SPUNKY GLORIA AND HER WALKING STICK

Every Mother's Day weekend and especially every May 9th, I get a little choked up and teary eyed remembering my Mom.
She died Mother's Day weekend back in 1997 at the young age of 61, just one year younger than I am now. Her name was Gloria and she was named after the Morning Glory flower. I plant those on a trellis every year on my back deck to watch them open up every morning..

She had a life changing major stroke in late 1981 just after I moved out to B.C.in the June of that year. When Laura Branigan's song "Gloria" came out in early 1982 a few months after her debilitating stroke, I flew back to Toronto and kept singing it to her, first in Oshawa General Hospital and than at home in her bedroom, once she was released. I stayed for almost two months at that time helping her. Bitter sweet in a way for me as I was the only left handed child and the last born of a large family. It was my Mom, while growing up who did not understand what it meant to be left handed in a totally right handed household until her stroke. She would call me down for being left-handed and not being able to teach me how to do many chores in house when growing up so it was my Dad I gravitated more towards because he had a left handed brother and understood the difference of how minds work. That is why I am a TomBoy to this day..

Due to my Mom's stroke, she had to learn how to do everything left handed because she could not use her right hand any more, which was her dominant side. When she arrived back to Port Perry after Oshawa General at that time and I was there to finally teach her how the brain works when being left handed after all the years she never understood me, she finally did and had to learn how to do life's basic skills, all over as a left-handed person..Even after all these years after her death and words of" Sorry Joy, I never knew." still ring in my ears, to this day. She was my Mother and I was her youngest of 7 children..

Every May 9th on FB in my memories, photos of her and stories from the Toronto Star titled "Jone's Angels, Spunky Gloria" pop up..

Even though , this youngest of 7 children was closer to my Dad, it was my Mom's traits I took after.

She was such a tiny woman in stature, yet larger than life and full of so much spunk, fire and passion for life itself. The quintessential 4ft. 10 inch Irish woman who could keep my 5ft. 10 inch Scottish Dad in check..

The apple does not all far from the tree there, and though I was closer to my Dad, it is my Mom's fire, zest for life and spunk that is such a Huge part of me still, 28 years later and I miss her dearly, no matter how long it has been since her death..

Me teaching her how to train her mind after her stroke and switch all she had known in a right handed world, to which side a left- handed one works, brought us so much close after that..