Meet My Mom by Cherrie Newman Dyer

Meet my Mom

By Cherrie Newman Dyer 

The only thing I didn’t like about her was he name … Dora Wandrella … (named after her mom, Wandrella) … I think it sounded like one of Cinderella’s step-sisters … Well, she was a ‘small cry’ for that … she was very sweet … in fact if she had lived she would be 100 this June 23^rd. However her life was cut short by a heart operation that went awry … and she died 10 days after the operation. The calcium that they took away from her heart .. a piece escaped and went to her brain .. and had she lived she would not be able to walk or talk. So she died at age 62 … the older I get the younger that seems. Her patriarchal blessing said she would live a long life!!! I didn’t think 62 was a long life but my sister Dianne said that with a  bad heart that was a comfort to her … tan she would be able to raise her children. She died when my little brother was 19 and in the mission training center. 

My Mom loved to cook. My brother Jay said he loved her cookie sheet filled with hot cinnamon rolls. I remember her spending all day making 6 or 7 pies … and my  brothers bringing home a friend … cut a pie in half … loading it with ice cream and eating the whole pie!!!

I don’t remember Mom ever getting mad. I remember her getting perturbed, when my brothers teased her. My brother Jay said the only time he remembers her being mad is when he fed the neighbors big dog a whole package of Hot Dogs that Mom was planning to have for dinner. I don’t recall Mom ever saying a bad thing about anybody. The closest think I remember her saying when she was Relief Society President was that Sister Herzog was kind of ‘different’.

My Mom’s homemade rolls would melt in your mouth. She never seemed tired of cooking.

She did get an ulcer when she was President of the Relief Society. I think it was from trying to keep ‘peace’ among the sisters. A counselor in the Relief Society said Mam always had an excuse for every one.

I feel bad that many of her 27 grandchildren didn’t get a chance to really know her!!!  Because to know her was to love her.