My dental hygentist lost her mother to cancer in August. Her mother happened to be a first grade teacher at the school my kids attend.  I knew her mom and liked her.  As I sat in the chair having my teeth cleaned, my twenty four year old hygenist was telling me about her mom's rapid decline, diagnosed in February, dead in early August. She spoke with love and compassion.  She expressed real happiness that her mother left this earth in the way she wanted to, lucid enough until her final days to make her wishes known.  She told me of her mom's final days at home, how she and her sisters made and shared breakfast each day, knowing meals they would have with their mother wouldn't last forever. She commented on understanding a mother's love, but backwards.  How the motivation for all the caregiving, cooking, cleaning her mother (and everyone else's?) had done over the years now became clear to her.  Listening to this twenty four year old woman explain that she and her sisters wanted to cook and clean for their sick mother, too weak to unload the dishwasher. The essence of motherhood is love.  Now, caring for her own mom, she was getting a peek into the deep love a mother feels for her family.  We work tirelessly, cooking, cleaning and caregiving because we love our family and want them to be happy and comfortable. Forced into a role reversal of sorts by her mother's illness, this lovely young lady and her sisters cared lovingly for their mother when she wasn't able to care for herself, because they loved her and they wanted her to be comfortable in her final weeks.  I listened to her explain this to me, my mouth packed with gauze, tears streaming down my face. We had a little chuckle that she was composed and I wasn't, not at all, as she shared her story.  My hope ? That everytime I feel overwhelmed by housework and caregiving, I remember this story and hope I am laying the groundwork for my family to see love is the reason behind the things we do.  I am going to try to remember as I care for my family, that some families don't have their mothers to cook and clean.  I am going to try to honor the memory of my hygenist's mom, a great teacher and mother, by finding joy in the daily work of running my family, being grateful that I am here to do it.