I have always been a doer, a trait I inherited from my mother.

Mom, the oldest child in a large German Catholic farm family, was happiest when she was getting things done. And as the mother of 10 sons and two daughters, she had ample opportunity to do.

From the moment her feet touched the braided rag rug by her bedside each morning, she set out to make the most of each day. That could mean cooking healthy meals for her family or canning the green beans that grew in the family garden.

In later years, it could still mean cooking and canning, but also planning trips with her new husband, whom she married at age 75. Or crocheting afghans as high school graduation presents for her grandchildren or writing them letters when they turned 16, sharing memories of her life as a child growing up during the Depression.

Today she is 87, confined to a wheelchair by a severe stroke with a mind no longer tethered by time. Physically bound, she moves freely through the events of her life, unrestrained by her present circumstances. In that world, she can still be busy hanging laundry in the cool of a summer morning or preparing a big pot of potato soup for a family meal.

When I visit her at the nursing home now, she might offer to make me a cup of tea, even though she hasn't cooked a meal or walked a step in almost five years.

So began this writing several weeks ago. With it, I had planned to talk about inheriting my mother's propensity for getting things done and how now, without children always in my home (my youngest started college last fall), I am trying to slow down and enjoy life in a new way.

A phone call from my brother who lives near my mother in Ohio interrupted my writing, and today this column has a different ending — one I could not have imagined when I began.

"The best laid plans of mice and men ¿," mother often said in her busy life. And so it is with this column.

In late February, following a brief hospitalization for congestive heart failure, Mother died peacefully at the nursing home. I was by her side.

It was Sunday morning, an hour before sunrise, and the moment of her death is crystallized in my mind's eye by the beauty of the surrounding countryside. Through a large picture window, past the empty bird feeders that stood like sentries outside her room, I saw the frost-covered ground and ice-laced branches sparkling in the first light of day; in the east, the sun rose silently in a frozen white sky. It was a surreal moment — cold and barren, yet breathtakingly beautiful.

Today as I write, I feel more fully the bond that binds mother and daughter, of the innumerable ways she and I are alike. In appearance and in manner. In our shared love of literature and writing. In how we managed our homes and our lives. Even in our propensity for getting things done.

Upon returning to Pennsylvania after the funeral, I saw for the first time ever a large flock of robins in a field near our home. I always look for the first robin of spring, as did my mother, for it is a harbinger of warmer days. Growing up, Mother would often call one of her children to a window to see a lone robin in the back yard tugging at a worm. This time, though, there were scores of robins in the field, hundreds, pecking away at the thawing earth.

Mother is gone now, but her spirit is with me in so many ways.

Linda K. Schmitmeyer is a freelance writer living in Middlesex Township. Her e-mail address is lks260@zoominternet.net.