personal2: A tribute to my mom (v1.0)

 My mother was the only child of a rich man with his much younger wife (her mom was 19 and her dad was 50 when they married). She had stepsisters who were roughly her mom's age! Her childhood was mentally and emotionally difficult. Her dad passed away when she was 3 years old, leaving his uneducated wife to take care of the wealth he left her. You would be inhuman if it did not impact you to some extent too, and it did impact my mom. My father’s parents and her father had agreed when they were kids that the two should marry when they came of age. And so, it happened after my father got his engineering degree.

I was my mom’s favorite undoubtedly. My sister was closer to my dad. My brother is 15 years younger, and I was almost on my way to college when he was born (was not there while he grew up). The kids, my dad, and home were the center of her life and she sacrificed for that. She had a great capacity to love. There is no doubt she was very smart. She did not have book smarts (She did have two years of college though), but she had street smarts. She was a survivor.  She had incredible intuition. She often foretold things and events and to our surprise they often came to be or later proven to be true. She also believed in astrology and was very capable of reading astrological charts. She also read people very well. She could plan with meticulous attention to detail. A great example is when she worked very closely with the building architect when her final house was being constructed. She was creative artistic. I remember she attended Ikebana Japanese flower arrangement classes and was very good at it and won a prize in a competition. She was also a perfectionist. She was an excellent cook. She was talented but remained a homemaker. 

My mom Inherited her dad’s home. Her grandmother lived there rent free until she died (her mom had passed away some time after my mom's marriage). The sale of that house partly helped my parents get their final home in Bangalore where they lived the rest of their lives.

My mom had lofty ambitions for me. But I was going to live my life the way it suited me and make my own decisions once I was an adult. When I married my wife in Hawaii, unfortunately she could not accept it. My parents did not attend the wedding. It took 7 years before we were fully reconciled. I guess she was a prisoner of her culture or upbringing or biases. Once reconciled, my wife and her got along famously. 

After my dad passed away in his sleep, she was lost. He was her anchor and in later stages lived for him. She managed valiantly throughout the time he had dementia. But she passed away too a few months after my dad. I loved my mom despite some shortcomings, and I miss her deeply.