by Sj Brown

Created on: April 07, 2010

My mother loved potato chips, books and roses. She loved lively conversations, helping those in need and anything British. My mom was in love with travel, although she didn't do much of it, and old black and white movies.

It's been more than 13 years since my mother passed away, but every Mother's Day and on her birthday in November, I do something she would have loved to do.

The year after she died, on Mother's Day, I took flowers to a senior citizen. She loved the elderly and would have done this herself. My heart and soul was in shreds but I felt so much better, like my mother was smiling over me in Heaven as I turned over the simple bouquet.

The next year, I traveled to a new place she had never been - South America. I wandered through the streets, just wondering what she would have done had she been there. I imagined she would have shopped, given the street children money (she had such a warm, charitable heart) and had tea at the roadside cafe.

The next year, I spent the day in a "tea room". My mother loved anything British and would have thoroughly enjoyed the thought of taking tea in a posh setting.

The next year I did nothing but read. This, of course, prompted memories of my mother, rocking in her rocking chair, reading a book and welcoming me home from school with a big smile. She was a glutton for a good romance novel.

One year, I did nothing but watch old black and white movies. Another year, I planted a garden (I wasn't very good at it, but I tried to because she would have tried to).

The best thing I think anyone who has lost their mother could do is to "extend" her life in a way by doing something that the mother never got to do - travel, take a dance class, go on a cruise, help out at the homeless shelter or see a Broadway play.

Remembering your mother on Mother's Day not only means remembering the memories she made for and with you, but thinking of ways she WOULD HAVE made memories had she lived. So, first write down a list of things your mother liked, things she told you she always wanted to do, things she regretted not doing, etc. and set out to do one of those each year.

The next few things on my list of things to do for my mother for future Mother's Days are to tour a potato chip factory, write a novel (even if I have to self-publish,) and learn to ski.

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