My mother, Shelia Savoy Jones was born March 6, 1941 to Lois Irene Craven and Thomas Milton Jones in Finnleyson, Georgia. She was the the seventh child of ten children. She grew up on a farm, as her daddy farmed for a living.

She married my dad when she was 15 and two years later she had me. With only seventeen years between our ages she was not just a mom, but almost like a sister and friend, too. She was sweet and mostly quiet, until you got to know her.

Things I remember and loved about my mom: she loved to rabbit dance … I can’t even begin to describe what the rabbit dance is but she would get going and it was so funny. She loved music, especially country music and Elvis Presley.

She loved the beach. Was an exercise/health fanatic, so when she was diagnosed with a glioblastoma brain tumor at the age of 60 it was a shock. She loved home cooked meals with fresh vegetables from the garden. She adored her grandkids but she was firm and strict with them because she was raised to respect her parents and stay out of trouble. She expected no less of me growing up and expected the same of her granddaughters. I always admired her tall, slim build. She didn’t see favor to pass that on to me!

I had some of the absolute best times in my life with my mom. In her last days I rolled her in her wheelchair down to the beach … her favorite place. We went on a picnic … just me and her.

We used to drive to the Palm Beach Gardens Mall and go into all the expensive stores … Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom and Bloomingdales … that we couldn’t afford, and we would try on shoes, and hats and sunglasses. The more outrageous the style the better as two simpletons with little class could make a spectacle of themselves with high heeled shoes we could barely walk in, Jackie O sunglasses as big as the size of our heads and the hats, oh the hats! Didn’t take either of us long to realize we looked horrible in hats. We would bend over double crying because we laughed so hard it was painful. One trying to outdo the other in who could find the silliest hat and high heels … “haute couture” … fit only for the elite in Paris rather than two hicks from Georgia.

And then one day mom was at work in the X-Ray department at Cape Canaveral Hospital and she fell off of a stool. Rod called me from the ER where they had taken her and said I needed to come to the hospital. I could tell by the tone of his voice that something was bad wrong. When I got to the hospital the neurosurgeon showed me her brain scans. He didn’t even have to tell me what was wrong. I’m a nurse and I could see it … plain as day … a tumor, a rare cancer … one you don’t recover from … the kind that starts as the size of a walnut but would eventually invade the rest of her brain like the tentacles of an octopus.

She decided to have brain surgery to reduce the tumor size and relieve some of the headaches. When they shaved one side of her head where the tumor was, well, she started wearing hats. We both learned to love hats after that. Oh yes we did. One of the last photos ever taken was of her on Easter Sunday in April before she died in August (2002) She was wearing a little blue hat. I now love hats. Still don’t look good in them so I don’t wear them, but one year for the Kentucky Derby I bought a hat just because I knew if mom were alive she’d be wearing a hat.

Her last months of life were spent at my house until her last three weeks. Her favorite dessert was lemon meringue pie and her favorite saying was “Life’s short, eat dessert first!” After she got the brain tumor, she lost her memory, but that was okay. I still made sure I had that piece of pie at every meal … so we could always eat dessert first!

My mom was my best friend. My heart broke and life was forever changed when she died. Oh I know being 44 and losing your mom is no big deal. I mean think of all the many people in this world that lost their moms at much, much younger ages. But she loved making my prom dress and was so excited for my first date to homecoming my senior year. She gave me my love of hummingbirds and the outdoors and beautiful lakes and mountains and scenery and flowers. Lots of flowers she would grow. She was thrilled over the birth of her grandchildren, my youngest being born on her and my dads 33rd wedding anniversary.

My mom didn’t get to see her granddaughters graduate high school or college. She didn’t get to see my girls marry nor get to meet her grandchildren. Oh she would have been the best great-grandma ever!

My mom died three days after my 44th birthday. She had to be put in a nursing home the last three weeks of her life because I couldn’t take care of her after her second brain surgery. On my birthday that year, three days before she died, she rolled all over that nursing home begging someone for a birthday card for me. And then she went into a coma. For two days she layed, with my dad by her side, and I can hardly rid myself of the image of her gasping for air as she lay dying. The night before she died I was really struggling emotionally and I remember asking her did she love me. What an incredibly stupid thing to do and ask. There was no way she would respond. For heavens sake, she was in a coma. But respond she did and she somehow not only heard but uttered with great difficulty … “You know I do” as my dad sat nearby with tears in his eyes.

Well, I didn’t really intend for this to end in such a maudlin way. Maybe there’s healing in telling her story after fifteen years .. a story I’ve never told anyone.

I thank God that I am a mother. I pray that my girls will someday have sweet and funny stories about me. I pray I will live long enough to see my grandchildren graduate high school and college and suffer their first heartbreaks and maybe, just maybe one day we will go shopping and try on hats, and silly shoes and sunglasses the size of our heads. And I’ll think of mom and I’ll count my blessings. Life goes on when you lose your mom but it’s never the same.

Happy mothers Day in heaven momma. Oh how I do pray I will see you again someday! In the meantime I cherish my beautiful memories of you!

Happy Mother’s Day to my sweet Amy! And most of all, thank you to my beautiful daughters for looking past my faults and mess ups in parenting them and loving me anyway!

Wishing everyone a beautiful and blessed day!