My Wyoming sun-worshiping mother skiied, hiked, and ice-fished in her shorts whenever possible.

Today would have been my mother’s birthday. I believe she would have been 69. She died at 60 in the hospital after for the second time in life beating the odds against what she went in for (pneumonia), only to get a staph infection in the hospital that lead to a released clot to her brain. We had to remove life-support on Easter Sunday of 2004.

I am embarrassed to say why it is that I never fail to remember her birthday. It is not because we were great friends, although we were. The very best of friends, actually. You see, I am the typical male gorilla when it comes to remembering birthdays. I don’t. But my mother’s birthday is a mere five days before my own, so as the selfish child, always waiting for the next calendar day that meant something for the ever-important ME, Mom’s big day was more like the white flag in NASCAR signalling the final lap to the finish.

Yet I’m glad I remember her on this day, no matter the reason. I blog about her today because my mother was a writer (as are two of my aunts, both traditionally-published). Mom never submitted anything. I believe in the wake of her older, successfully-published sisters, she lacked self-confidence. It was harder then, too, even up to her death, not having what we have today in the form of totally free, no rejection self-publishing. So I have doubly tough regrets this year: because she didn’t live to see her son actually selling books, but far more importantly because she was a fine writer—perhaps the better of us all—and I would have LOVED to see her name on a book.

As this story ends, however, I did (and still can). Some of you have heard this story before.

When my first son was only three or four, my mother wrote a story called “Wimpfrey” and sent it to him letter by letter. To make a long story short, she and her closest geographical sister formed a business called “Anticipation Express” where they would have these wonderfully illustrated stories, near hand-crafted in their quality, and they would come in five to six “chapters”. Within the package would be as many envelopes as chapters plus a binder that slipped on to finalize it into a book once the last chapter had been read. Her idea was to encourage grandparents to send books to their grandchildren. (My mother was also a remedial reading teacher and believed very strongly in the importance of children gaining a love for the written word.)

So my mom, aunt, and even myself (one story, “Farmer’s Pond) wrote half a dozen “chapter stories”, the ladies found a wonderful artist to illustrate the pages, and they invested in the printing costs and the elaborate packaging. Next step, AMAZON. They put their wares (not books; you couldn’t publish a book on the site then remember) and they tried to sell. As we Amazon-published writers know, you can’t simply throw up a page and have the masses find you. I so wish I knew then what I know now because I think their idea was both to be lauded and brilliantly marketable with the right promotion.

The lasting, endearing thing is that my mother’s several and my one story are still on Amazon, perhaps at least pictured, somehow forever captured, mother and son. They show as out of print now, and honestly I don’t know where the boxes of printed stories are. Buried somewhere that I will uncover one day when I am NOT looking for them. Ironically there is a fairly well-known and successful (same thing, I suppose) children’s book author with the same name as my mother (Donna Guthrie). But on this day I honor her with the links to two of her favorites (and yes, the one to mine, too: only so you can laugh and say Guthrie wrote a children’s book). And please, for me as an honor to my mother, click LIKE on her two books to which I linked (you can skip “Farmer’s Pond, at 11 Million in book sales!). Honestly, I noticed today that no one had ever liked them, and I just think it would be cool if they had a bunch of likes. Kind of a “you did good, kid” to her.

Ah, but we’re not quite finished: I dug and dug yesterday through cobwebs and must and too many boxes and crates to find the one piece of original writing I knew I still had somewhere: a kind of poem my mother wrote to her husband of twenty-seven years who died a few years earlier. She almost died that year herself, I say of a broken heart, but the alcohol she used to numb the pain did no such thing and had the doctors even then (in 1993) wanting us to consider the possibility that she’d not come out of her coma. She did, making the renal specialist who gave her zero chance of survivability a goat’s ass. This poem she wrote after enduring a 30-day program; the shame of which my mother, the most gracious, beautiful, mother-like mother could hardly bear:

Lament for Jeff

by Donna Guthrie

Would I still love you
If you returned to me this day
I’ve changed, you know,
Grown apart some might say

Your leaving affected me with
Guilt, anger, and remorse
But as the seconds and minutes
Ticked into hours and days
Months became years
And the healing took its course

Would you still love me
The true crux of my dilemma
Could you accept the changes so dramatic
I’ve grown strong where I was weak
Vulnerable where I had strength
Less dreamy
Less lovely
More distant, yet close
Definitely more pragmatic

Is love really eternal
Can it truly survive the test of time
The answer lies not
In the words of any mortal man

The being of his children
Therein lies your answer
His eyes, his heart, his soul
His sweat, laughter, and tears
Remain, exist forever
Withstands the test of years

Would I still love you
Would you still love me
Of course, my love
For all eternity