Before my mother died in February last year she said to me, “I know you’re destined to great things with your life. Just don’t go off and forget about your momma.” And I remember those words like a city remembers a tornado. They were devastating and important. Devastating because it made me realize they were all counting on me for something, and important because they reminded me about how this whole process in college has been wholly reliant on the sacrifices they were all willing to make.

During my sophomore year, my parents announced to my sister and me that they would be splitting up. This decision blindsided me and cast us into a world filled with chaos beyond our wildest dreams.

Soon after they made this announcement, my mother moved out of the home we’d lived in for 10 years and into an apartment. And I say apartment quite liberally here. The place was actually a shack with walls made of plywood and no insulation. My mother was disabled and wasn’t able to work, and her transition to this place was tragically juxtaposed to my own move into Ridgecrest South. Who was I to deserve the University’s most luxurious dorms when the place my mother lived didn’t even have real walls?

I decided to go home for the summer after sophomore year, and despite being embarrassed through and through of this place my mother was living, I chose to stay with her. When I got home that summer, I found out that money had gotten so tight back in Marbury that she was relying on food stamps to be able to feed my sisters and her. And then, I immediately felt guilty for all the time I spent complaining about Lakeside’s dining options.

But even though money was scarce, my mother paid for the gas for me to drive to and from the congressman’s office in Montgomery who I was interning for that summer. I told her how it was necessary and important, and realizing how pertinent I felt this opportunity was, she made sacrifices so that I could do it.

After I returned to the Capstone the following fall, my dad’s hours were being cut at work so I tried not to burden them with my need for financial assistance. For weeks I would eat only one package of ramen noodles a day and sometimes I would just go without because I realized the amazing sacrifices they were all making for me to be here and do the things that I wanted to do.

Some of these events, no doubt, probably would have happened anyway regardless of where I was or what I was doing. But I was here. And I was learning about Plato, Machiavelli and human rights, but more importantly, I was also learning that life has an implacable way of moving on regardless of your crushed dreams or broken hearts. And I saw that even in the toughest times my family was willing to make amazing sacrifices for my education.

I write this not because I feel that I have some great wisdom to bestow upon the underclassmen here at UA, but because I think it’s important to realize that you cannot honor me without honoring my mother and my family. So as the University of Alabama honors my colleagues and me in the graduating class of 2012 on May 5, I want to congratulate and thank my mom, my dad, my sister, aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents. We did it. Congratulations.

Michael Patrick is a senior majoring in political science. This is his final column.