I originally wrote this as a “Profiles in Dementia” tribute to my mama, but it’s appropriate as a remembrance of her birthday too.

Today would have been Mama’s 88th birthday. I miss her – and my daddy – terribly, but I’m glad her suffering – and his – is over.

I hold you both close in my heart and my love, and most importantly in my memories of thankfulness and gratitude for the blessing of both of you in my life.

Until we meet again.

One of the heroes in my life is my mama, Muriel June Foster Ross.

Mama is the reason that I wrote Going Gentle Into That Good Night: A Practical and Informative Guide For Fulfilling the Circle of Life For Our Loved Ones with Dementias and Alzheimer’s Disease and You Oughta Know: Acknowledging, Recognizing, and Responding to the Steps in the Journey Through Dementias and Alzheimer’s Disease.

Mama is the reason the Going Gentle Into That Good Night blog exists.

And Mama is the reason why I created a Facebook support group for caregivers of loved ones with Alzheimer’s Disease, dementias, and other age-related illnesses.

My mama, Muriel June Foster Ross, was born March 2, a Great Depression baby, in Erwin, Tennessee, a small town in the hollows of the Smokey Mountains in northeast Tennessee.

From the get-go, Mama had a life full of tragedy and triumph, successes and failures, bad times and good times, love and hate, deep-down sadness and uplifted-heart happiness and forgiving and forgetting, which I chronicled in the first book I wrote after her death, a memoir about my parents and us kids and our life together titled Fields of Gold: A Love Story. 

My mama was a most remarkable woman in so many ways, because no matter what came her way in life, she persevered, she overcame, and she prevailed.

Mama left me with an incredible legacy and some pretty big footsteps – ironically, because Mama was a lady whose physical foot size was 4.5W while my own foot size was almost twice that big and even wider – to follow in and I see continually how far I fall short of the example she left me.

However, even in my failures, I see Mama’s legacy of prevailing and not quitting. I’ve finally been able to see that even trying and failing is doing something and that beats not failing because I’m not trying to do something any day of the week.

It’s still hard for me to fail over and over, but I find myself rehearsing Mama’s life and all the places where it looked like failure and she could’ve quit but she didn’t. And, in the end, not quitting brought incredible meaning and blessings to Mama’s life.

My mama was intelligent, curious, active, humorous, whimsical, outgoing, and loving. She had a lifelong love affair with learning anything and everything. Mama was a decent writer – she got her second Bachelor’s degree in English at the age of 54 – but she was an even better oral storyteller.

Mama’s twinkling blue eyes and her mischievous smile could light up even the darkest room. She had her dark moments, her fears, and her insecurities as well, but she reserved those for the people she loved and trusted the most: my daddy and us kids.

Mama’s journey with dementias (vascular and Lewy Body) and Azheimer’s Disease probably began in 2005. The real nuts and bolts of these neurological diseases didn’t really appear in full force and persistently until 2009. And the downhill slide was pretty precipitous from that point forward until her death (related to congestive heart failure) on August 14, 2012.

But I had the blessing of being beside Mama throughout the journey and through the end. That’s priceless. I also had the blessing that Mama didn’t live long enough to become completely uncommunicative and bed-ridden. That would have killed both of us. The journey was no picnic, but the blessing was that we shared it, and I am thankful for that.

It seems that each Mother’s Day since Mama’s death has made me miss her more than the one before. On the one hand, I’m glad Mama’s not suffering anymore. But, on the other hand, I miss her.

And not just the Mama I remember before these neurological diseases, but the Mama I remember after they appeared. There were moments interspersed with the chaos, the uncertainty, and the tough stuff that were some of the softest and gentlest and most loving moments Mama and I ever shared and those are etched just as deeply in my heart, in my soul, and in my mind. 

Side by side with Daddy, Mama’s resting now in the peace that often eluded her in life until the Sun of Righteousness arises with healing in His wings. 

May that day come quickly for us all. I love you, Mama. See you and Daddy soon.