Mom’s Letter

Last night, I was looking through some boxes in our rafters for something I wanted to use for my daughter’s school projects. I found a large ziploc bag filled with letters written from my friends in high school. I thought it would be fun to look through those again, so I brought them down with me and browsed through them while I sat on the couch watching our evening shows. I came across an envelope with my name scrawled across the front in red pen. I recognized the handwriting right away and knew it was from my mom. What a precious find!

I opened the envelope and took out the letter which, I discovered, was written to me around the time I was 15. I’m thinking that it was written and given to me at one of our mother-daughter activities at church. I sat on the couch reading my letter, tears streaming down my face, as my husband snored on the rocking chair beside me (he will deny that). I was so touched as I read her words and it made me long for my mom to return from her lost little world.

The part that hit me the hardest was when she wrote,

“I pray that we will always be close and friends as I am with your grandma.”

Oh how I long for that too!! 

Is it okay to have a feel-sorry-for-myself kind of day every once in a while? I’ll pick myself back up tomorrow ;)

Remembering Deana: Part II

This memoir was written by my Uncle Mike, who is my mom's oldest brother.

It’s really hard to write things about a little sister you hardly knew when she was my “little” sister. I left home to go to war only six years after my little sister was born and did not come back for almost seven years except for military leaves. During that time I met my wife, got married, and had already started a family by the time she had grown to be a teenager. I missed a lot by being the oldest of five children.
Even so, I was stationed somewhat close to home at my last military posting before I was discharged. Just a few weeks before I was to finish my Air Force duty, I came home and picked up my little brother, Jeff, and Deana to take them back with me to Arizona where I was at Luke Air Force Base, near Phoenix.

I’m sad to say that at first, things seemed a little awkward. It was like babysitting kids I only barely knew. Deana was still very young. Deana was only about 12 or 13 years old. She seemed very subdued, even though I knew she idolized her big brother in uniform who had sent her interesting and beautiful gifts from my travels in the Far East. I’m sure that wasn’t because she was timid being around me. If I had to think about it, I would have to say she missed living with her mother and father as a married couple. Sadly, mom and dad divorced while I was away, and Deana lived with my dad who seemed not to care much about the children he had to care for in absence of a mother. This would make any child sad. Hell, it made ME sad, and I was living with the love of my life and enjoying every minute of it!!

After a few days they started to have more fun as we swam almost every day in the pool at our apartment complex in the sizzling Arizona heat. We’re talking August, folks…Hot, hot August! Then we took a trip to the Grand Canyon and Deana still talks about it to this day. It seems odd to me that someone can have clear memories of times long gone by, but cannot remember her friends names from church, or who is the President of the United States.

Anyway, in absence of having decent guidance at home, I stayed close to my little brother and sister as much as I could while being a deputy sheriff in the neighboring county. I would drop in on their apartment my dad rented in La Sierra, and visit her at work when she worked at TG&Y stores. Once when we found out she was dating a non-LDS guy, my wife warned her that his “kind” have only one thing they are after—sex. Well, it didn’t take long for my wife to be proven a seer. Not that he tried anything with her, but he did it with someone else and she found out. She broke up with him and came to ask how my wife knew that would happen? She has been grateful ever since.
Then she told me sometime later she was dating a neighbor boy named Buddy Alves. I remember when I first saw him and wondered if my sister had even learned anything from the last guy. Next thing I know he is being baptized and my sister is marrying him. She had to get out from under a stressful and lonely home life living with my dad and his second wife. How could I blame her?

But, something was obvious; the two were madly in love, and even a hard-nosed cop like me could tell that. So, believe it or not, I began to drop by the newly-weds home as much as I could. That’s when I really got to know my sister, and as you might expect, her new husband who I grew to like quickly, long hair, beads, and all!! He was not afraid of hard work and I respected that a lot. I knew he would be good for her.
We camped and fished together often and always got together on holidays. My sister also added to the family income by selling crystal and had these “crystal” parties. I remember one time when she was trying to sell a group of ladies a crystal dove, or something like that. She said you could use the dove as a way to signal your husband that “tonight’s a good night for romance” by placing the dove upside down on the dresser. I about swallowed my tongue. That’s just stuff I never talk about openly, but both my brother and Deana would giggle at small gatherings joking about uhh, umm let’s just say their love times. Funny, now she has totally lost any brakes and will sometimes say things that will make you blush or cover your ears and yell “la,la,la,la!”

I think it wasn’t until her older years that we finally grew close and truly felt like a brother and sister should towards each other. Which makes it all the more difficult to accept that I am already losing the sister I once knew. I am so thankful that in the life that awaits us hereafter, we will be as close as any family can be thanks to the blessings of a merciful God, temple sealings, and the power of the Priesthood.

