Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Twenty Years

     There are some events in your life that you never forget: the birth of a child, the day you met the person who would change your life forever, the death of a parent. Right now I'm thinking of my Mom. It's twenty years that she's gone and there isn't a day that goes by that I don't think of her.
     My Mom was not perfect but she was a unique woman. She didn't always have an easy life but she never really complained about it. She fully expected to die at the age of forty, as had her mother and grandmother, and when she didn't she treated the years that came after as gravy. She had a good sense of humor and laughed about the fact that the first thing she read in the newspaper every day was the death notices. She called them "The Irish Comics" and always found something to laugh at when reading them. She often commented on the fact that people would spend an arm and a leg for them. (For those of you who have never thought about it the cost of a death notice in the local paper can be quite expensive. Last I checked it was eight to ten dollars a line and that's without a picture.)
     I won't say my Mom was perfect, hell none of us are, and we argued quite a bit, because she always knew how to press my buttons, but we also got to that point where we were friends. I was the one who never left home so I was the one who got to hear all the stories, and she had a lot of them. The woman remembered every outfit she ever wore, every movie she ever saw and all the books she read. The love of movies and books I picked up on but I never really got that love of clothes; I can however describe in detail the dresses I wore for First Communion, grade school and high school graduation. Yes, I am my Mother's daughter in many respects.
     She had one story about meeting a friend for dinner. It was summer and she had a yellow dress and black accessories; hat, gloves, shoes and handbag were all black. The problem was the gloves. They were three-quarter length and did I mention it was summer? Well all was fine until they got to the restaurant and she went to remove her gloves and found that the dye from the gloves had come off on her arms. She ate dinner wearing the gloves.
     She was twenty-one when the US entered WWII and she was a registered nurse. Unlike many of her classmates she did not volunteer to serve. He father had died the beginning of 1941 and she wanted to stay in Philadelphia to be close to her two younger brothers who were still in school. She worked as a private duty nurse for a while and earned the exorbitant salary of $50.00 a month for working twelve hours a day, six days a week.    
     My siblings and I kidded that Mom was a nurse but she always tended to diagnose the ailments of her kids as 1.- Gas or 2.- Too much makeup. (My brother never had to worry about number two and neither did I for that matter.) I remember having the measles when I was in first grade and how sick I was and the care my Mom lavished on me. I remember the first time I saw her cry was when my youngest sister had pneumonia when she was about nine months old and she had to be hospitalized. It killed her that she had to leave her baby in the hands of others. I didn't see her cry again for almost twenty years and that was when my Dad passed away.
     When Mom went in the hospital that September day in 1992 she had the knowledge deep in her soul somewhere that she wouldn't be home again. She was hospitalized for over a hundred days before she died and in those days she prepared us for her death. She told us what to put in her death notice, the songs she wanted at her mass, the clothes to dress her in, where to have lunch and what to eat. The thing about those conversations was that she made a joke of them. We laughed when we talked about having soup at the buffet after her funeral; she wanted the guests to have something to warm them up after standing out in the cold. When she did finally let go she waited for all of us to be in the hospital. She knew we would need to lean on each other more than she ever had before.          
     What else can I say? She loved her kids and thought family was the most important thing in the world. She was a great cook who never really followed a recipe. She loved to shop, especially for shoes and always over packed for a weekend away. She loved to sing. She was a night owl. She loved to talk on the phone and could spend hours chatting away. One of her favorite lines was that she had been vaccinated with a phonograph needle. She had a memory for people and once recognized an old schoolmate from behind more than thirty years after leaving grade school. She was not good with money and was dangerous with a credit card.

     She was Mary Katherine beloved wife, mother and sister. She was my Mom and I still miss her.