Arlene

My mom died. July 9, 2009. My mom was a lot of things to a lot of people...daughter, sister, wife, mother, grandmother and friend, definitely a friend. She was Switzerland when it came to friendship! She loved everyone equally whether they loved each other or not! She had a lot of practice being a mediator - my dad and I have very strong personalities so she spent a lot of time running interference between the two of us - but never made either of us feel like we had lost the negotiations!

My mom was one of 10 kids who married an only child. She sometimes regretted marrying at 20, but stayed married for almost 59 years. She wanted me to see more and do more than she had done...and yet she had managed to do a lot in her life. She once went to Las Vegas at midnight in a convertible with my dad and some friends, just because. She took helicopter rides, rode skateboards, hung out on Padre Island at spring break and started drinking at 10:00 am in Mexico because I needed company!

She kept these journals...not a "Dear Diary" kind of thing but these general info journals that started in the 1960s. Interested in when I bought my first car or when they repainted the living room or I came home for a long visit when I lived in New York? It's in there. Wanna know what she paid for a new microwave in the 1980s? Check. My brother's minor in possession bust and college graduation are in there as well. A wealth of odd family information. These are the only things of hers that I truly wanted, there are probably a dozen of them. Seeing her handwriting, knowing she was thinking of her family as she wrote each entry...that's what's important to me. I've started reading them and laugh over some of the stuff that's in there that I had totally forgotten! Melissa...did you know I paid you $500 for the Datsun? I can even tell you what day it was!

I will miss her every day, but WOW she was an incredible woman and I was blessed to be her daughter! Love you Mom!