Personal Narrative: My Mother's Legacy

Her Legacy I’ve been told the impact of a parent’s passing can carry on for years or forever. I was my mother’s primary care giver for two years. In her last four months, along with hospice, I took care of her full time along with maintaining my full time job. She passed in her home surrounded by me and my other two siblings in January. Just three months later my dad, who was not married to my mom, died unexpectedly in his sleep. I am still in the tender times of grief from my mother’s and father’s deaths. Who would think I could fathom writing about such a sorrowful time in addition to writing about the lessons I learned from my mother’s last months and the graceful way she left this earth. I relive this not only because it is kind of
Her grace in all things she did stood out most. I watched as she was thankful to everyone, even swallowing her pride most times. I finally found out that life is not about always having it easy and people weren’t always kind. Beha said is perfectly, “if you design your life around pleasure, life will teach you eventually to do otherwise” (145). I was not always going to be happy, however how I dealt with those times is what mattered. Her voice comes to me a lot; smile even when it’s hard, be courteous, and when others are petty and mean; remember that is not the person I am. I am still in the process of grief and don’t know if the something is missing will ever go away. Most likely not due to the person she was and how much she taught me. I never thought I would learn something from this trying experience. I do take comfort in knowing that qualities I admired in her, she inadvertently gave them to me. It was these qualities; strength and grace that were contributory to restarting what I started two and half years ago; obtain my Bachelors at Eckerd