My mother died this afternoon, the culmination of over a year of health problems piling up, most stemming from her diabetes. The official cause is congestive heart failure.
It's more difficult to write this than it was to write about John's grandmother. My mother has gone through many different phases of her life, and I've been there for many of them. Who she was when she died was different from who she was three years ago, and that's different from who she was when I was a teenager, which is different from who she was when I was a child. Which Holly do I write about?
But even through the differences, there were some constants that transcended each phase, things that were definitively Holly. She was intelligent and not afraid to show it. She knew her own mind, and didn't let anyone tell her she couldn't do something that she wanted to do.
Certainly, we've butted heads more than a few times; it's normal for any mother and daughter to do so, and with both of us being strong-willed, our clashes were frequent and loud. Still, we got over them (eventually), and managed to have a better relationship than any mother-daughter pair in my maternal line.
No one truly dies until everyone they touch dies. Holly lives on every time I grab a hammer or screwdriver (she taught me basic home maintenance) or pick up a needle (she taught me to embroider, and she tried to teach me to crochet as well), or every time I give someone a scathing look or a biting comment for telling me that I can't do something just because of where my genitals are located-- in every one of these, I am just like my mother.
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