How would you have ended it?

Assuming we all agree that the ending was executed rather poorly, how would you change it?

1. Would you have the mother alive at the end, or stick with her death and have him end up with Robin as the show did (just change the way they did it?)

2. If she's alive, how would you have ended the finale in a satisfying way? If she's dead, how would you fixed the finale/final season in a way which doesn't make it a slap in the face?

3. If she's dead, how would you have dealt with Robin and Barney's divorce?

4. Would you have told a different ending altogether?

5. Would you make Ted meet Tracy earlier so we wouldn't have to sit through an entire season at the wedding?

Just curious on everyone's thoughts. I personally am fine with Ted going after Robin, but because they cemented Robin and Barney together, that kind of makes it impossible as far as I'm concerned when it comes to satisfying storytelling, so I would have kept the Barnstormer and the Canuck together. Because of this, I would have kept the mother alive. Or maybe, she's sick and it's possible she could die by the end of the story. BUT, then it wouldn't make sense for the kids to be annoyed to listen to this. So maybe she's just alive and it's one of those "The Journey is what matters" kind of shows. The more I think about it, the more I feel as if there wouldn't have been any truly satisfying endings.

Basically, the writers wrote themselves into A LOT OF CORNERS during the course of the show with the directions they pushed characters. If they wanted Ted to end up with Robin, then her marrying Barney was a huge blunder on the writers' part, and having their wedding take up an entire season was a INSURMOUNTABLE blunder to this end. Also, since every last iota of Barney's development was thrown out the window in 3 seconds flat, and then he is given a brand new development that enjoys a COMPLETE ARC, also in 3 seconds flat, instead of him going after Robin, they would have been better of giving him a kid to begin with, or just forgetting that altogether and letting Barney remain the one static character in the show. We loved Barney; he didn't NEED to have a complete character arc. He was just that guy.

I really don't know how I would have ended it, to be honest. Perhaps they developed too many contradicting storylines over the years for the show to ever have a truly satisfying ending, or one that makes complete sense and at the same time doesn't completely trample important development in some way or another.