her high school graduation picture taken in 1949. Time reversed on that awful day and made her look young and full of the promise she must have felt when that picture was taken.  I've been bedside at a few deathbeds. Death is terrible to look on. The mouth gapes open, the eyes are wide open not closed. Fluids dribble from the mouth. Shudders shake the body.

None of this happened with my mother.

The evidence of the major stroke she'd suffered was erased by a kindly hand. Her face was youthful and lovely. Her hair black and wavy, moved gently away from her face. She had rolled to her side and faced the window as the sun rose over a clear morning. It shone on her face, as if she would open her eyes and see it. She looked, to reuse an overused expression, just as if she were sleeping and would soon wake.
 

Yet, I'd seen her sleeping while she was alive. Her lips were usually pursed and she frowned, forehead scrunched as if she contemplated something in sleep that she didn't particularly like. I'm not going to write much more on this; there's little more that needs to be said by me. I will post pictures here for the family to view and share and remember Mom in their own ways.

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