Mother's Day 2024

We're postponing the big celebration until next week, because my niece's boyfriend graduated with his master's degree yesterday so my brother's family has been there to celebrate and bring back furniture.  Also, my mother and father aren't quite up to celebrations following surgeries.

So, my parents and I have been cleaning out closets (I know, so exciting) and I'll make a cheese soufflé for supper with a side of asparagus.

Photo is from a Mother's Day brunch of seven years ago, showing me and my grandmother and my mother, and my mother's aide of the time who'd been providing services to my grandfather and grandmother for many years:

Motherhood is complicated as is daughterhood, and we're doing okay.

Her 108th Birthday

My grandmother would have been 108 years old today.  She died late last May, two weeks after her 107th birthday.

Photo taken on one of last trips.  My grandmother
is watching a video of her beloved Pavarotti.

It's been a complicated year for me, emotionally.  We were close and yet often disagreed.  More than once since last May I've found myself thinking about telling her something, sending her something - and I cannot.  I had to remind myself that there's no longer a need to send a card at a holiday, or a postcard from my travels, or to make a vest or some other item as a birthday or holiday gift.

In the Jewish tradition, you spend a full year mourning a close relative.  I am coming to the end of that year, and yet in some ways, the mourning never ends.  As long as there are memories, I will miss not being able to make more with her.

As my mother often says, 107 years is a good long run.  I am glad I was able to visit and celebrate that final birthday with my grandmother.