My Greatest Life Influence

Thinking this morning about the GREATEST influence in and on my life -- Florence Henrietta Brown Williams -- My Mother!

This time twenty-four years ago, I did not know that my time with her was limited, and that I only had ELEVEN (11) more days with her.

Six (6) years ago, I was able to come to terms with her passing, and today, I am looking forward to celebrating her life and times with me.

November 29,1993 at 5:05 p.m. Mother closed her eyes, decided to take a early nap, smiled and never woke up again. I did not see any of this, but this is what I was told by those providing her care. When I got to her bedside, she was still warm, the smile was still on her face, and I personally witnessed the most angelic look I have ever seen.

It was so beautiful, I rushed back home to get my children because I wanted them to see her like that. It was completely devastating to see the death mask on her face when we returned. There was no angelic look. There was no smile. Just death taking control of my Mother's body and people rushing me to decide what would be the next steps to my long journey into a life without my best friend, my soul mate, my confidante, my spiritual advisor my sanity. My Mother was simply no more.

I was angry! I instantly developed a total dislike for anyone whose mother was still living. I became totally and forever alone. I was an orphan. First my father had died, and now MY MOTHER! I barely missed my father because I did not know him on an up close and personal level. I knew him from the three months together every summer, and the visit I made to visit him when I became an adult.

In my entire forty-eight years of life, even after I was married and had children, my Mother and I had only been under different roofs for four or five years (three years in college and one year in Oklahoma. She moved to Maryland to live with me in 1970 and remained with me until her death in 1993. My Mother was my Bestie, road dawg, constant companion, and always the one person that I could tell EVERYTHING to – yep, if you told me something back in the day when she was living, she knew about it. LOL

In 1993, I did not have a clue on how I would ever be able to move forward, but somehow, I manage to keep moving through the fog that settled on my mind. As recently as yesterday, I wondered out loud what would she think of this world that we have created. Hearing her answer in my head made me laugh out loud for real. I also thought about her as I wrote the piece a few days ago on being relevant.

These last six years of coming awake have been challenging. It is amazing how much I missed or just didn’t care about, yet I kept moving forward.