Vendor Remembers Her Mother Who Passed Earlier this Year
By Bobbette Robinson
I buried my mother March 8th and I miss my mother. All the good times we had going out to lunch and talking on the phone. She liked to look at the stories and soap operas, such as Young and the Restless and Bold and the Beautiful. She also liked to look at Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy. We used to go to the casino because she liked to gamble, and we would have lunch at Subway at Tower City. I used to love to have lunch with her all the time. I used to talk to her every day at 6 o’clock in the morning. I would sit up every day waiting for her phone call and she would talk about her gospel programs.
She loved to travel and she used to go visit her mother every mother’s day and talk with her mother all the time. She loved to travel, but was afraid of airplanes. My mother liked to throw parties, specifically birthday parties. She loved being around her family, grandkids, nieces, and nephews. The main reason why she was would throw parties was because of her family. She loved to decorate, especially for Christmas, and loved being around her family for the holidays. She was the oldest of 8 kids; there were four girls and four boys. She was also born in Virginia and when I was a little girl I stayed with some of my family from Virginia for a few days. She had four children, three girls and one boy. My mother never drank or smoked. My mother loved to eat; her favorite meal was spaghetti and fish. She also loved to cook and taught me how to cook, clean, and wash clothes. She liked to go shopping and her favorite stores were Dillard’s, Kaufman’s, and shopping at Tower City. She liked to go to the movies and her favorite movies were all the Tyler Perry movies. We would stay up and look at movies all night.
My mother used to work as a housekeeper at Baymount and then she worked at Cleveland Clinic as an executive. She loved her job cleaning. When she caught a cold or illness, she still went to work, but when she was found to have brain cancer, she couldn’t go back to work anymore. She used to talk about how she wanted to go back to work, but she couldn’t because she was sick. When she got sick, she didn’t want to die in the hospital, she wanted to die at home. We had to take care of her and clean up after her which was ok. We got to hear her last breath. She couldn’t do the things she wanted to do. She passed away from brain cancer, but I remember my mother as a very dedicated and loving person. She retired at 62 and died at 70 in March. I love her and miss her a lot.
My mother decided to plan her own funeral before she passed; she wanted a church home going service. She picked out her colors that she wanted for her funeral which were blue. Her home going service was very nice and family had come from all over; it was bigger than what I thought it was going to be. My mother was a very outgoing, likeable person, thoughtful, and respectful to others. Any hard time that I went through in my life, my mother was there for me to get through those hard times. My mother will definitely be missed and the thought of her is motivation enough to keep moving forward in my life.
Copyright Cleveland Street Chronicle May 2014 Cleveland, Ohio