Mother's Day without Mom
This is our first Mother's Day without Mom. I miss her. I know how much we all loved her. In going through her things, I found cards from all of us saying that she was the best mom in the whole world and how lucky we were to have her as our mom. It was true. I found a quote on one card that I had given her that said, "To the world, you might just be one person, but to one person, you might just be the world." She and Dad created our world, and I will be forever grateful.

Here is the picture and comments from her senior year of her high school yearbook. She was always well-groomed and she definitely was clever.

I love this one. Monica and Eileen are so cute in their little dresses. I don't know what Monica is looking at, but she is not pleased about it. Eileen is perfectly content to smile for the camera. Mom and Nana look so happy and lovely.

Here's Mom happily receiving cookies for Mother's Day. She was definitely a cookie monster. When she tried to get me to take cookies home once, I told her that Phil tries not to eat too many cookies. She said, "Well, I sure don't!"

Here are some scenes from one of our more entertaining Mother's Day in 2010.

To good times! Happy Mother's Day!

Books, Books and More Books

Mom and Dad had a lot of books! Mom used to say, "When I go, I feel sorry for you kids having to clean out this house with all those books." They had books in the living room, books in the TV room, books downstairs, books in dressers, books in boxes, so many books. There were lots of cookbooks, beaucoup de French and German books, Dad's books on chemistry, food safety, science, philosophy, tons of books on religion, and then an assortment of mysteries, novels, Reader's Digest condensed books and others. I was particularly interested in all the book on philosophy and religion. Dad was a chemistry major in college, but minored in philosophy, I think. As a scientist himself, he was interested in the reconciliation of science and religion.  I wish I could have talked to him about his explorations in that area. 

We each took some of their books, but there were so many that we couldn't take. We brought them to the library and Goodwill. I hope someone will enjoy reading them. We threw some of them away- old textbooks that wouldn't be useful today. They were books from the 40s and 50s. It was hard to throw them away with Dad's name written inside. I had a dream last week that Mom had not died. She was talking to me and Eileen about folding napkins and said that she had a book on that. I felt so bad because I didn't want to tell her that we had given or thrown away all her books. Last night, I had a variation on that dream. I bought a picture to give to Mom because she didn't have any pictures left on her walls. What a process. I don't know if Mom realized what the real hard part about getting rid of the books would be.

Our Nana's crucifix

In going through Mom's things, we have come across lots of little treasures. In so many cases, it would be interesting to know more about them. She had lots of religious articles- statues, crucifixes and rosaries. One crucifix was unusual. It had been our Nana's. It was made out of bullets. Eileen did some research on it and found out this information:

I googled the words on this crucifix Gott Mit Uns (God With Us) and found this.  This one looks just like her crucifix.

Was probably made by a German soldier during WWI, called a trench crucifix.  They would carry it and stick it in the mud when in the trench.  Has a German belt buckle in the center.  I know this was Nana's  because I remember seeing it at her apartment, but I don't know where she got it.  Wish I knew the story.

Eileen