When I was three, my biological mother died of leukemia. She was diagnosed with the disease soon after I was born. What a change it must have been for her to shift from the joy of my birth to the reality of death. My most vivid memory of her was a day we spent at home alone together. She was in bed and unable to get up. My dad was at work and my brother was in school. With a big smile I remember to this day, she asked me to make lunch. I felt loved and trusted as I went to the kitchen. Of course, I made the only lunch a 3-year old knows how to make: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and a glass of milk. I carried the lunch up the stairs to the bedroom on a tray, being careful not to spill the milk.

My mom and I talked as we ate lunch on the edge of her bed. I do not recall what she said to me or what I said to her, but I do remember that she spoke softly and lovingly, smiled as she listened to me, and looked beautiful. She wanted nothing from me. Instead she gave me the awesome gift of unconditional love despite her exhaustion. She died soon after that day, and that lunch is my last remembrance of her. It is a picture I treasure as the most vibrant and perfect love I have ever experienced. Her life may have ended, but her love is alive today.

Love is motherly trait. Unconditional love is, however, a choice. Facing the dragon of death, my mother chose to give love freely. There were other choices. She could have told me how sad she was for dying so young, her remorse for mistakes she may have made, her need for compassion, or grief for the events in my life that she would miss. Maybe she felt all of those feelings while we were eating lunch. Such feelings would have been normal. But if she felt those feelings, she did not communicate them to me.

Unconditional love is brave. It knows no boundaries and no fear, even the fear of death itself. Unconditional love does not possess others, nor will it be possessed. Unconditional love is its own reward, sufficient unto itself. I am sure my mother's last minutes on earth were filled with great joy because she invested them in unconditional love.

Unconditional love is courageous. It conquers every
challenge and every fear, and expects nothing in return.