57

57 candles. I think about that and I laugh that maybe the entire cake would melt because there would be so many candles. Mom would be 57 today and I cannot imagine her at 57. I try to think of so many things to say or to remember that I haven't written 200 times in my memorials and my thoughts. When I said it aloud last night I caught myself. 57. We have been without my mother since she was 48. I remember thinking of what she would be like as she grew old. I envionsed her as the perfect grandmother with gray hair and glasses. I think by now she would be retired, but she would still keep in touch with her students and she might be obsessed with Facebook catching up and making sure people were behaving. The best thing about people we love is that they never fade. No matter two birthdays or nine... we remember. Grandmommy told me the story of the day Mom was born... She told me they had been traveling as my grandfather was a coach so they were on the school bus the night before! Uncle Mike said he went to get a Cherry Dr. Pepper in memory of her because she would stuff Mike in the trunk to get into the drive-in movie cheaper and they would spend their money on Cherry Dr. Peppers! It always makes me smile to hear those stories! Mom was truly just an angel. Seriously. The stories I heard today from teachers or people in her Sunday School class... They all commented on her laughter and her smile and her knowledge of Jesus Christ. People may think I am sarcastic, but she could run circles around me. She had that wit that came from nowhere and you just couldn't match it. The laughter and love that vibrated through my household on a daily basis is truly something that cannot be written in words. So God took her at 48... and for 48 of those years Deanna Kay Boles Adams loved hard and lived hard every single second. I'm so thankful I got to know her 19 of those 48 years... how blessed am I to have an angel as a mother?

Here are some of my favorites... She hated photos... but, there is evidence of that famous smile!...