Today is Mother’s Day, the ninth since my mom died. She’s in my thoughts often, but especially in May. Her birthday is eight days away as I write this, and as the weather gets warmer every year around this time, I’m reminded of 2006, when she left home for the hospital in April and never went back home. She died that July.

It’s easy on sad days to get drawn into remembering the end, but it’s heartwarming and a comfort when I remember funny stories (she had a sneaky kind of humor, and sarcasm), or I recall the details of moments perhaps a bit out of character (or so it seemed at the time).

One night when I was young, as she was preparing to cook dinner, she dropped a pot or pan on the floor, and — unaware that I had come into the room, behind her — she blurted out a single word in frustration. Then, realizing I was there, she said more softly, “I mean ‘shoot.’ ”

After my father died, my mom didn’t date, and as far as I know, she never seriously considered it. If she ever commented on a man’s attractiveness, I don’t remember it. “Handsome” would have been the extent of it, I suppose. So I was tickled when, about a decade after my dad’s death, I visited my mom as she was watching “Pretty Woman” on television, and there was a mention of sharp-dressed Richard Gere. “He looks very mature,” my mom said, perhaps comparing his appearance to how he looked earlier in his career, such as in “An Officer and a Gentleman.” (Sidebar: My mother said “mature” with a hard “t” rather than pronouncing it “machure.” She also liked to say “sharp” in reference to a man’s attire, especially if she had bought me an item of clothing and thought it looked nice on me.)

I’m not sure how long it took me to realize it, but it dawned on me that “he looks very mature” was the closest my mom could come to saying, “Oh, he’s hot.”

Favorite expressions of hers pop into my head on occasion.

• “Cute, Helen.” (if she made a mistake or did something clumsy)
• “You don’t have to be a fashion plate, but if you dress nice, you feel better.”
• “I’m going to come back and pinch your toes while you’re sleeping.” (her planned notification system in the afterlife for telling me to straighten up and fly right)

For her funeral, we made a booklet with photos and essays about her written by her lone surviving brother, her son, daughters and grandchildren. On the back inside cover, we compiled a list of fast facts, mom trivia, if you will.

Ten things you might not know about Helen
(a list for the Queen of Lists)

1. She used to bowl every Thursday morning at Recreation Lanes in Lake Charles.
2. She wasn’t sure how to spell Bourré (BOO-ray), but she sure knew how to play it.
3. She could not back her car out of the driveway in a straight line.
4. Her favorite movie was “Regarding Henry.”
5. English was her second language (Cajun French was her first).
6. She had you over a barrel if she knew your reward was a bowl of her gumbo or chili.
7. She could sing “La Marseillaise,” the French national anthem.
8. The small scar on her right cheek was a souvenir from a fall at the Astrodome.
9. In her hands, a camera was a lethal weapon. Try as she might to take the perfect picture, she would invariably cut off everyone’s head.
10. In February (2006), celebrating what she and her family thought was a lymphoma-free diagnosis and a relatively clean bill of health, she treated her daughters and herself to a weekend in Las Vegas, staying up until the wee hours playing penny slots, catching shows and eating breakfast way past her bedtime.

Before the last months of her life and her struggles in the hospital, one of the most powerful moments I had with her was when she was in a different hospital for a different reason — waiting in the emergency room for someone to come and help me as I suffered with excruciating back pain. That I was in a wheelchair wasn’t helping, as sitting was the worst position I could be in at the time. As time dragged on, and the pain got worse, and nobody came to help, I saw the tears well up in her eyes, and the look on her face told me that she loved me and cared for me more than I could imagine anyone loving and caring for someone.

It was more than a decade later that I stood by her hospital bed, several years before she died, as she recovered from heart-valve replacement surgery. I happened to be there when they brought her food, and because she couldn’t eat without help, I found myself, for the first and only time in my life, feeding her. It didn’t seem real, the reverse of all of those times she sat at my bedside when I was a child and fed me cough syrup or some other medicine, hoping I’d get well. There was almost so much at once to wrap my mind around, I had to remind myself to keep feeding her instead of becoming lost in my thoughts and attempts to get a handle on the moment.

As I think about that and about her today, I hope that despite my struggle to live up to my responsibility, she could see something in the look in my face approximating what I saw years earlier from that hospital wheelchair, and that she would know how much I loved her.

Happy Mother’s Day, mom.