Her Legacy of Love

Five years ago today, we were getting ready to make the long drive to Cleveland, OH to say goodbye to one of the most important people in my husband’s life. His mother had passed away the day before and we were make preparations to make the trek to celebrate her life.

So, here we are five years later and I have such bittersweet emotions. I am deeply saddened that she is no longer with us. I know that each one of her children are, too. However, I am relieved because I know that she is no longer suffering from the havoc that Huntington’s Disease caused on her body. I feel so bad for Robert, Debbie, Craig, Bill and Kevin because they no longer have their mother in their lives. They no longer get to call her up and share the joys of their lives with her. But, I am happy because she spent her days shaping each one of them in to the wonderful sons and daughter they are today. I hate that we lost her – and many others – way too soon to this dreadful disease. I am hopeful though because I know we are one step closer to finding a cure for this disease that rips apart so many families.

Above all else, I am so grateful for this wonderful woman that I only had the opportunity to spend time with on four occasions in the six years that I got to know her. Our time together was short. She was already showing the effects of Huntington’s Disease when I met her. She could only talk and carry on a conversation the first time I saw her. And even then, it was more like talking to a two year old where she only said a few words instead of full sentences. What I remember about those conversations is what she would say – almost on repeat – to Robert several times a day.

She constantly told him “I love you”. Even when she couldn’t say much, she worked hard to say those words and to let him know that he was loved. That is the legacy that she left behind that still resounds today. Above all else, she loved her children dearly. They meant the world to her and she made sure they knew that. Ask any one of them, and they can share story after story about the loving, thoughtful things she did for them. 

There is a saying that the legacy you leave behind is the life you live lead today. The life that Cheryl Everett lived was a life of love of her family. That is the legacy that lives on today. Nobody that had the opportunity to have her as a part of her life would ever question her love for them.  So, that is what I choose to remember about her today – that legacy of love that she left with every one of her children, her grandchildren, her sister, her brother and every other person she came in touch with. Remembering that makes me happy because I had the opportunity to spend a few moments with her and experience that love for myself.

It’s been five years since she stopped suffering. That doesn’t mean we aren’t still saddened or that we have stopped missing her, but it does get a little easier each day. Her legacy of love lives on and I see each and every day in her children.