MOTHERS DAY FEATURE – It was well into the night when I got the call, “your mother has been injured. She is being life flighted to the hospital and should arrive in about 20 minutes.”

I rushed to the hospital just in time to see them wheeling my mom into a room. Her leg was broken, but broken wasn’t really the right word for it, more like pulverized  – the bone turned to dust.

She had been getting in great shape, my mom, preparing for a hike to Havasupai, Arizona. She was more fit than I can recollect, then one misstep off a boat at Lake Powell and it was all over.

It would take several reconstructive surgeries, nine pins and plenty of physical therapy to set her leg right, or as right as it will ever be. Even still, it pains her to walk.

Though the leg break was certainly the worst, it was by no means the first.

One time we were out hiking and she slipped and broke her arm. One time she tripped on a shopping cart and broke her toe. Another time she was riding her bike and fell, broke her arm … again.

That’s my mom, always broken, not exactly a klutz but not exactly graceful either. Except for where it counts.

When I was nine she went through a divorce that would break anyone; an adulterous husband, a move across state, and a new reality that she was now a single mom of three.

When I was 13, her own mother passed away and though I am sure a part of her died too, she did not break, not in front of us.

And even though she has suffered disappointments both large and small at the hands of her own children (sorry, Mom), she got up every single time, veritably unscathed, with a heart more full and more ready to love.

She has handled the trials of her life with the grace and skill of a ballerina and while her body has been broken her spirit never has.

That is my real mom, unbreakable.

Submitted by St. George News Reporter Hollie Reina

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