After an extended absence, I wanted to resume my “Friday” posts by sharing with you a tribute to my Mom (may she rest in peace). And while I doubt this sad chapter will ever be entirely over for me, I’m at least ready to turn the page and wanted to let you know I’m doing fine.
(Even in death, she’s keeping me busy! I had no idea how involved being the Executor of even a small estate was going to be. I’m not complaining – just that it’s a lot more work than I had anticipated it would be. Even when virtually everything was POD [Payable on Death], TOD [Transfer on Death] or named Beneficiaries, the paperwork required to execute even these is mind-boggling.)
As you know, I (like probably most, if not all, of you do for yours) thought the world of my Mom. She will be missed by many, and I realize that sometimes fond memories of her will sneak out of my eyes and roll down my cheeks. But I also know, as Joe Biden so eloquently told a gathering of Gold Star families, that the day will come when those same memories will bring a smile to my lips before they bring a tear to my eyes.
She grew up on a farm in northern Illinois with two older brothers, both of whom preceded her in death – although one of them lived to be 99 y/o. As I’ve mentioned a time or two, Mom was 101 when she died on February 6th of this year – which happens to be the same day her oldest brother died back in 1979.
She loved – and excelled at – sports … especially her beloved Cubbies. I was so glad she lived long enough to see the Chicago Cubs finally win a World Series. I got her a Cubs t-shirt to mark the occasion – just as I did when her second favorite baseball team, my KC Royals, won the World Series both in 1985 and 2015!
In fact, I was able to take her to a World Series game back in 1985. When I was in practice, one of the docs in our group was a rabid KC Royals baseball fan, so our group had box seat season tickets right behind home plate. And we also happened to have KC Chiefs season tickets, too. (But those were in the nosebleed section.) And as luck would have it, the Chiefs played the same Sunday (October 20, 1985) as the second game of the “Show Me I-70” World Series with the St. Louis Cardinals. And Mom and I got to go to BOTH of them! A Sunday afternoon of NFL football followed by an evening World Series baseball game … she was in hog heaven!
She loved to travel with friends and has gone to Europe more times than I have. She even made it to Africa … TWICE! (I’ve never been.) Her wanderlust must have started back when she and a group of friends from church drove across country to take in the New York World’s Fair back in 1939! I have a photo of them stopped on some country road enjoying a watermelon.
Reading was a passion for her, and when her macular degeneration prevented her from doing that anymore, we got a boombox for her so she could listen to books on CD that the public library would mail to her when she lived in her home and brought to her when she moved to the Assisted Living facility. (In honor of their wonderful service she enjoyed so much we requested that in lieu of flowers donations be made, besides her church, to our public libraries that she was so thankful for.)
In fact she listened to those books on CD so much she wore out her first boombox, and was well on her way to putting huge mileage on her second one!
We adored hearing stories she and her brothers would share about their adventures growing up on the farm. And probably by necessity, having grown up back in those days, she was a whiz in the kitchen. She was especially known for her, cinnamon rolls, baked beans, Swedish rye bread and especially her divinity at Christmas time that were always accompanied with her roasted pecans.
Fortunately, she was more than willing to share her cooking talents with me. And if I wasn’t able to emulate all her skills, then at least I certainly inherited her love of all things culinary. (Especially the eating part!) So many wonderful times were spent in our family kitchens with her – I think I’ll miss those experiences the most.
I put together a slideshow of the setting for her funeral in her beloved church that I grew up in. To respect privacy, I didn’t want to include any photos of people other than my Mom. Consequently, most of them were taken the day before when our family was setting up for the service. Only a few were of the reliquary cremation urn, and that is my hand resting on it in the photo taken in the Mausoleum. (Pastor said that a lady from church sewed the pall covering the urn, because they hadn’t had any services involving cremation remains before.)
She was buried next to our Dad, who died September 10, 1962 (which was the same day her second oldest brother was born in 1915). But we had gotten over 4” of new snow on top of the 6” that had recently fallen, so the cemetery folks said they wouldn’t be able to provide a graveside service, which is why it was in the Mausoleum. (Perfectly understandable)
I’ll close now the same way I always did during our almost daily phone calls, because I think I feel another fond memory of her about to trickle down my cheek: “Love you bunches, Mom!”
[NOTE: I apologize for the size of the slideshow, but I worked for over an hour trying to get it pared down, but with no success. I think the problem is that it contains both portrait and landscape photos – but you can only set the size parameters for the entire show. My “compromise” was to crop both height and width so they all are a little funky – but to do that you have to make them huge. And I got tired of trying different combinations – so they’ll remain huge. And if it gets stuck, just click the “Advance” button and it should resume.]
