Mom's fashion embarrassed me as a kid. After she died, her clothes were my most prized keepsakes

This is a First Person column by Melanie Chambers, who lives in Rossland, B.C. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ.

It was just days after my mother died when I saw them on Queen Street West in Toronto — tall white canvas boots patterned with pink and blue donkeys. Mom would have loved these, I thought to myself. They were ridiculous, outrageous and inexplicable — just like her. Showstoppers. I immediately bought the boots and wore them along with a strapless white frilly dress to her backyard memorial. 

But there was a time when my mother's fashion embarrassed me. Like the time I had just finished teaching a class at Western University in London, Ont.; she came to meet me at my local bar wearing an off-the-shoulder sweatshirt with red rhinestones. In front of my friends and the bar's regulars, I called her out. 

"What the hell are you wearing?" 

Her face turned ash white as she looked away. 

"Mel, that was harsh," my friend whispered.

It was harsh. It wasn't the clothes; it was what they represented. 

I was 14 when my parents divorced. After that, my mother and I blossomed at the same time. I got my first boyfriend and went to the movies; she found a younger man with a black Dodge Shelby Charger convertible. 

She'd always been stylish, but post-divorce, her skirts got shorter. Colours became brighter. She was a great mom and adored me. She always tucked me in, brought me home little gifts after work and praised me up and down. But even as a teenager, I felt like her parent.

Getting ready for bed, sometimes I'd hear a honk from below our second-floor apartment window. 

"Hey Linda, get that sexy ass out here." 

It was him. The neighbours shouted from their balconies, telling Mom's boyfriend to shut up while she ran around the apartment like an excited schoolgirl. 

"Help mommy find her lipstick!" 

"Stephanie's mom would never wear that," I told her, silently judging her for not dressing more modestly like my friend's mom as she slid on a bright red blouse that revealed the fringe of her lingerie.