A Love Letter to Lorraine

Lorraine Large

Her name was Lorraine Large.

Feisty. Independent. Loving. Simple.

Those are the four words I'd use to describe my mother. And if you knew her, you'd nod and say — yeah, that's exactly right.

She raised seven kids on a dairy farm in Wisconsin. She baked bread that made the whole house smell like something holy. She made quilts with her hands. She married young, loved hard, and spent the last nine years of her life without my dad — determined, stubborn, and absolutely refusing to leave her home.

She got her wish. She died at 88, in her own bedroom, with two of her girls beside her.

I was there every single day of the four days it took her to go.

I couldn't not be.

The promise I made to my dad

When my father passed, I made him a promise. I told him I would take care of Mom.

I meant it the way you mean things when someone you love is leaving — completely, without reservation, without fully knowing what it would cost or how long it would last.

I lived .7 miles down the road from her. Close enough that she would call me every morning just so I knew she was awake and okay. Close enough that after Dad died, I moved my CrossFit gym to her farm — partly because it made sense, and partly because I needed to stay close to her. I opened that gym at 5am. And every morning in the dark, I'd glance over at her bedroom window and her bathroom light.

If the light was on, she was okay.

That was love. Not the greeting card kind. The I'm watching your light kind.

The light in the window

What I didn't know until she told me — what made me catch my breath when she said it — was that she was watching for me too.

From the right window in the right room of her house, Mom could see my kitchen light. And in the years after my dad passed, she would check for it before she went to bed. It was her way of connecting with me one last time before she closed her eyes. Her way of knowing I was there.

Neither of us ever said I need to know you're okay. We just left the lights on.

If that isn't the whole story of us, I don't know what is.

What she taught me without knowing she was teaching me

Mom wasn't a woman who sat you down and gave you life lessons. She taught by doing.

She taught me to be strong. To be kind. To help other people even when you don't have much to give.

She also taught me — though she'd never admit it — that you can be hard on the outside and completely soft on the inside at the same time. Mom had a tender heart she didn't always know what to do with. She'd act like she didn't want the fuss. But she did. When you spend your whole life making sure everyone else is okay, sometimes you forget that you're allowed to be someone's favorite person too.

She was mine.

The couch

About a week before she went into the hospital, I came in from coaching — like I always did, to say goodbye for the day, give her a kiss, tell her I loved her. She was lying on the couch.

She looked up at me and said:

"I'm so proud of you. Those people love you."

She was talking about my gym members. About the community I had spent twenty-two years building. About all those 5am mornings showing up for other people.

I think about that moment more than almost any other.

Because she saw me. She always saw me.

And if she were here right now, watching me build this blog, and start over at this stage of life — I know exactly what she'd say.

First she'd tell me she was proud.

And then, because she was Lorraine, she'd look at me sideways and say —

"Must be nice."

What it felt like when she was gone

I don't know how many daughters stay as connected to their mothers as I was to mine. A lot of women go off to college, build their own lives, and the daily thread loosens naturally. Mine never did. And I never wanted it to.

For years my whole heart was organized around one daily question: Is she okay?

In the weeks before she died she needed me constantly. She'd call in the middle of the night. I'd come. And when I got there — sometimes all she needed was someone with her. Just someone there.

I came every time.

And then she was gone.

And I felt like part of me went with her. I had a gym to run. People counting on me. A whole community that needed me to show up. And I did. But inside I was so lost. So without purpose. The person my whole heart had been pointed at for my entire life wasn't there anymore. The morning phone call that told me she was okay — gone. The kitchen light she watched for before bed — no one watching for it anymore.

Grief doesn't always look like crying. Sometimes it looks like going through the motions. Sometimes it looks like not knowing who you are when the most important job you ever had is finished.

Finding my way back

This blog is part of how I'm finding my way back.

I'm not all the way back yet. I want to be honest about that. But I'm on my way. And I think Mom would say that's enough. I think she'd say keep going. And then she'd say something feisty to make sure I didn't get too sentimental about it.

That's the woman she was.

Why I puzzle

Every time I sit down with a puzzle, I feel her.

She loved puzzles in her later years. Now in retirement, so do I. I don't think that's a coincidence. I think it's the way she stays close. The way I stay close to her.

Grief finds the smallest containers and fills them completely. A puzzle. A kitchen light. A Dairy Queen cone on a summer afternoon.

She's in all of it.

What I want you to know about her

If you never met Lorraine Large, here's what I want you to know:

She was prouder of you than she knew how to say. She was softer than she let on. She made bread that smelled like love. She stayed in her home until the very end because she had made up her mind and that was that. She had seven children and one daughter who watched her bedroom window every morning at 5am just to know she was okay — while she, in her own window, watched for her daughter's kitchen light before she went to sleep.

She was the kind of woman who shapes you completely without ever making a speech about it.

I am strong because she was strong. I am kind because she was kind. I show up — for my people, for my community, for myself — because she showed me what it looks like to keep your promises even when it's hard.

This blog is called Things I Swear By.

Mom, you are the thing I swear by most.

If you have a Lorraine in your life — someone who shaped you quietly and completely — I hope you'll tell them. And if she's already gone, I hope you'll tell someone else about her. That's how they stay with us.

That's how we keep showing up.