My leukemia is getting worse. I sure wish I could talk to my mom who passed 30+ years ago.

My mom left far too soon. I have copies of this for all my family to read when my leukemia finally says it's time. I can still hear her voice. This piece has stayed with me since the day I first read it. Copies are in our "important papers" so my husband, daughter and grandkids can read it. I hope it moves them as well. And maybe some of you.
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Goodbye to a mom who was quite right

Chris Erskine: March 31, 2012
LA TIMES

The thing about my mother's eulogy is that I used note cards. After 55 years, you'd think you could remember a mother without such prompts. But this was no regular mother. Tell me, are there any regular mothers?

She could be hell in high heels, my mom — a little French, a little fussy about what other people wore on airplanes these days. She once bought a Christmas tree, hauled it home, decorated it with a thousand lights and a million ornaments, then took the whole thing down and returned it to the tree lot.

"It's not quite right," she told the puzzled tree man.
Hey, Mom, I said: That tree isn't the only thing that's "not quite right."

We'd visit her every summer back on the outskirts of Chicago. It's not Anywhere USA, but close. Where farms once stood, now subdivisions. In what passes for progress, Wal-Marts have replaced the wetlands.

My mother died peacefully in her sleep the other night on the same shady street she was born on in 1924. Who does that anymore? She was of another time. In summer, she'd fill big pickle jars with flowers from her yard and surprise neighbors with them. Who does that either?

Read more:
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http://articles.latimes.com/2012/mar/31/home/la-hm-erskine-mar31-20120331