The day has finally come...

I knew the day would come, but I wished it would always be in the future...

On Monday, March 28, 2011 at 2:36pm my brother and I wept softly as my mother drifted from our world to the next....  Despite having roughly three times the lethal level of CO2 in her blood she was in a lucid state most of the time able to answer questions and even laugh with us... 

It was the most peaceful event, almost completely painless and with the opportunity for us to say our good byes and re-enforce our love for our mother...  The only way I could describe it is complete tenderness...

My mother battled with Alpha1-Antitripsin deficiency for nearly 20 years...  After the 18th year she received a double lung transplant from a donor unknown to us.  That donor and their family gave my mom the opourtunity to live two years past her original due date, and returned 100 percent quality of life to the first year after transplant.  For that I am eternally grateful...

Oh sure, I have many regrets as we all do... But I am willing to forget about all of those and focus on my future with my amazing wife and kids...

To my wife, I owe everything now... She loved my mother every bit as much as I do, she nurtured her as if she were her own mother.  My kids were ultimately the rock where I turned to for strength in all this... And my brother who's timely arrival allowed us to both give my mom all the love and respect that she deserved...  If you were not or are not close to your parents, you will never understand...  For my Brother and I we could never repay her for all the amazing sacrifices she did for us...   We were not a rich family growing up... My mother scraped by with this and that, and even slept in the living room on the couch because her boys needed the two rooms that were in our childhood home.  A home that was free of worry because my mom took care of every necessity we had.  For the times when she would go on little or no food so that we could eat, and would be alright with it... Or the way she never spoke badly about anyone including my father after their breakup...  She just simply said, you will come to understand as you grow up...

My Dear "Mommy" I will love and miss you forever, but I will hold steadfast the moral values and intelligence you instilled in us.  You "ARE" the best mommy two boys could have ever had...

My mother, was very organized and kept everything that would and could become a memory some day...  We never really looked into her stuff while she lived with us, but now that we are going through it looking for insurance papers etc we have been finding papers/books with notes and poems scattered all throughout... Poems that tell us how she feels about people and events in her life... She did this for our comfort and knew we would find them sooner or later...   What an amazing gift this is to me.. I will cherish them forever and will share them with all of her grand children and my brother...