To mom
I just wanted to publish this while mom was around, even though it is just a matter of time. Posting on Jan 26, 2025. Thanks for reading. Mom is very cool :)
If I were to take just one thing from having mom in my life, it would be how to be a proper friend. She exhibits an ideal in this regard; after all, you can’t gain this amount of wonderful people who choose such quality time, to put forth such an effort to have along, to reminisce with such laughter, if you haven’t gotten it right.
For being such a stubbornly independent woman, who seeks ‘alone time’ like oxygen, she does such an incredible job of being engaging when in these social situations. Now that I’m an adult and it’s not so much me needing a mom I can instead observe her and her friends, and know it’s been rubbing off. I’ve learned loyalty, making things right and the importance of reciprocation. It all comes natural to mom, but it was that nurture that instilled those important values. And I couldn’t be happier that I get to be a friend that can always be relied upon to exhibit what a good friend is- if I’m not also being intransigent about my alone time, of course.
I’ve never known anyone who had all these clusters, these smaller groups of friends who either get together for a round of golf, a round of wines, an annual event in some lovely locale and then zoom out to see a large group of such great people where mom is the common denominator. It really is incredible.
Another group of people who, in many instances it’s decades after working with her, they still ensure a connection as that time proves to have been memorable and worth a friendship after the fact. When you were at the detachment, your life was easier to know how the real boss was. I suppose she created amiable working conditions, considering it was the RCMP.
You can link so many people that know mom via work, being a parent in Kelly or my class, community organisations or any other extracurricular endeavour and find, instead of a long-gone connection, a current friendship in its stead.
But of course I can’t just take one thing; she showed an incredible amount of poise, love and tenderness when it came to caregiving for both her mom and dad. As I was older and more cognisant of this quality with Boppee living in Bassano, she never presented the consuming work of taking care of him as anything resembling an obligatory burden. Instead, an expression of love and what needed doing. And how much a quality of life he did get when things were tough; his Palsy was an exceptionally tough disease to mitigate. Mom worked, looked after Kel and I and honoured her father by doing right by him. I’m just glad to have become a man who can recognise what she did and be awed to experience such a good example. I wouldn’t be that man except for mom to show me the way.
I’ve spent some time finding out where I’ve got my humour from, and happy to know both mom and dad have been such bad influences. I’m sure the dry sardonic wit is more on the fatherly side, but the outrageous ‘as long as its funny to me’ part is all mom. No one exhibits the antithesis of thinking a mildly insulting 40, 50 or 60th birthday card as good enough, than her. Nobody went to such lengths to insult you as you passed those milestones- no one except the collective will of so many people to get her back as she also hit those same years. Who else gets that many ‘modified with such effort and spraypaint’ old cowboy boots in one day other than a mastermind? I’m sad to say this risible cruelty hasn’t passed onto my generation. I’m just glad to see to have seen what one can get away with with your friends.
These latter years have been with their share of setbacks and strains. It happens. You deal with the hardship, you put it in its place and then when you’re out there in the world, you put on a brave face.
After all, you are with your friends and they deserve that part of you that will not be diminished, that unrestrained reserve of joy shared freely, despite it all. That’s the nature of being a true friend, the experience of knowing my mom, Marlene Maguire.