Tomorrow my mom will have been gone 25 years.  I have officially been without her in my life longer than I was with her.  Which is weird.  And sad.  And sometimes it’s just nothing.

There are times when I can’t really remember what she was like in the everyday sense.  I have an image of her sashaying into a room, running a hand through her auburn hair and smiling as if she owned the room.  And she did.

She had what we kids called the “Dody strut.” We would tease her about the way she’d walk; as if she were on a runway, head held high, working the room.

I was in my freshman year of college when she was diagnosed with colon cancer.  She was 53. At the time she was diagnosed the doctors said she had a few months to live.  She survived for six more years due to sheer willpower.  At least that’s what I believe.  She fought that disease with her strength and faith until her last dying day.  By the time she passed away that tumor was literally growing outside of her body.

She complained once to her doctor, asking him why she had to go through chemo and radiation, countless surgeries and mildly succesful experimental treatments, more so than other patients it seemed to her.  He answered her point-blank, “Because my other patients are dead.”  She didn’t complain again.

To be able to be positive and feel lucky while going through such suffering is a gift.  And she had it.  She made cancer look easy.  She ingrained that idea so much into the four of us it was difficult to accept she was actually sick. When you are in the midst of an illness it is hard to see it clearly.  My mom had been so strong for so long that near the end none of us realized it WAS the end. And when your mom tells you she’s going to be okay, you believe her; it doesn’t matter how old you are.  It’s still your mom and you just believe her.  When she went on hospice I was more in shock than you should be when your mom has been slowly dying for six years.  But it’s hard to see the truth so close up.

Here is the truth I do know:

She was competitive.  Like, annoyingly competitive.  Like, let’s-check-the-dictionary-and-then-the-official-rules-to-the-game-so-we-can-prove-that-I-am-right-and-won-the-game sort of competitive.  She would have loved Google.

She had a great sense of humor.  Not only did she appreciate the humor of someone else, she could be funny herself, which wasn’t easy when you were married to someone as quick-witted as my dad.

She spoke her mind without worrying about the consequences.  She would stand up for what she believed in even if it wasn’t the popular thing to do.  She didn’t go along with the crowd.

She took 45 minutes to tell a three-minute story.  Even now when family members start to digress or give too many details you are interrupted with a terse, “Okay, Dody” and you immediately know to move on. She dominated the conversation with her stories.

She liked to be the first one to get the new gadget, but she was also cheap.  Which meant we had the first “car phone,” but weren’t allowed to use it.  (I do remember the one “emergency”: We called to ask if we could pick up a pizza on the way home).

After she would go grocery shopping she would come home and cross-check the receipt and the food and make sure she got everything she paid for.

Sometimes we would run out of milk and then she would “make milk” for us.  Which was instant dry milk powder that you mixed with water that ended up being a lumpy warm cloudy substance.  It was disgusting and my memories of this have made me wonder why she didn’t just buy more milk on a weekly basis.

She was a terrible cook.  I don’t know how she missed the “Greek mom” cooking gene but she did.  Everything was dry and overcooked, just like my dad liked it.

She was the first of her generation of Greek women to go to college.  When she applied to Michigan State University she noticed the brochure included pictures of co-eds frolicking on campus playing tennis.  At the end of her application the last question asked “Is there anything else you think we should know about you?”  “Yes,” she answered worried, “I do not play tennis.”

She was smart.  And she expected us to be smart.  And not just be smart but to be the smartest.  She was hard on me and expected me to succeed.  I once argued with her that she should be happy I wasn’t doing drugs or sneaking out like other kids.  “I EXPECT you to not do all of those things.  You aren’t getting praise for that,” she retorted.  And that was that.

She was creative with ideas and great at execution.  She could make a seven layer Jell-O, bake and decorate an R2-D2 cake, sew a bridesmaid gown and wallpaper the bathroom, all at the same time and usually at the 11th hour.

She could iron a shirt like nobody’s business.  She would stack those dress shirts of my  dads and work all day on the sleeves, the collar, the front and the back.

She liked to correct your grammar.  And she did it often.  Hers was impeccable.

She was the life of the party.

I remember when she died thinking “I will never truly be happy again.”  And in some ways that was an exaggeration, and in some ways it was true.  Somehow it was a loss of hope, or naiveté, or this sudden worldliness that was on my shoulders that I didn’t ask for and didn’t want.  How can you ever be truly content without your mother?  All the fun was gone.

All through her illness she would tell us that she was going to be okay. In fact, a day or so before she slipped away she said to me, “What are you worried about? I’m going to be okay.” Looking back, though, her definition of okay was different from ours.

I was there when she died; and the look of peace on her face told me that, yes, she was going to be okay.  I’m just not sure about the rest of us.