On 3/5/22, My Mother, Patricia Rose Brown Nelson, passed on from this life.
To call her the matriarch doesn’t scratch the surface of her complexity or what she means to our family.
A Mother and a wife of 49 years, she was a homemaker, a teacher, an artist and a loyal friend to anyone who was a friend to her.
A natural at almost everything she tried, yet she never did anything halfway. She followed her curiosity and made things for the enjoyment of it. She knit blankets for all of her children and grand children. She made halloween costumes from scratch. She wove baskets and made stain glass sculptures. She was a gardener and always had plants in the house, some that were older than her kids. She was the editor of her High School Yearbook in the year 1969. She liked to ski, hike, swim and play tennis.
She did all this while working full time. First at the Poughkeepsie Journal, then as a preschool teacher at the YWCA, and later at Cross Court Tennis Club, yet still found time to be a mother to my sister and I, while taking care of 2 dogs, 6 cats and my father.
She was fierce, selfless, kind and unbelievably strong willed. She sacrificed herself for her children.
She was the greatest Mother a kid could ever ask for and I just hope she knew that.
There is nothing I can say that will explain what this woman means to me. So much of who I am is because of her.
I love you Mom.
