Five Years Is but a Moment

Five years ago, today, I said goodbye to my mother as my sister Kara held her cell phone to Mom's head as she lay dying in a hospital bed. I have no idea how Kara had the strength to be able to do that as Mom made an effort to speak to as many of her six children as she could in the time she had remaining.

That, as much as anything in the almost eighty-nine years she lived was Mom: her count, her cadence, her priorities. Always focused, always forward. 

Sigrid found this picture, which she took when Mom came to visit us in Germany in 1989.
We appear to be discussing how much more we should have tipped our hairdresser.

From what I know (or think I know) of my siblings and their lives, I think she taught us well by her example every day for all those years. There's not a day that passes when I don't think of Mom and know that the sadness and tears which always accompany those memories are followed by joyfulness in my heart for being her son.
-bill kenny