It’s been a long time since my mother passed away. Yet, I miss her more each year.

I was listening to a panel discussion on talk radio about the ongoing influence our mothers have on us.

One panelist said she doesn’t think we can ever fully appreciate our mother until she is gone. The passage of time is what gives us true perspective, she said.

I sure can relate to that.

When we were kids my brother and I viewed our mother as “the enforcer.”

We thought about how unfair it was that we had the meanest mom. I kept telling my mom about everybody else’s mother.

Everybody else’s mother didn’t make her kids scrub the porch every single Saturday.

Everybody else’s mother didn’t say their kids couldn’t go outside to play with friends until they did their daily chores.

I had assigned chores every day. My mother said I would thank her some day for teaching me responsibility. What bothered me more was my unreasonable curfew. When I was in high school I had to be home from school dances at 9, while my friends could stay until the end.

Even after I graduated I had an 11 p.m. curfew. My mother said there was no reason for me to run around all night.

Back then when I got together with my friends everyone smoked. Everyone except me, that is.

When friends kept encouraging me to smoke one of their cigarettes I said I couldn’t because “my mother would kill me” if she smelled smoke on me.

In years to come I was so happy I had a strict mother. But I don’t think I ever thanked her for keeping me grounded and safe.

If there’s anything I regret in life it’s that I never gave my mother the credit she deserved.

Sure, she was my mother and I loved her. But we weren’t an affectionate family. Our love for each other was taken for granted, but we sure as heck didn’t express it.

While my mother showed she loved us by everything she did, no one ever said I love you.

When I married and had children of my own it still bothered me that my mother never verbally shared love and affection.

I made sure I often told my children how much I loved them and how special I thought they were.

But I never told me mother how much I admired her. It just wasn’t what we did in our family.

A while back I told readers the story of how I broke the ice with my mother and was finally able to talk with her about love and affection.

It took giving her a plastic blue kangaroo that said I love you. She smiled when she saw it but she didn’t comment about it until I opened up and said THE WORDS. I told her I loved her.

She said, “I know that.”

I learned that she never heard words of affection growing up. Quite the opposite.

There’s an old expression that says, “One cannot give what one does not have.”

My mother never received words of affection so she never learned to verbally express feelings.

After our talk when I gave her the blue plastic kangaroo we did start to say I love you. But it wasn’t often and she seemed awkward when she said it.

A mother’s role is one of the most influential, continuing to affect us long after she is gone.

Erma Bombeck used to tell mothers struggling with raising their children not to fret over difficulties. She told mothers that when they die they will become saints in the eyes of children.

I found that to be true with my own mother.

When Mom was alive I used to think we were opposites in almost everything. Funny though, now I find myself like my mother in so many ways.

How does that happen?

My brother and I often talk about how our financial habits are definitely influenced by my mother.

She taught us it isn’t how much you make that’s important, it’s how much you save.

One of her favorite sayings was if you were careful not to waste a penny the big things would take of themselves.

I don’t know how my mother was so financially astute. She only had a grade school education and never had anyone to teach her.

My brother is right when he says we owe a big debt to our mother.

I’ve spent decades writing hundreds of stories about special people. But never once did I think about doing a story about the extraordinary woman who raised me.

Never once did I tell her how much I admired her emotional strength.

It stands as my biggest regret in life.

When my father left my mother must have been terrified. She had no job, no money, no home. Not even a car.

I remember how she had to support us by working in a dress factory during the day and as a waitress at night.

It was a tough life but never once did she complain. She just did what had to be done.

That was her enduring legacy to me. When things are tough don’t complain. Just do what has to be done.

I will always be grateful for the woman I was proud to call Mom.

Email Pattie Mihalik at newsgirl@comcast.net