My Most Memorable Mother's Day

I don't remember too many mother's days from when I was a little girl. I know that it was always an important day and that my dad, brother and I celebrated my mum, grandma and aunts, but details are fuzzy. I do know that my mum has kept every mother's day card my brother and I ever made her or gave her, along with many of our childhood pieces of art that were made especially for mother's day.

The mother's day I remember best was in 1994, when I was 10 years old. My dad was dying of cancer in a hospital two hours from home, and my mum and I went to visit him every weekend. He always made a big deal of including me in mother's day because I was such a little mother - always playing with my dolls, treating them like real babies, talking to them, taking care of them, carting them around with me. Even at that young age, I would talk a lot about 'when I grow up and have kids...' and I have to wonder now if part of the reason he made such a fuss was because he knew he wouldn't live to see me grow up and have children of my own.

Because my dad had been in the hospital for an extended period of time after his bone marrow transplant, he hadn't had a chance to shop or take my brother and me shopping for a mother's day gift. So, the weekend of mother's day, my dad and I headed to the gift shop on the ground floor of the hospital. It was the loveliest, grandest gift shop I had ever seen - to this day, I remember it clearly and I haven't seen one to rival it. It was like a mini department store, full of everything you could imagine - knick knacks, jewelry, books, stuffed animals, figurines - it was colourful and sunny and beautiful, a real bright spot in a hospital dedicated to people with cancer.

My dad and I carefully picked out gifts for my mum - a set of salt and pepper shakers with a fruit and vine design, a hand-painted wooden hummingbird, and a beautiful pair of gold and zircon earrings. Then he let me choose something for myself as my mother's day gift, and I chose a pair of dangling earrings with bright multicoloured shapes. We still have all these items and they're treasures to us.

My dad died a little over a month later. Losing him was the hardest thing I've ever had to deal with, but it brought my mum and me closer. She is my best friend in the entire world, the one person who has never let me down and who I know I can always count on. She is my confidante and my partner in crime. I've made it my mission to make every mother's day special because she's had to be both parents to me and my brother, and she's the best parent anyone could ask for. If someday I can be half the mother she is, I'll consider myself - and my children - lucky.

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