This is a repost from 2009.

My mother, Helen Fallihee, died of cancer on September 27, 1972, at the ripe young age of fifty-six.  Two days later, on my nineteenth birthday, she was laid to rest.  They scheduled her funeral on my birthday? For years I resented of the timing of the funeral, but as the years have passed by it has turned out to be a blessing.

My dad, Tom Fallihee, was devastated by her illness and slow, painful death.  She spent the last three weeks of her life in a coma. We were told that she had no chance of regaining consciousness and sadly, the doctors were right.

At four in the morning the phone rang. Good news never gets delivered at 4:00 am. I laid in my bed and listened as my dad gave one word mumbled responses finally ending with, "Thanks for calling." He hung up the phone and burst into heavy sobs. I hurried to his room and he looked at me with the most defeated, lost, and panicked expression I had ever seen on anyone. The love of his life and the mother of his three sons was gone. Yet, classy as always, he thanked the person on the phone. That was Tom Fallihee.

I didn't cry that day, or the next day, or at the funeral. Everyone else did but not me. I wanted to.  I desperately wanted to. I was too numb and too self-conscious. I brooded instead.  I wanted to feel something, anything, but I didn't. 

My mother was a strict, no-nonsense, loving, and lovely daughter of Norwegian immigrants.  She drove a tractor when she was ten. She had "perfect pitch" and could play any song she heard on the piano without sheet music.

She met my dad in seventh grade and neither one of them even went on a date with anyone else. They got married in 1936, three years after high school and spent the next thirty-five years together, building a life, and raising their family.

She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1969 and had a double mastectomy followed by chemotherapy. The next three years were followed with periods of remission and recurrence until the cancer finally and fatally invading her brain.

So here I am, on the eve of the thirty-seventh Mother's Day since her death, and I realized that my memories of my mom have faded.  After all she has been gone almost two thirds of my life.

I don't remember one single thing that she ever said to me except for the often blurted out, "Eat and shut up." I'm sure that she told me that she loved me but I don't remember.

I don't remember if she was a Republican or a Democrat. I don't remember what movie stars or entertainers that she liked or didn't like.  

If I heard a recording of her voice I'm not sure if I would know that it was her. I don't remember her laugh. I don't remember her anger. I don't remember her smile. 

There are a few things that I clearly remember.

I once overheard my parents discussing the fact that money was tight so I didn't ask my mom for money to go to a magic show at my elementary school. I came home from school crying and when I finally told her why I was upset she gave me a dollar and drove me back to school. I got to the magic show just as it was starting.

When I was twelve I was taking confirmation classes at the Magnolia Presbyterian Church, except that my friend Rick Scarvie and I were mostly skipping out.  I had no interest in becoming a member of the church.  The pastor called my mom and told her of my excessive absences.  When she confronted me I told her that I didn't think that I believed in God. She sat for a moment, looked me in the eye, and said, "Then there's no reason for you to go to bible study is there?" I remember that moment clearly because that was the first time in my life that I felt empowered.

Last year at a family reunion my cousin Ellen, who is ten years older than me, remarked that my mom was "edgy." Edgy?  Really? I was fascinated by that.  I wanted to remember something edgy about my mom. I couldn’t.

It turns out that every year on my birthday I'm reminded to think about my mom, and I like that.  I like sharing my birthday with thoughts of her.

On the morning of her funeral my broken-hearted dad handed me a wrapped gift box. "I'm sure that you'll have better birthdays in the future, but happy birthday."  It was a moss colored Pendleton shirt.

That was a moment that I'll never forget.