Mourning and Celebration

My mother passed away last night. It was expected, and frankly a relief after dozens of late-night and rushed trips to the hospital as her condition became steadily less stable.

I realized last night , after calling my children and emailing friends with the news, that I’ve been mourning for a while now, and that was part of why I didn’t want to talk about it very openly.

I’ve been mourning the woman who raised me to be independent, who always taught me I could learn anything, and somehow, gave me the confidence to try, occasionally fail, and get back up and try again. She’s been gone for a while, in that respect, and that’s the person I’m crying for right now.

Mom grew up in small-town America: Casey, IL to be precise, and had many of the core values and attitudes that came with that upbringing. Her father and mother were businesspeople in the local community, and provided her with values and a stable, loving home. Mom was a popular person with those who came to know and love her; she was her high school Homecoming Queen despite having a disfigurement caused by an accident when she was a teenager. To know her was to love and respect her.

In later years, having survived many years of a bad marriage and economic deprivation, she went back to school and became a registered nurse. I remember sitting at the table when I was in high school, doing my homework as she did hers. Imagine being homework buddies with your mom!

I have 52 years of memories of my mom. I can’t write them all down here or it would cease to be a blog and would start looking like a novella. Still:

I remember going with my father to pick up mom after work at the Lincoln Lodge where she worked as a maid to help make ends meet; as often as not we’d stop at the A&W root beer stand in Champaign, IL and get hotdogs and root beer.

I remember her awe at the space program; she kept me home from school to watch the Mercury launches; and bought me books about space and other planets; I was firmly convinced at the age of 6 that I would grow up to someday stand on the surface of Mars. I couldn’t imagine being that far from home, but, thanks to Mom, I could believe it was possible.

She was handy with a needle and thread- she worked part time for a while at an auto upholstery shop in Downers Grove, IL. She would bring home scraps of Naugahyde and make them into toy puppets, trim for Halloween costumes, and anything else her mind could come up with. It was a standing joke in our family for a while about the Naugas giving up their skin for seatcovers.

When I had my first job, a paper route when I was in the third grade, she nagged me and made sure I actually went out and did the work, making sure I was responsible, even though I complained about the cold and snow, she’d lecture me on what responsibility meant. That didn’t stop her from helping me out when it was really brutal, though.

I remember the look on her face when I ran home the mile from school on November 22nd, 1963 and was the first to tell her that the President had been assassinated. I was afraid, since an event like that was unprecedented in my experience, and she made sure that we were supported and explained to as necessary.

I remember a bleak time when the power had been shut off due to my father having been laid off at work, and we were without financial means to even pay the electric bill, that she borrowed enough extension cords to run from the neighbor’s house to ours so that there would be lights for my birthday party.

During that same period, I had a band concert, and was supposed to wear black pants and a white shirt, and discovered a hole in the knee of my only pair of black pants. Mom found a bottle of India ink and inked my knee behind the hole to make it invisible.

Mom taught me about poetry- she loved Ogden Nash. One of her favorites was “Waiting for the Birdie”, a wonderful, whimsical poem about going to have your picture taken. I can still recite it line for line, 40 years later, after she “performed” it for me in a very funny ‘dramatic’ reading.

Mom devoted her later life to helping other people- she was a nurse for about 30 years and a repiratory therapist prior to that. For most of that time, I was away, leading my own ‘independent’ life. Still it was nice to come home, and see her when I could.

It was especially difficult for her when I was the first to flee the nest and literally try out my wings by taking flying lessons. Still, she accepted everything I did, and it often took only ‘that look’ in her eyes for me to know when I had displeased her.

She was especially gracious to my various girlfriends and later, wives. It didn’t matter who they were, if I brought them home, she was forever warmly accepting and loving to them.

Each of my brothers and sisters would tell you similar stories, each from their own perspective. This is our common bond, more than blood. We all share the warmth and comfort that Mom gave to us.

The last few years have been tough. Mom’s physical decline took away her ability to do the things she loved, like cooking huge Thanksgiving dinners and having Christmas at her home. We all became more or less sucessfully independent people, and the price that she paid, as well as her reward, was seeing us all leave and have our own lives.

Of all the things in my life that I learned for myself, somewhere behind it all, I realize, is my mother’s guiding hand. It is time to stop mourning and celebrate what she’s done for me.

Rest in peace, Mom. Your work here is done, and done well.