Dec 22 2008 I said my last goodbyes to my mother Patti.She had battled Lymphoma for a long time and defeated it on Thanksgiving Day 2008..She was a soldier,a warrior of her own long haul road not just in battle with the elements,she was fighting for her life..Her victory was short lived

when a massive heart attack took this beautiful couragious woman's life just days before Christmas

  I would have to say that her voice was heard many times by other drivers I have met on the road

who I had become friends with running into every now and then.Those drivers would count on her wisdom and listened closely to her while i put her on speaker phone sitting at a Petro or some other greasy spoon with the boys.She taught them that sitting and venting about waiting for a load

or simply being taken off your home run was our call of duty.She always said that our loss could possibly be a brand new drivers chance to get home and see his sweetheart and little one who was crying for him,and that driver getting to go home may have just decided he was going to stick with it instead of saying that Trucking was not for him...You have to admit..We lose many drivers that way.

 

I took my mother on a few short hauls that I had every now and then to make some extra cash on my off days running usually into Canada to pick up Carrots or Beets.This woman my mother was

in total awe of the powerful machine her son had full control of from the moment I helped her climb on up.She would sit and play with the seat like a little child raising,and lowering it again and again.It was really funny how she would get on the CB and tell the other drivers to watch their mouths because she was a mom and knew theirs would be greatly disappointed if they heard them talk that way..The drivers response back was usually.."sorry mam..no disrespect intended"

 

My mother volunteered a lot of her time helping out at pre schools for less fortunate neighborhoods and regularly had me drive on up and let the children check it out..She would sit in the drivers seat and lay on the airhorn giving these children a little spook of delight and she loved to see the look on their faces.She was proud to be the mom of a trucker and it showed

often defending us when others would say we were dangerous..She would say "how the hell else would you have food clothes or furnature in your house..They deliver it.

 

This is in memory of Patti Tillery, A proud truckers mom

 

Written by James Tillery her son