By Vicki Brydon, Special to the Peace Arch News
With Mother’s Day fast approaching, you may be reminding yourself to reach out to your mom this weekend.
Maybe you’ll call her, or maybe you’re lucky enough to be able to spend the day with her; it’s a gift not everyone has.
For me, I’ll make that call to Ontario, just as I have been doing daily for more than 20 years.
Yes, that’s right. I’ve called my mom every single day since 1995.
Let me explain.
Growing up, my favourite person in the world was my mom. I loved to be around her. Through the ups, downs and inevitable curveballs of life – divorce, new schools, shared custody – I didn’t always live with her, so I cherished the time we spent together that much more.
We even made it through the feral teen years relatively unscathed.
I think she recognized I was somewhat of a force early on: bold and tenacious with big dreams and a robust imagination. She tried to balance her natural instinct to worry with her desire for me to be free and to explore, though it was not something she could relate to, my restlessness and persistent quest for adventure.
I spent most of my 20s simply trying to be an interesting person, bouncing from various jobs, postal codes and new experiences to college and the occasional existential crisis. Her support was unwavering – both emotionally and, often, financially.
The daily phone calls started in the mid-’90s when I was living in Vancouver and long-distance rates dropped; all of a sudden I had unlimited calling for $20 a month.
Our conversations varied from benign day-to-day chatter to occasional hours-long discussions of life, love and meaning.
She is the first person I think of when something big happens, like a promotion or a relationship that goes south, or if I need advice for how long to cook a turkey or remove a stain. (Sure, I could Google it, but mom is a phone call away.)
Do we disagree? You bet. Our personalities are so different but our bond is unbreakable, even across five provinces.
In 2009, something happened to emphasize that bond and it still affects me deeply.
My beloved sister-in-law was fighting a harrowing battle with an aggressive form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Our family – most in Ontario and I in B.C. – could only watch, helpless and grief-stricken, as she, at age 44, quietly raged against the disease.
Sue became a warrior, struggling to stay alive for her two daughters, my nieces, who were just nine and 14 at the time. They were her biggest joy in life and her proudest accomplishment. She loved nothing more than being their mother. To her, every day was Mother’s Day.
As Sue neared the end of her life, my brother promised he would care for her at home as long as he could. A hospital bed was set up in their bedroom and a palliative-care home nurse came daily to help.
On a chilly mid-November night, after weeks of rapid decline that left her ravaged and blind, she took her last breath. The nurse yelled for my brother and the girls to come quickly. She said that though Suzy’s heart had stopped, her brain would continue to function for a few minutes and she could hear them.
The girls raced up the stairs, grabbed their mom’s frail hands and yelled, “We love you, mommy! We love you, mommy!” over and over and over, so that the very last words Sue ever heard as she slipped from this earth were that she was fiercely loved by the people she loved the most.
And that’s the most important reason I will call my mom today, tomorrow and every day – because I can.
Vicki Brydon is an occasional contributor to Peace Arch News.
