My most FAQ has changed over the course of the last year.

It is no longer do you miss working at The Robesonian (the work, no, the people, a lot), how are you hitting it (surprisingly well, all things considered), or how is the back (kind of like the weather, anywhere from blue sky to hail).

Instead, the most FAQ is: How is your mother doing?

The query comes mostly from the dwindling number of friends my folks made during 32 years of calling this county home who know her as Tiger; my childhood friends who adored her welcoming and permissive nature as a den mother in the Tanglewood family; and from more casual acquaintances who know she lost her first born on April 29 last year and her companion of 71 years, husband of 69, on June 15 – deaths that sandwiched Mother’s Day.

With Mother’s Day on the doorstep and understanding that many of those asking this question read this column, I figured I would use this space for an update but also to brag on my 89-year-old mom, Joyce Strother Douglas.

“Amazing,” I say, “and I really do not understand it.”

My siblings and I back in the day would on occasion discuss which of our parents we would lose first, and how the survivor would manage life afterward. I was convinced my dad, who was in remarkably good health until pancreatic cancer took him in a blink, would outlive my mother, whose mind is crystal clear but who has battled physical challenges.

We all agreed Mom would do better without Dad than Dad would have done without Mom – and there is evidence daily that theory was correct. My dad could do almost anything, except provide for himself, which he farmed out to my mother as part of the marriage contract they hatched in 1954.

My mother lives in an independent facility in Raleigh, near my sister Terryn and her husband Bill, and her grandson Paul and his wife Brooke, who share doting duties. She has made a bevy of new friends at the facility, people with whom she spends time playing bridge and mahjong, games she plays better than most. She has become a de facto instructor who is long on knowledge but short on patience.

On this, do not get her started.

She spends time doing puzzles, and too much time watching television news and screaming at the TV, saddened by what she sees as a nation in a freefall. My suggestion is to change the channel, the problems are not hers, but she worries about what kind of world she will be leaving those who share her genes.

It is what most occupies her mind, how she can make better the lives not necessarily of her children, whose paths are paved, but grandchildren and great-grandchildren still charting theirs.

I call her often, ask what she is doing, and frequently she will answer, “Talking to your dad.”

She often talks to a portrait of my dad positioned beside the couch; she does the talking, he sits in silence, so in that respect, not much has changed.

She says she is content with her life but allows that the happiness that she enjoyed with my father is gone and cannot be recaptured. She is grateful for a good life, and with her mother having lived to 102, has no plans beyond living some more.

To all who have asked, thanks for caring.

And to you mom: You are loved. You are needed. We are inspired by your strength.

And happy Mother’s Day.