A Life Well Lived

Of late our summer evenings have been packed with family events and neighborhood comings and goings that keep us off the front porch.  The front porch at Menagerie Manor is a little bit of paradise, a place one would normally find us on warm summer evenings sitting and talking about each other’s day.   I savoured one such moment sitting quietly on the porch  reflecting on the past week.  As you know from my previous post my dear mother’s valiant battle against cancer was coming to an end.  She battled breast cancer twice only to be told that the radiation treatments caused the lung cancer that snuffed out a life well lived.  Friday July 12^th was my parents 61^st wedding anniversary, when I walked into the house my father showed me the card and lovely red begonia he bought her.  Saturday July 13^th at about 04:15 in the wee hours of the morning my sister alerted my father that silence was present on the monitor.  They checked mom's  heart beat and felt two small beats then that to fell silent.  Calls to the rest of her children were made, we in turn called her grandchildren, and so forth down the family chain.  MeMa and I hurried the short distance from Menagerie Manor to my parents house to pay our last respects.  A phone call to hospice was made and the rest of the events were taken care of for us.  Respect is how I would describe the process that unfolded before us, I can’t thank these caring people enough for the way they treated my mother and the way they helped bring closure. 
“A life well lived” is how I would describe my mother’s.  Every few years packing up their home and children and moving on to a new home, such is the life of a military family.  My mother was an organizer and when her household furnishings arrived our new home was put back together as though magic was involved.  And in three or four years the whole process started again , the difference with our family was both of my parents were aware of the hardships of uprooting their children and they strove with all their being to make leaving one home for next one an adventure. Love for her husband, love of home and love for her children, all of this never stopped.   A life well lived, we love you mom.

Bertha "Bertie" Chambers

July 17, 1931 to July 13, 2013