All I can say is, if ever you had the opportunity to be a child (or grandchild) in the good graces of Irene Malanowski, take the job. In all my life, I never doubted my mother’s love, and I do not think it is at all a debatable proposition that for the first 15 or 16 years of my life–and what are we, if not the first 15 or 16 years of our life?–she was the most significant figure in my development. Loving, ambitious, striving, exacting–she invested a tremendous amount in the hopes and dreams she had for her children, and especially me. This came at some cost to her and to my father, but it worked. A lot of what I think is best about me was launched by my mom. Would I have become a writer if I hadn’t set close to her day after day, listening to her read about the heroes of the Civil War?
It no doubt came as a great surprise to her that after she sent her creation off to college, he never returned. When I thought about it years later, it came as a surprise to me as well. It might have been very nice if it had worked out otherwise, but it didn’t. I don’t feel guilty about that, but I am 
sorry that it must have caused mom some hurt, and there were some years of awkwardness. Things improved tremendously after she became a grandmother. She was very good at that, and when I saw her with my kids, I saw what she must have been like as a young mother, and tried to live up to that ideal.
I miss my mom, but truth be told, I have been missing her for several years. The dementia that destroyed her personality and her mind was a progressive disease, and once it too hold of mom, she was never the same. Although we made many efforts in the last few years to show mom how much we loved her, and how much she meant to us, it seemed that this remorseless, insidious disease prevented those efforts from being recognized. My grief is lodged there, and I do not think it will soon dissipate.
As mom’s dying and death reminds us: there is only one day we have guaranteed. Make the best of it.