hopieknits: A Tribute to My Mother

She didn't teach me to knit, but she paid for my lessons. She always supported any new thing I wanted to try. My mother passed away on March 9 at the age of 92. She was a fiercely independent person and until last year that's exactly how she lived. Maybe we were blind to the signs, but it soon became very apparent that my mother was suffering from the effects of dementia. It seemed like it happened overnight. Last year this time she was living on her own, with a little bit of light housekeeping help and someone to assist in making meals. Not because she couldn't mentally handle it, but because her eyesight was failing. Then, last June, she fell and nothing was the same after that. A stay in the hospital, three months rehab in a nursing home and then home again with 24/7 care. As much as she wanted to go home, she never recognized it as being so. I still don't know what exactly happened. She fell off a cliff and she never recovered.

On Saturday, March 6 she celebrated her 92 birthday. She wasn't fine but she was OK. There were no real physical ailments. A little high blood pressure, borderline diabetes, but she was on very few medications, mostly vitamins and it seemed that she would live forever. She didn't. Three days after her birthday I received a call in the middle of the night from the home attendant who took care of her. She had gotten up to check on her, as was her habit during the night, and she couldn't rouse her. She called 911 and then called me. Silly me, I never even considered that this might be the end for my mother. I arrived to find that she was gone from me forever.

That's the sad part. The more uplifting story is that a woman, born to a sharecropper in rural Virginia, with less than an 8th grade education, lived for 92 years and accomplished so much. She was a pain sometime. She was bossy and always wanted things her way. Her way was the right way. She had very definite ideas about everything. But she was also life long learner. Her biggest regret was that she didn't have an education but she didn't let it stop her. She studied everything from the Bible to the guitar. At age 72 she was ordained as a minister in the Baptist church. She was my role model, my biggest fan, my mother. She was the person who loved me most and best.

But this is a knitting blog after all and she is the one who gets the credit for my knitting. I wanted to learn and she found a yarn shop near her job and arranged for my lessons there. I don't remember how many lessons I took but I remember sitting in the afternoon with a number of older ladies and being instructed by all of them. My mother never refused me anything. She and my father were like that. They didn't have but they wanted me to have. I guess that's not unusual for parents, but it seemed that way to me.

I loved her. The last few days of winter, after she passed away, I wore the scarf I made for her two years ago. It still smelled like Youth Dew, her favorite fragrance.

I will try to remember, every time I knit something, that the person responsible for my having this skill is a woman who never held a knitting needle but who was so proud that I did.

I love you Lou. Thank you for being my mother.