Today is my mother’s 100^th birthday. However, she’s not here to enjoy it. In fact, I doubt that she would be enjoying it even if she were here. So far as I know, being 100 years old was never on my mother’s bucket list. She only made it about three-quarters of the way.

Although she never said it in so many words, I think mother’s concept of life was not so much in its length, but in its impact. She spent much of her life making things better for others, both in the family and out. It wasn’t a campaign. She didn’t start a foundation. Nor did she look for credit or praise. As I’ve noted before, her formula was simple: see a problem; solve it.

But today, for some reason, my mind is locked onto what about her made it to her 100^th birthday.

Maybe it’s because of my own advanced age, but I have this vision of some part of us living long after we’re gone. Part of it’s genetic, but I think there’s another, equally important part that rubs off on us as we’re around people who are important to us. Sort of like cat dander, but without the ill effects.

With mother, these things are pretty easy to identify.

For instance, mother had no use for things that made people’s lives more difficult. So far as I knew, she never blew her car horn in traffic, nor was she haughty in her interactions with others. It wasn’t that she was particularly humble. Humility and pride were not the poles between which her actions fell. I believe respect and disrespect were, and she stayed very heavily on the side of respect.

In Mother’s worldview, respect was not earned; it was not some sort of wage a superior person paid to an inferior one for living up to the former’s standards. A person was accorded respect simply because he or she was a person.

That made life much less complex for her.

Toward the end of her life, in the last job she held, she was a teacher’s aide in a school for developmentally disabled children. For her charges, the present was difficult, and the future, so far as their accomplishments were concerned, was essentially nonexistent. According to her job description, her job was to convey them from school to home in the school bus she drove and help the teacher help them in class. But she went far beyond her job description.

If she saw one of her students needed something, she would do her best to see that the student got it. And one of the things that all of us knew was that you spoke of her students only with respect. It was easy to remember since we were taught that that was true of everyone.

The idea that everyone deserves respect is something I’ve carried down from my parents, and I hope we’ve instilled it in our children and they in theirs. It’s just one thing. Probably one among many. But it’s important.

Had mother lived to be a hundred, I don’t think her print on the lives of her sons would have been any greater. And maybe that’s what each of us, instead of years, riches, and privilege, should strive for.

Happy birthday, Mom!