Mom, I wish I could've said goodbye

I didn't get to say goodbye to my mother.

Neither did anyone else, including my father, Arlene's husband of more than 61 years.

She lived in Ohio, and I lived in Virginia, so I tried to see her a couple of times a year. But I was overdue for a visit, and I hadn't been especially good at calling, either.

I remember the phone call from my sister that Saturday morning — March 11, 2006. My mother had fallen asleep on the living room couch the night before and hadn't awakened and later gone to bed as she usually would have done.

When my father woke up the next morning, he saw her on the couch and thought she was still sleeping. A little while later, she was still there, and he knew something was wrong.

The paramedics arrived and confirmed that she had passed away sometime during the night. Although she was almost 84, her health wasn't bad — some heart problems and osteoporosis, but nobody thought they were life-threatening.

My mother, a gentle woman in life, had just slipped away quietly.

"I'm thankful she didn't suffer," my father said.

I was thankful, too, but then I started thinking.

Why hadn't I made more of an effort to visit? Why hadn't I been better at calling? When was the last time I had written her a letter, or even a thank-you note? Or sent her some up-to-date photos of her grandchildren?

Then I started remembering.

I remembered that she never, ever yelled at her husband.

Or her children. Her quiet words of correction were enough as she sometimes had occasion to say, "I'm disappointed in you. You can do better." Sometimes she would start singing: "patience and fortitude. …" Was that message directed at us — or was it to bolster her own resolve?

I remembered her approach to having her kids help with housework. She would give us a list, then put on some music, usually the opera "Carmen." Maybe that's why I don't care much for opera.

I remembered her devotion to her Mormon faith. We lived in a small branch that slowly grew into a ward. She was willing to support it any way she could: Relief Society, Primary, choir (she forced me, ah, er, rather encouraged me strongly, to join when my voice turned bass), ward newsletter, whatever it took.