Celebrating My Mother's Life, 26 Years After Her Death

26 years ago on a Friday the 13th, I was at a rehearsal for a Christmas play at Jimmy Swaggart Bible College in Baton Rouge, Louisiana when the Dean of Male Students interrupted us to escort me back to his office. Nothing could have prepared me for that call from my sister, informing me that our mother, Norma Jean "Stormy" Falor, had died.

She was a fighter. She was a crier, She waited tables to put herself through secretary school after dropping out of high school to elope with her sweetheart in the Air Force and then facing the disappointment of divorce It was as a waitress that she met my father. After getting a break to join the steno pool at Toledo Edison, she worked her way up all the way to Executive Secretary to the President. (All while helping my dad produce his Masters thesis.) When John Williamson would fret and fume over corporate difficulties, she would take him by the arm and lead him to the glass walls of his 15th-story office, point to the streets of downtown Toledo below, and say, "Look at all those people walking around down there, Mr. Williamson, just as if the world weren't coming to an end!"

When I was born, the doctor had to inform her of my heart defect, warning her that I might not make it to infancy when surgery would be possible. She looked him in the eye and said, "Bet me!" She made many mistakes, some of which (drinking and smoking) drove me from her home and put her in an early grave. But none of that can ever blot out my admiration of her, my gratitude for all she was and did for me, or the sweet sorrow I feel that she did not live to see me come into my own and lead an extraordinary life.

I've lived more years, now, without her in this world than with her. Yet the memories and the love remain strong. I know she would be proud of me. The occasion of today's anniversary gives me the opportunity to express publicly, "I'm proud of you, Mom and I celebrate the brief, dazzling spark that was your life."