Life Motto's

Not sure where I plan to go with this post but while driving this morning many thoughts went through this broken brain of mine, and I felt I needed to get some of it out, so please bare with me as I could jump from one thing to another. The point of the post is I believe my true life motto is something like....... "Living a life free of regret" I've heard the motto before and never took any pass of it until recently.

People live their lives with a lot of different motto's. Some people "really" live by the motto, some quote the motto but don't show the results of living by that motto. Examples of life motto's can be numerous things, most commonly known include; Live each day to the fullest, or one of my faves Live life like heaven begins tomorrow, treat people how you would like to be treated and on and on. Over the last couple of weeks since mom passed away its been hard for me to live life to the fullest (some days I just want to stay in bed and wake up in a week, month or year) so am I living life to the fullest, probably not. Am I living like heaven begins tomorrow, not really.

The word "Regret" is defined by .... it is an intelligent (and/or emotional) dislike for personal past acts and behaviors. Regret is often felt when someone feels sadness, shame, or guilt after committing an action or actions that the person later wishes that he or she had not done.

Within days of moms passing my brothers, sister and I were sitting in my parents living room of course talking about mom. Stephanie had already prepared the words she was going to speak at the service and my brother Jason was looking for the words, personalty characteristics and favorite stories of mom from all of us, so that he could be sure that when preparing his words about mom that we all input. One of my favorite things that came out of the discussion was Taylor proclaiming that "Nanny, she could fix anything", which in most of our eyes was true. This was used. We continued to talk about things that mom said and did. Jason then asked me; "What is your favorite mom memory?" at the time the only thing that came to mind was how many times I heard her say to one of us was "I'll rip your teeth out". however this statement did not make it to the speech. The more I sat there trying to think what I came up with was; " I know that I caused a lot of mom's gray hairs, and by saying that I should feel regret. But I don't because for everyone of those gray hairs I caused, the stronger mom and I's relationship became. ~ This did however make it in the speech with the twist that we all caused our fair share of the gray hairs, but that not one of us would regret this because it made all of us and her stronger.

During the wake a friend of the family, whom had prior in this year lost her mother as well. Came to talk to me to provide the advice that she thought I needed. The advice was that I needed to be alone with my mom to tell her I was sorry for the crazy fights, the "wild child" activities, the stress I had caused over the course of my teenage years and life. She indicated that if I didn't I would "Regret" it. I thought about this outside that night and came to the conclusion that I didn't need to do this, I believe my mom knew I loved her, and I also believe that deep down in her heart she knew that everything I did was not to hurt her. Then I started asking myself; regret past relationship choices? regret not getting 100% on all my test? Do I regret anything I have done in my life? The answer No, why?.......

A couple of weeks ago my brothers, sister and I came into the house to clean up my dads bedroom. In doing this we came across letters from me to my mom from those crazy years passed. We also found a letter to me from mom, I packed them in my bag of stuff to keep and thought I'll read those later. The funny thing was the letter from mom, she never gave to me. Later that night I decided to read it. It was a letter she wrote shortly after we found out I was pregnant, and stress levels were high. While I read the 5 page letter, the 2 things I remember about everything said in it are; 1) one line of the letter my brother Jason actually said in this speech at her funeral: that being that mom told it like it was and 2) in the letter she is asking why God would decide to have us in the situation we were in. In the very next line it says " maybe its so you and I can be better friends" and This is EXACTLY what happened, its how we became friends. So do I regret being a child and having a child? no way, because at the end of the day it made mom and I close, strong, and great friends, it gave me the reality check that I needed to grow up and it gave her first and only grandchild that she would ever know.

This word (regret) and realization of this have been with me for the last couple of weeks. and I have determined that there are only 2 things at this point of my life that I regret, those being that I regret that mom was not conscious in those last hours, even for a minute and secondly being that I never told her enough how much she meant to me or how much I loved her.

Everything I've done in life, I've done for a reason, whether it was to learn and grow by making mistakes, or forming of great loving relationships and friends. Please try to build this motto into your daily lives.

~Live a life free of regret!~