Dear Mom. It is the third Mother's Day without you. I know. I know. There are some child orphans that have not even spent three years with their moms - who am I to complain? But I still feel like an orphan.

This year, was not as painful as the previous years. Perhaps because I have not been shopping and therefore been exposed to the in-your-face Mother's Day marketing. (You will be glad to know that I finally took your advice and started my debt diet).

In the last two years, I wanted to rip the Mother's Day promotional posters from the windows and shout at the no one in particular: "Have you no sensitivity?"

I felt a knife in my heart when I watched mothers and daughters walking hand-in-hand in the shopping centres. Especially, when the daughter was already an old lady. Why couldn't you and I go on loving and bickering into your eighties or nineties?

But this year, I am celebrating Mothers Day. I celebrate that God chose you to parent me. I celebrate the morning and evening phone calls that we shared until you left. Even if it made others think I was a mommy's girl.

I celebrate your passion and enthusiasm. My mom was the stylish eccentric that raced about on two wheels on the dirt roads in her yellow VW Beetle. You were the one who helped the neighbourhood girls learn how to apply their make up as "they came of age". You played tennis with us in the street, whilst other moms baked - though mom (sigh) I do give you your dues - you did try.

I celebrate your spontaneity. You whistled loudly to call us when it was time to come in from play. You just oozed fun and life and joy.

I celebrate the pieces of you that show up in me. I love it when I do something and suddenly realise that you would have done it. For example, your grandkids were shocked when I did some laughter therapy with them last year. I shrieked with laughter at nothing, and in the end we were all laughing until the tears were flowing. Ian told me later that dad had a tear in his eye at this, and said that it was something you would have done. Now that I have become aware of it, I smile inwardly when your irrepressible spirit is mirrored in my behaviour.

I celebrate your ageless spirit. You made mud for the grandchildren to play in, and got dirty with them. You espoused the joy of youth in a failing body, which you never allowed to stop you from enthusing all of us.

I celebrate your courage and your faith. You were never a fence-sitter. You stood up for your beliefs. Sometimes your "stubbornness' drove me crazy. But I admired most that you were no chameleon - someone who goes with the flow.

I celebrate your unconditional love. No one has ever loved me the way you loved me. And the amazing thing is you loved dad, and the rest of the family with the same passion. Even non family members were loved as family. So many of my friends feel that they also lost a mom.

I am also able to celebrate the relationships that other mother and daughters have. It is beautiful to see them holding hands in the shopping centre, heads bent together in that exclusive mother-daughter connection. Being witness to the love of mothers and daughters, reminds me that I was fortunate to have that sacred relationship too.

I am a tired cliche when I say that I wish I had said some things, and that I wish I had not said some others. I wish that I had not revelled so much in your love, that I sometimes forgot your need to be loved back in the same way. It is true that one appreciates people more when they are gone.

Mom, I sometimes wanted you to be different. But today, on Mothers Day 2008, I want you to know that I celebrate every treasured memory and every cell that made you, uniquely YOU

Learn more about this author, Charmaine Lloyd.
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