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From: pking@uiucuxc.Uiuc.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: Good ol' Mom
Message-ID: <43800007@uiucuxc>
Date: Thu, 19-Sep-85 17:18:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: uiucuxc.43800007
Posted: Thu Sep 19 17:18:00 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 21-Sep-85 03:43:44 EDT
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Nf-ID: #R:osiris.UUCP:-52000:uiucuxc:43800007:000:2274
Nf-From: uiucuxc.Uiuc.ARPA!pking    Sep 19 16:18:00 1985


I thought alot about this question --   my mother and I were
very close, best friends almost, and in looks we're a lot
alike, and there are a lot of people who say we're alot a like 
in many other ways but I don't see that.  She was a nurse
for over forty years (I was born when she was 37), I
go weak at the site of blood and never had any desire to
enter the medical profession.  She had the most incredible
patience, and endurance of anyone I ever knew.  Very few
things rattled her and I wish now I could have that trait.
She taught me it was okay to have a career and a family,
but family and childern were always first in her life and
they are in mine as well.  My mother and father worked 
all of my childhood but I knew as did my sister, mom or dad
were only a phone call away.  She was more tolerant than 
I am, she put up with my father moving around the country 
as he changed jobs about every five or six years or so. 

Mother died June 14, 1984.  She had just retired in January,
and endured cancer surgery and treatments.  Blessedly 
her death was quick and relatively painless.  I miss her still,
and there are times when I think about all of the things I 
could have said and didn't when she was alive.  Her closest 
friend once told me that mother knew how I felt, but I still
wish I'd said it to her, and I hope in whatever after life 
she's in that she knows.  I learned alot from her, about
strength, patience, love as well as how to be myself, because
that's what she always seemed to be.  She wasn't a great 
cook, or a great seamstress, or anything like that, so
in consequence neither am I, but I don't think I'm 
any the poorer for it.  

Perhaps I didn't really appreciate her until it was too late,
and maybe a lot of people out there feel that same way when 
they lose a parent, believe me there's no pain like it on 
earth, except perhaps for the loss of a child (they are a 
tie for 1 and 2 in the pain department).  

Well I guess that's all, except I'm glad she and I were 
friends, and mother and daughter, I wouldn't have traded
the relationship for all the money in the world.


pat king
university of illinois
adminstrative information systems and services
54 adminstration building
506 s. wright
urbana, il 61801


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