There are three little stories I often tell about my mom. They’re simple, but together they say a lot about who she was—and, I’ve come to realize, about who I’m still trying to be.
When I was 52, she asked me to boil water for coffee. I walked over to the old Chambers gas stove and turned on the flame.
I noticed her head move slightly as something caught her attention. Slowly and deliberately—the way she moved after congestive heart failure had weakened her—she came over to stand beside me.
She leaned in and studied the flame for a moment, her focus as steady as ever. Then she looked at me, and that easy smile I had come to cherish spread across her face. It was her gentle way of teaching—without judgment, without words—just a quiet reminder that I had missed something. Apparently, I hadn’t turned it up high enough.
So yes—at 52, my mother taught me how to boil water.
The second story is about the times I ironed shirts while visiting her. I always set up the ironing board by the big window that looked out over the wooded backyard. That was her favorite room, and she’d usually be sitting nearby.
It became a familiar rhythm between us: I’d start the ironing, and before long, she’d quietly take the iron from me and finish. Her hands were swollen and twisted with arthritis, but they moved so gently over the fabric. I can still see her smoothing out each wrinkle with slow, careful movements.
It’s been five years since she passed, and I think about those moments often. I’ve realized she didn’t actually know more about boiling water or ironing than I did. She just knew more about life.
She carried a calmness that came from knowing she was loved by God. Her peace and quiet confidence made her see things I missed. She noticed the flame because she lived in the moment; I didn’t, because I was too distractqed by everything I couldn’t change. She helped with the ironing not because I needed help, but because she saw that I hadn’t yet learned patience.
Those stories weren’t really about coffee or shirts. They were her way of showing me what it means to live one moment at a time.
In the years since her death, I’ve found myself walking some of the same roads she once traveled. I’ve had heart issues similar to hers and even suffered a heart attack in 2022. In the time since, I’ve dealt with high blood pressure off and on. Then, in May 2025, I survived cancer. Now, I find myself at a crossroads, searching for the peaceful awareness my mom lived with so naturally.
In that search, I came across mindfulness-based therapy, a practice that teaches us to pause and fully experience the present moment instead of being carried away by thoughts of the past or fears of the future. It’s not about emptying the mind or forcing calm—it’s about learning to notice what is happening right now, with gentle curiosity rather than judgment. Mindfulness-based therapy encourages people to become observers of their own thoughts, feelings, and sensations, to recognize them without immediately reacting or labeling them as good or bad.
That’s when these two stories came back to me. That’s when my mom’s lessons finally sank in. Awareness isn’t some mystical, unreachable state. It’s about pausing in the everyday moments. It’s not just seeing the wrinkles in a shirt—it’s taking the time to slow down and truly focus.
I’ll end this essay with a third memory, one that puts an exclamation point on who my mother was and the quiet strength she carried.
Two years after her death, I went to her grave for the second time. It’s on a small hill under a tree. As I approached, I noticed what looked like two worn spots in the grass. My heart pounded with each step, and as I got closer, I understood what I was seeing. The ground was worn because people had stood there—others who loved her, others she had touched. Her spirit was still alive in them.
I stood in those two spots and remembered. I didn’t think about boiling water or ironing shirts. I just felt love, acceptance, and the grace she so easily gave to everyone who knew her.
I invite you to join me on this journey—to seek your own moments of awareness, to listen for the small lessons tucked inside ordinary days, and to discover the peace that comes when you stop chasing meaning and simply begin to notice it.
In loving memory of my mom, Helen Eva Louise Swenson.