Remembering Deana: Part I

Today is the day that I begin sharing stories and memoirs about my mom, written from other people besides myself. I want my mom to be remembered for the beautiful person she was before the dementia.

This first post was written by my sister; my mom's 3rd child. Grab the tissues...I sure did!

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Remembering Deana: Part I, By Christina Alves-Avila

When I was a child, I remember telling my parents and grandparents that they were going to live forever so that I would never have to suffer the loss of anyone I love during my lifetime. Even as an adult, I would still carry on saying the same thing, even though I knew deep inside that, at some point in my life, I was eventually going to experience loss. Over the years, a few family members and acquaintances passed away, but nobody with whom I was very close. When my grandparents both passed away in 2010, when I was 25 years old, I experienced the first real loss in my life. It was shortly before that time that my mother started acting different, though we would not have a diagnosis for two more years.

Dementia has truly changed the person my mother was. My mother was fun, intelligent, giving, and devoted to her family and church. My mother held many positions (unpaid) in our church over the years and hardly ever missed church. She set a positive example for my siblings and me to follow.

When I was a child, I remember my mom attending the community college a couple of nights a week for a couple of years, maybe more, to get her Associate's Degree. My sister, brother, and I would stay home with my dad on these nights. I remember my mom doing her homework during the week. I still remember her walking in her graduation, though I was still fairly young. My mom demonstrated to me at a young age that education is important, and this is a belief I have carried with me throughout my life.

Something important to me that I will always remember is my parents’ love for one another. My sister, brother, and I used to get grossed out when my parents would “make-out” in front of us. My mom used to say, “At least you know your parents love each other!” And we did. I rarely saw my parents argue. They usually took it behind closed doors. A few times I caught on that they were at odds about something, and I would usually find a flower or something on my mom’s pillow the next day.

Something I will always remember about my mom is the way she would wake us up in the morning. She would come into our rooms singing in her opera voice, “Good morning! Time to get up!” Alternatively, she would often sing the song “Oh What a Beautiful Morning” (from the movie Oklahoma!). Occasionally, when we did not respond to her singing, she would come into our doorways with a water bottle and squirt us until we jumped out of bed, wet and angry. What a way to start the day!

I have fond memories of, as a child, sitting on my mom’s lap during church and falling asleep, and, as a teenager, lying on her lap while she played with my hair. There were the family vacations every summer that my parents would save up for all year long where we would build memories. These are the little things I took for granted as a child.

As a boy-crazy teenage girl, I put my mom through a lot of worry and many sleepless nights. There was no question in my mind that my mom cared about me because she was active in my life. When I did something wrong, I was given a consequence. I would get mad at her for “ruining my life”, but deep down inside, I knew I was lucky because many of my friends did not have parents who showed that kind of love and concern. In some ways, I was a bit of rebel, but I never snuck out my window, tried drugs or alcohol, or did a lot of other things that my friends did because I knew that my mom would find out.

My mom was at every event I participated in as a child. She was at the Spelling Bee that I won in 5th grade. She was also at the one in 7th grade, when I misspelled "eureka" and cried on her shoulder. From fifth grade through high school, she came to every choir concert. My ambition as a child and young woman was to become a singer/songwriter. When I turned eighteen, she took me to a convention in Los Angeles for aspiring artists and paid for the hotel room. It was at this age, in my young adulthood, that I began to identify with my mom as not just a mother, but as a friend.

When I got pregnant with my first child at the age of eighteen, unmarried and still living at home, I told my mom first. I knew my mom would be calmer than my dad and felt less-threatened by the thought of telling her first and letting her tell my dad. My mom suspected the pregnancy before I even told her about it – she must have had that maternal intuition. I told her, and she cried. She and my dad tried to talk me into adoption, without success. My mom went to childbirth preparation classes with me. She went to doctor’s appointments and ultrasounds with me, and, when my son was born, she took me to the hospital and stayed by my side. My mother was also in the hospital with me for the births of my other two children.

My mom helped me tremendously over the next several years. She babysat the kids often. Being a preschool teacher, she took an interest in helping the kids learn. She decorated my wedding cake and birthday cakes for my kids. She always gave me motherly advice – how to discipline, what to do when they get sick.

But her ability and willingness to help with the kids slowly diminished over the years. She became fatigued, irritable, and impatient. She has become more and more disinterested in the events of my life, perhaps partially due to her inability to understand everything going on around her. She no longer has advice to give. Though she is still physically here, I have suffered a loss – the loss of my mother and one of my closest friends.

My mom is young, and I am too young to lose her. Then I look at my friends who have their moms much sooner and realize that there is always someone who has it worse. I am grateful for the memories I have with my mom. Because my mom was involved, because we made so many memories when I was young, I have so much to hold on to and remember her by.

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