"My Mom's With Me"
By MaryLee Smith

She died three years ago, but she'll always be with me. I have a locket with a bit of her old gray hair. I have her glow in the dark rosary that she prayed on, in the back seat of our Buick, everytime my Dad drove from New York to Florida. I have tender memories of her love and devotion to me when, as a child, I was dying of pneumonia, and she nurtured me. I have her Irish spirit, for in the most dismal of times, I never give up. I have her, in her Grandson, when we go out sailing, and he pours a beer, which she dearly loved, into the Pacific, for her.