Dorothy Ruth Taitz was my mother. Today would have been her eighty-fifth birthday. She smoked for fifty years, quit for twelve and died three weeks short of her seventy-seventh birthday. Cancer was the only thing that could defeat her. My mother was a true force of nature. She was the best friend you would ever have. She could also be your worst enemy. Tenacious and with a will of iron. Born in Norfolk, Virginia but raised in the Bronx, New York City, she was a curious mix of Southern Belle and tough street kid. She hade lots of male friends in high school but no one ever dared to touch her without permission. That's her at ages sixteen and seventy-five. She once told me a story that seemed to me to be the essence of southern womanhood. During her sixteenth summer she was visiting her cousin Sonia in Norfolk. They were walking down the street when they encountered another girl Sonia knew. Sonia introduced my mother and the three chatted for a few minutes, smiling and laughing. As Sonia and my mother walked away, Sonia, still smiling, said in her soft Virginia accent, "Ah cain't STAND that gurrl!" As you might guess, my mother was the boss in our home. It wasn't that my dad was weak it was just that most day-to-day things were not that important to him. He once told me, "Your mother may not always be right but she is never wrong." Nothing better illustrates this than the day I came over to ask about our family tree. The series "Roots" was playing on television then and the whole country was digging into their family histories. "I think there is a family tree in one of the photo albums", my dad said, so the three of us trooped into their bedroom to search for our roots. My parents' bedroom had a storage area over the closet where the boxes that were never opened were hidden away. My parents had a very clearly defined division of labor. That day was no different. My father stood on the stepladder rummaging through the boxes while my mother stood on the floor "supervising". It must be noted that my parents never argued they just had very loud debates. "I can't find it." "What do you mean?" "What do you mean, what do I mean?" "Well maybe if you marked the boxes you could find something." "Why do I always have to mark the boxes? I never see you with a marker in your hand." Finally, in frustration, my father steps off the ladder and heads for the bedroom door. "It's not there!" My mother calls out to his back. "It's not where?" He answers without stopping. "Wherever you're going to look." She replied. My parents loved each other until the day they died. But sometimes love isn't enough. My father was always the one who wanted to go and do. My mother was content to sit at home and fall asleep in front of the television. After thirty-three years of marriage my father walked out. When I asked him why he said that he was fifty-five, had looked down the road and wondered how much time he had left. Ironically, after they divorced, my mother became very active. She traveled, lost weight and joined a gym. Once she showed me her bicep. It was bigger than mine. My mother never had much use for men after that except for plumbing and electrical work. That's what I was for. I found it annoying when she would call and say, "I need you to do..." It wasn't until much later that I realized she just couldn't bring herself to say, "I need you. I want to see you." I always got a free meal out of it though. She was fearless. Before she moved to her last home she lived next to some problem neighbors. The wife of one once threatened to shoot her. My mother, who was seventy at the time, laughed in her face. The woman never bothered her again. After all, when you give someone your best material and they laugh at you what do you have left? A six-year-old boy was in the habit of riding his bicycle across her lawn, breaking the sprinkler heads. One day he walked past her and she noticed he had a cast on his arm. "You see that?", she said pointing to his arm. "I did that because you were mean to me! I'm a witch!" The boy ran home crying "momma, momma." He never road across her lawn again. In July of 2000 we took a once in a lifetime trip to Asia, visiting India, Cambodia and Bhutan, a tiny kingdom in the Himalayas. By then my mother had been off cigarettes for over ten years but now had emphysema. When her doctor heard that she was traveling to a place 11,000 feet above sea level he forbade her to go. Well, she had already spent the money so that was not an option. The picture above shows her and our guide Needup at Tongla Pass, 11,635 feet above sea level. If you look closely you can see she is sticking out her tongue. That's the picture she sent to her doctor. As my mother aged she mellowed. She even started laughing at my jokes. I was still her son but we had also become friends. There were still tensions of course. One day, I don't know why, years of resentment came spilling out. I accused her of ignoring me and of treating me as a hired hand while she favored my younger brother and sister. "You never even noticed me!" I threw it in her face. Her reaction surprised me. Her answer was quiet and gentle. "Of course I noticed you. I notice how you bite your fingernails when you are concentrating and how your hair curls on one side and how your deaf ear sticks out more than your good ear." And then she smiled and said, "A mother knows her child." Later, as we sat in her living room, I asked her why our upbringing had been so strict, why there had been so few hugs or laughter. She gave me a sad look and said, "We were not raised to be happy. We were raised to survive." And so was I. For over a year after we returned from our trip, the pain in her back had continued to grow. The doctors could not figure out what was wrong. Eventually her right arm became numb and useless. They operated on it suspecting a pinched-nerve. Her pain continued to increase. They replaced a disk in her spine. Nothing helped. On September 14, 2001 the results of a biopsy showed cancer. It had spread from her lung to her bones and nervous system. She faced it the same way she had faced everything, without fear. Her pain was so great that even the morphine I gave her could not give her any peace. I took care of her for three months. She died on December 24, 2001, a day before her mother's birthday. I invited my father to the memorial service. All he had to say was that he had loved her very much but just could not live with her anymore. Several of her friends spoke of her great sense of humor and her generosity. I responded, to laughter, that they must have known someone else because that was not the woman who raised me. Throughout all of it I was a rock. I never cried, not when she was in pain, not when she died and I had to sit with her while I waited for the ambulance, not when they took her away, not at her funeral. As the weeks went by and I went through her things I began to discover the person my mother had been. There were the cancelled checks to the City of Hope and Saint Jude's and public television. There were the letters and cards from people thanking her for some kindness. One day I came across a small box. Inside was a beaded bracelet with my last name on it, the type they put on newborns to prevent switching. There was a scrap of cloth from a baby's first outfit. A paperweight I had made at age eight including a picture of me in my cub scout uniform. And then there were the prescription slips. Every slip my pediatrician had written for me when I was a baby was there. She had saved them all. And that was the day I cried for my mother. The great tragedy of my mother's life was the fact that she was filled with love but never learned how to express it to her family. In all my fifty-four years with her I cannot remember her ever telling me she loved me. Of course she did, more than I would ever know until after she died. So, if you've read this far, what have you learned? First, don't smoke. If you smoke, stop it! If not for yourself, for your family. You might say, "It's my body and my life." Imagine your spouse or children taking care of you. Imagine trying to get you to the bathroom and not making it. Imagine your throat slowly closing until you can no longer eat or drink. Imagine the pain your family will feel. Or you might say, "Hey, your mother made it to seventy-seven. That's not a bad run." Perhaps but her mother never smoked and died in 2008 at the age of 103. She was healthy until a week before she died. Second, if you love someone tell them because tomorrow is not guaranteed. Am I acting like a jerk? Yes, but it's been eight years and I'm still angry. At my mother's memorial I quoted someone whose name I have forgotten. "A man does not become an adult until his parents die." To which I added, "And I wish with all my heart that I was a child again." Happy birthday mom, the kids are all right.