Follow courageous Moms Ky KALYN SKCKETAN "I sat with Mom as she died, both knowing the end was near. "She was calm and relaxed and once in a while a tear. "She turned to me telling me in her eyes, but what she had to say, came as no surprise. "I have to die, she said to my sister and I, I love you, all of you. "It was not hard to cry." I'll never forget that moment, the love and courage I felt from my mother was a strength which could never be taught in any other way. There is a bond in a family that gives you someone to live for, to achieve for. It is a powerful force. My mother waited that day, several hours until she had seen every one of her six children. There was so much to live for, she had put up a long fight. A husband, her children and 22 grandchildren. Mother had been living on a cliff for a long time suffering with leukemia. Her body had required 24G pints of blood and she did not waste a lot of time feeling sorry for herself. She made friends with many on that hospital staff. One nurse said, "Your mom has helped us so much. She is at peace with herself and her maker." In all of the suffering, my brothers and sisters with their families pitched in to relieve the suffering, helping out at the family business, bringing dinners, arranging for blood and visiting mom and helping keep up the home. On Mother's Day 1977 we were preparing for our mother's funeral. She died on May 6 and was surrounded by beautiful flowers. In thinking of her strength and courage I couldn't help but think of other courageous mothers. She came from a long line of them. Her mother was left alone with a family of 10 children on her 23rd anniversary, the youngest child nine months old. She raised one of the best gardens .in Cedar Fort, enough for her family and to share with others. She raised a grandchild and took in others at times when they needed a home. She, too, was called horn by Heavenly Father at Mother's Day time. My grandmother's mother was a pioneer who left her home to come to Utah. She lost her mother in Ohio as they were coming across the plains. Seeing her mother buried was too much for her to bear. It was evening before she was missed and the scouts went back to where the young mother was buried and there was my great-grandmother great-grandmother lying on the grave. She couldn't bear to leave her mother. That mother buried on the plains ' had lost her husband just a short time before and was coming west so her posterity could be free from persecution. When ' you think of all the sacrifices, you realize the responsibility that you have to the mothers of the past. All of our mom's have sacrificed in the past and left us a pattern of love, courage and service. The joy in life comes from having someone to do for. Yes, Mother's Day does have many memories of our moms because my mother-in-law also passed away on May 6, five years after my mom's death. She was a woman who left Utah in a covered wagon as a baby to settle in Canada. They spent the winter in Idaho in a covered wagon so the trip took several months. She compared her trip in the covered wagon to the two hour flights to Canada in her later life.