Tag: mothers

Posted in 2024, life, Memories, thoughts, Writing

Signs

Posted on by nancyb422

Do you believe is signs from loved ones who have passed? I do!
May 2nd was our 37th anniversary of meeting. One of the words in the NYT Connections game was SOULMATES – it jumped out at me as soon as I opened the game.

May 1987


May 6th was our 36th wedding anniversary. What popped up in the Connections game? COUPLE and LOVERS.

March 2024


Coincidence? No, I think my mother is sending her love to the two people she set up to meet in 1987. I’ve told this story so many times, you might already know it….I was scheduled for a vacation on March 24th because she was sick and she died on April 4th. I ended up taking the trip on May 2nd and my future husband was a last minute addition to his friend’s trip. Through a medium I went to in 2013, she confirmed she set us up.

I wrote most of the above for my facebook page on Monday the 6th but I was thinking some more about that time and coincidences. You see just before I moved out to California, someone I worked with paid for me to hand a hand analysis with her sister. Although 37 years have gone by, I still had the cassette tape of the reading and a few years ago transcribed it. I think through it my mother was trying to give me motherly advice — and I did NOT listen to it. Literally, I did not listen to that tape again for 35 years. There was actually some advice I could have used. Oh well! They say the other side will give you signs but you have the free will to listen to it or not. Sorry Ma! I’m listening now!

Posted in 2024, Goals, life, thoughts

Balance in the Coming Year

Posted on by nancyb422

It’s the end of my Birthday Month and my march towards 65. I don’t mean that in a bad way, more of a contemplative one.

My husband has retired and I can now find him most days out in his garden preparing for the season.

The garden area

I’m looking for balance in my work and home life. My three office responsibilities have been pared down to two thanks to our incredible Client Manager who has successfully taken over those reins (and it is sometimes like trying to rein in wild horses).

I have projects at home to work on – organizing 35,000 pictures on my devices, family stories or family history research.

Honestly, I enjoy what I do in the office. I feel like now I can organize and set up the business in the best way possible moving forward – and get that Succession Plan, aka “If Something Happens To Me” plan in place.

My goal is to consider Wednesdays and Fridays each week and schedule something, whether full day, half day, by myself, with my husband, or with a friend.

I see the possibility now whereas a year ago, I don’t think I saw it.

A little bit of this contemplation comes from the fact that my mother died the day before her 65th birthday. If you’ve been over to It’s All About Family you’ll know her story. It was 9 weeks sudden, but sudden enough so she never got to experience that retirement.

I think about what her and my dad’s life might have been like if she didn’t get sick and it makes me want to honor and appreciate each day.

An early morning on the Seine river 2022
Posted in 2024, family, life, Memories

Heading Towards the Unexpected

Posted on by nancyb422

What were your parents doing at your age?

I’m turning 64 this year. My parents are 2 years apart, so we’ll just use the same age range.

My mother was working for a nice local construction company where she had worked for many years. They were good to her. She got the job because she was good at what she did and they were our neighbors so they knew they could trust her. Outside of work, she spent a lot of time reading and she enjoyed going to tag sales on Saturdays with her sister in law Edna.

My dad was working for a local rehabilitation hospital in their Facilities Department as their painter/wall paperer which was his profession since he got out of the army in 1946. He really enjoyed working there because of all the people he got to see and my sister worked in the Occupational Therapy Department. He started golfing again when my sisters and I were in high school so he probably golfed sometime during the week and maybe weekends – I don’t really recall!

This was also the time that my mother had a ticking time bomb in her brain called a Glioblastoma Multiform weaving its way through the areas of her brain. Little did they know how different life would be towards the end of that 64th year.

Posted in 2023, family, Memories

Painful Memories

Posted on by nancyb422

Something that happened to my niece recently who lives two time zones away, brought up some emotions in me that have been long buried.

I moved from Connecticut to California in 1987 when I was 27 and five months after my mother died from brain cancer.

In November of 1989, on a Saturday afternoon, I had intense pain in my side and my husband rushed me to the local hospital. It was discovered I was pregnant but bleeding internally somewhere. After an inconclusive ultrasound, I had exploratory surgery and they found it was a ruptured cyst. They stopped the bleeding, said hello to my little fetus, and closed me back up.

All of this was long before the days of cell phones, zoom, FaceTime, social media. And three hours time difference from my family.

I remember my husband calling my father to tell him. I remember asking him to call my boss to tell her I wouldn’t be at work on Monday. I remember talking to my sisters from the hospital.

I don’t know if I wished for my mother at the time but resurrecting these memories, I wish I had her then, even from a distance like my niece has my sister now.

Posted in family

What We Keep

Posted on by nancyb422

I found this somewhere sometime in late 1986 or early 1987. I was in my “calligraphy phase” and I spent hours writing out poems and my name.

The day my mother died in early April of 1987 it rained and poured and the wind howled and all I could thing was “how appropriate”. She so young, her daughters so young.

I pictured her setting the wind and rain in motion to tell us how sorry she was to leave.

I had my cousin Ann read this during the funeral mass. I’m sure no one else felt the significance except me but I felt like I was telling her that I understood.