Today, 18 March 2025, is the 35th anniversary of my mother’s passing. I sit here now wondering how can it be 35 years ago? But, it has been and not a year goes by that I don’t miss her and wish I could talk to her, hug her, and hear her laughter where her bright blue eyes would disappeared into the happiest of squinting slivers. She died 18 March 1990 when she was just 60 years old. I had turned 24 only a few months prior. It was far too young to lose a mother. As I look back now, contemplating how this is the year when I will turn her last age of 60, hindsight tells me just how right that statement is: 24 is far too young to lose a mother.

I try not to let myself think about dying as young as she did. I have a young son who is 6 years younger than I was at the time my mom died. As I continue to currently struggle with some health issues, I shudder thinking of leaving him behind and alone at such a tender age, God forbid. Honestly, it scares the crap out of me. I’m determined to not let that happen, to do all I can to improve my health where possible, but I also know life doesn’t always go how we hope.

Never mind for now.

Today I won’t focus on that dread. Instead, I will focus on who my mother was to me. Who she was as a woman. Who she was as my mom.

• She was a light in an often dark childhood.
• She was the person who taught me to be tender and loving.
• She was the mother who insisted I eat the lima beans in the mixed vegetables, something I never did, much to her dismay.
• She was the mother who trusted her youngest of 4 children, me, with carrying out her final wishes upon her passing.
• She was the mother who showed compassion when I asked her if what my paternal grandmother once told me was true, did she want to abort me? I had to ask her while I had the chance. No, she never thought or said that, she reassured me.
• She was the woman who fell in love with a married man and pined for him as their love was never going to go any further than an affair.
• She was the broken-hearted woman who would cry listening to her favourite song, Time in a Bottle by Jim Croce.
• She was the woman who struggled with alcohol, chain smoked cigarettes, and loved bacon.
• She was the mother who taught me to have good manners, who loved to dance in the living room, and who entrusted me with the safekeeping of the family photos and heirlooms.
• She was the woman who liked animals more than people. Her words.
• She was the mother who, now divorced from my father, left me, her youngest child of 8 years old, alone on my own too many times, with no dinner, no breakfast the next morning, no reassurance throughout frightened nights alone in an empty home, left to fend for myself.
• She was the mother who my father had me ‘spy’ on at 8 years old by writing down the times she came home, or should I say didn’t come home. He said it was for court. Talked of going before a judge as he and I sat one day on the steps leading up to my bedroom. Mind you, he made no effort to make sure I wasn’t left alone all those nights. Just spy on her. Take notes, Tracy, as he handed me a small notebook.
• She was the woman I loved – and still love – beyond measure. She was my mother. The woman who I watched crying as she stood on the front door steps of our family home as my father drove me away a year later, age 9, after filling me with promises of a better life which never really came to fruition.
• She was the voice I longed for on the other end of the phone for so many years of my childhood, moments that filled me with joy as I held the yellow phone typical of the mid-seventies to my ear, as she asked me when I could come visit.
• She was the woman that my father said I was just like, “a jezebel” he’d yell. I was about 10 or 11 years of age so of course had no idea what that word meant, I only knew it wasn’t good. Nothing good is ever said in drunken rages though, is it?
• She was the mother I returned to as soon as I was old enough and able upon hearing she was diagnosed with cancer.
• She was the woman who I joked with that her auburn hair fuzz growing back after months of radiation treatment reminded me of a kiwi fruit. I can still see her rolling her eyes at me, hear her saying both my first and middle name as if one name, all the while smiling at the humour of it. To this day when I see a kiwi I think of that moment and it makes me smile.
• She was the mother whose hand I held for the last years of her life as she battled cancer.
• She was the frail woman whose body slowly failed and faded away before my eyes, just as my first born son, not yet born, would do 32 years later.
• She was the woman who, with the sharp eye for a nice pair of muscular legs on a man (an eye which I did happen to inherit, truth be told) said to the young man bringing in her oxygen tank to her hospice bed two days before she died, what nice legs he had. And yes, she was right but I’m sure I blushed more than even he did!
• She was the gentle voice who softly said to me she wasn’t hungry as I tried to feed strawberry ice cream to her on what would turn out to be her last day. I’m not hungry, honey, I’m ok. I love you.
• She was the first dead body I ever touched (my son being the second), missing her passing away by mere minutes. I had to be sure in some grief-stricken level of disbelief, as I reached out and gently shook her shoulder with my trembling hand. She was gone. She was gone.
• She was a woman who was far more than my simple words could ever say. She was creative, kind, gentle, loving, fair, a fighter, a lover, and so much more. She instilled in me many positive qualities. She taught me how to be – and indeed how not to be – and for all of that, I am eternally grateful.

Despite it all, and maybe because of it all, to me,
she was the person I loved most in this world
until I myself finally became a mother 14 years after losing her.

To you mom, all of my love, always. I hope you’re keeping your beautiful grandson, my precious Brendan Bjørn, in loving company until it’s my time to join you both. But may that be a very long time from now.