This is about my mother, who as of May 2009 is ninety two years of age.
I am her son, Ian. I am 54 years old (as of 2009) and am married to David, who is a young 31 years old (as of 2008) Yes, we are Gay and proud of it, but this is about Mom, who welcomed David into her family, at the age of 87.
My father and mother were married for 61 years, before Dad passed away some six years ago. He died at 1.18 pm on April 16. Life has not been easy for us, since then.
When you think about it, Mom was born at the end of the Great War, and has survived the Great Depression of the 1930′s, and World War II. She has survived the Korean Conflict, Viet Nam, and has seen new countries born, that no one thought would ever exist.
She has seen the beginnings of the Russian Revolution, and has lived to see not just Man walk on the moon, but seen the collapse of the tyranny of the Russian Communists. She has seen Presidents like Franklin Delanore Roosevelt, Ike, JFK and even Nixon, Carter, Reagan, and Clinton. She has lived to see the first black man, sit in the White House, while remembering the struggles of Martin Luthar King, as he struggled to bring equal rights to America.
Through it all, Mom has survived, and now enters that final stage, so it is only right, for me, to try and chronicle what she has gone through. Maybe, in a small way, it can help me understand all that Life means, because frankly, this is also my hardest period of life.
Mom has always been there, and to imagine a world without her, is something I do not wish to contemplate, but which I must. I am angry about it, and sad too. I know it is the natural order, but doesn’t mean I have to like it.
