This morning my mother, aka PlaneMom, passed away. She was 84 years old, and she and my father marked their 65th wedding anniversary just two weeks ago, on June 20.

As many of you are aware, this has been a very long downhill struggle. But my mother never gave up the fight. I don’t know if I could have or would have done the same.

While it is hard to let her go, I am relieved that she is now in a much better place than she was.

The image here is what we are going to use on the announcements concerning her memorial service. It is a hand colored rendition of a photograph I took of her last year. This was one of the last times that she was able to come home. It was Easter. And I gave her the hat and told her I wanted to take her picture. The thought of looking “festive” and having her picture taken seemed to brighten up her day.

Mom was an artist. A pretty good one. And when her arthritis got so bad she could no longer hold a paint brush, she became a photographer.

And she was a pretty good photographer too.

No surprise then that she was always the one pushing me to do creative things. When I was five years old, she would let me make “creations” in the kitchen. Flour, food coloring, bread, jello, whatever would go into these concoctions, which she would dutifully let remain in the refrigerator for at least a week — before she threw them out. This, of course, after she had cleaned up the mess in the kitchen I would invariably create as part of my “cooking” process.

She loved hot air ballooning (compliments of my brother), Sedona, and the Jersey shore, where she grew up, and where I was born.

And she always had a flair for the dramatic. Hence, I’m not surprised she died this morning, July 4th.

I’ll miss you Mom.