My mother, Bonnie, was born in 1932 during the Great Depression on a rural farm that sat between Guernsey and Wheatland, Wyo. Her family relocated to Vancouver in the late 1940s. My mom was working at Dollars Corner Tavern when my dad walked in one night in the early 1960s and inquired who the beautiful woman was that was working there. He asked her out on a date, and she accepted. They were married in 1966 and I was born three years later when my mom was 36 years old.
I had a wonderful childhood, full of camping, fishing and hunting. It was during these excursions that Mom created funny memories for me, from making me believe she was from another planet to creating her fist into a hand puppet named Lady Rose, which I would spend hours talking to. Later in Mom’s life, I was her caregiver, and though she was blind and dependent on her wheelchair, Mom still had the spunk to retell stories of her childhood and my childhood to my children and we would laugh for hours.
My mom passed away in October 2008 when I was 38 years old, and with her she took my fondest memory.
I moved out at the age of 17. Every year, on my birthday in November, my mom would call me and sing “Happy Birthday” to me and tell me little tidbits of the story of my birth. But you see, she would call me at the exact time I was born — right on the dot — to have this song and conversation. This just happened to be at 3:16 a.m. We had an agreement before she passed away that we would giggle about: If there was a way for her to prove to me that there is a heaven, then it would be for her to make the phone ring on my birthday.
