Bobbie was my mother’s given name. Not Roberta or Barbara, but, Bobbie.

My mother was the most loving and giving person I have known in my life! As a child growing up in the 1950’s, I was the oldest of three sisters, and my mother was the embodiment of motherly love. She was the fire that kept her family burning bright! We all depended on her for those material needs of clean clothes, great southern cooking and help with homework. But, most of all we depended on her spiritually. She was deeply spiritual.

As a Catholic convert, my mother chose to become Catholic and embraced the tenets and devotionals of the faith. She was absolutely dedicated to Our Blessed Mother and prayed the rosary every day. I can honestly say, it was her prayers that got all of us through the tough times. She was my father’s saint! He adored her all of his life and with good reason. She loved him deeply and nurtured their love with fidelity and commitment. He wasn’t always the easiest person to love, but that didn’t matter…she knew him only as her soul mate and committed her life to him and to her Lord.

One of the most remarkable talents that my mother had was the gift of growing the most beautiful roses I had ever seen. She grew them in honor of the Blessed Mother. I remember her first rose garden in 1963 in our backyard in Miami, Florida, it was incomparable in beauty. The living room, dining room and kitchen always had vases of fragrant, fresh roses. She would take my sisters and I out and tell us about each rose, where it came from and some of its history. When she and my father retired to Central Florida and larger acreage, she grew a huge garden of roses, they were absolutely stellar and she shared them with friends and family. As my sisters and I had more daughters, Mom would share the “walk through the roses” as I like to call it, with her grand-daughters.

My mother passed away in 2003, and Dad followed in two years. He couldn’t really find his place in life after Mom passed and the Lord was good to bring him home to be with his beloved Bobbie.

This past weekend, we sisters got together to share what we like to call a Ya-Ya Weekend. My daughter and her husband took a long weekend to the Bahamas and we sisters functioned as babysitters for their three children, my beautiful grandsons and grand-daughter. Mom was in the midst of our laughing and playing with the little ones….like an echo from our childhood, a continuance of sharing the love that you learn to share from a mother such as ours.

Thank you Father for the loving mothers we are given, who show us your Trinitarian love and the love of your blessed daughter, our Mother Mary! They insure that goodness and love continues to exist to your glory O Father and in Your Name.

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