I can’t explain where, after thirty-one years, the need to visit my mother’s grave came from. I was driving south on Highway 99, thinking about this and wondering what to expect when I got there. I first started feeling this need a few months earlier and had ordered a copy of her death certificate from the Office of Vital Statistics in Sacramento. The death certificate gave me information that I had never known: what the coroner had determined to be the cause of death, where she was found, that she had been cremated, and where she was buried.

My mom at 82 passed away this past year, but…

As I think of my mom prior to her illness, (she had not been herself since 1985; strokes and dementia had taken away much of her personality) I think of someone whose total focus was her kids. My mom was a “working mom.” She was a cook, then head cook at Ambridge High, but this played a minute role when compared to her kids—my brother and me. We knew, in our every breathing moments, that we were the most important aspect of her life.

On August 2, my grandmother passed away after 9 years in a nursing home with advanced Alzheimer’s. Her passing brought back fond memories and actually was seen by her family as a joyful occasion to celebrate her freedom from the chains of her earthly body and mind.