I learned a great lesson from my mother on her deathbed. She counseled me on the importance of taking care of myself so I wouldn't end up in an unhealthy body like she did.
My father passed away after three years of debilitating disease, which transformed a very strong and bright man into a real wreck. And that is hard. You have to get out of that stronger, if you can, which I was lucky to be able to. I was the eldest of the family, and I had to support my mother and help my brothers.
I'm a strange mixture of my mother's curiosity; my father, who grew up the son of the manse in a Presbyterian family, who had a tremendous sense of duty and responsibility; and my mother's father, who was always in trouble with gambling debts.
My mother was a very talented pianist, and she was a music teacher who hated to teach music, actually, but she loved to play, so I was brought up with Chopin, Debussy and Mozart.
My mother fought cancer for almost a decade and died at 56. She held out long enough to meet the first of her grandchildren and to hold them in her arms. But my other children will never have the chance to know her and experience how loving and gracious she was.
To turn our hearts to our fathers is to search out the names of our deceased ancestors and to perform the saving ordinances in the temple for them. This will forge a continuous chain between us and our forefathers eventually all the way back to Father Adam and Mother Eve.
In my own life, I find myself doing some task - driving or playing golf - and having a conversation with my mother or father, who are both deceased. I don't know if that means I'm mentally ill, but I suspect lots of people do it. And when I hold that conversation, different images of my parents appear to me.
Don't be fooled. Looks can be deceptive. Like every working mother, I'm paddling away like a duck beneath the water.
My mother had no end of tragedy in her life. She would make herself get up and take a deep breath and go out and do laundry. Hang up sheets.
I love babies. I also have this very deep desire to become a mother. I always thought that motherhood was my highest calling.
Somewhere deep inside me was the will and determination not only to live, but to be a more present mother for my kids, instead of one who was emotionally unavailable because she was in so much pain, as my own mother was.
I grew up one of six children with working-class parents in the Deep South. My mother was a college librarian, and my father worked in a shipyard. I never saw them balance a checkbook, but they kept a roof over our heads and got all six of us into college.
As a little girl growing up in the Deep South, my mother told me that my future lay in my education. And she was right.
When I was growing up, my mother used to say, 'Don't ever bring no nappy-head Black girl to my house.' In the deep South in the '50s, '60s and '70s, the shade of your Blackness was considered important. So I, unfortunately, grew up hearing that message.
My father wasn't around when I was a kid, and I used to always say, 'Why me? Why don't I have a father? Why isn't he around? Why did he leave my mother?' But as I got older I looked deeper and thought, 'I don't know what my father was going through, but if he was around all the time, would I be who I am today?'
A mother defends herself with a heart filled with love before doing so with words. I wonder whether there is any love for the church in the hearts of those who pay so much attention to the scandals.
I chose to embrace the spirit of my mother, who, though she had too many of her own dreams denied, deferred, and destroyed, she still instilled in me, her child, that I could have dreams and that I did have a responsibility and the power.
My mother's death was the defining moment of my life.
My most defining moment was the death of my mother.
My mother was born in Wilmington, Delaware. She's a U.S. citizen, so I'm a U.S. citizen.
