A Much Loved Woman

    

          She was not perfect, she didn’t even claim to be.  She just did the best she could.  She was born during WWII, to hard working people.  She had siblings.  They loved but weren’t openly affectionate.  I doubt if communication was important.  Where she learned to hug and kiss and talk I’ll never know, but I know she learned so that her children would always know.

          She had to get married, I know she loved my Dad just as he loved her, but sometimes love isn’t enough and sometimes love can be killed.  Unlike so many other divorcees I’ve known, she never passed her new found dislike of my father down.  She informed us, that we had one father and we didn’t get to choose, we had to love him, only when we became older would she admit, that even if we had to love him, it was our choice to respect him or not. 

          She didn’t make all the games, plays or concerts.  She had to work up to 60 hours a week, because once you are a retail “manager” they owned your time and no longer had to pay you overtime for it.  At Christmas time when other families would spend extra time together, she would be forced to work 8 days before she would be given a day off.  30 years she gave to that company. When she retired people who had worked with her in the beginning came back to wish her well.  When occasionally we would crib about how retail treated her, she would always say, “the company gave a high school drop out a way to put food on the table, roof over our heads and clothes on our backs, for that she would always be grateful. 

          No one explained to her where babies came from.  She made sure her children knew at an early age.  As a teenager I remember her saying “you are old enough to want to, say no anyway, and if you aren’t going to say no, get yourself on the pill”.  Under no circumstances did she encourage us to have sex outside marriage, but she was practical.

          As an attractive divorced woman in her 30s she dated frequently.  She went out and we met several men who she cared about, but never did we wake up to find any of them in her bed, never did we wake up with her not in the house.   I’m sure she had normal relations at some time , but it was never anywhere we would see. 

          Life isn’t easy, life throws lots of things at us to knock us down.  To prepare her children for life’s little speed bumps, she made us work.  In the house we learned to clean and scrub, how to cook , how to make minor repairs.  It’s amazing what you can fix with a butter knife and a high heeled shoe. 

          We worked, we learned to pay for things we wanted.  She wanted to give us the world, but she couldn’t, so she gave us skills to go after what we wanted, she made us work and study. She threatened us that if it took us until we were 30 years old we would have a high school diploma.  After high school it was our choice, whether to go straight to a job, vocational school, or college.  However, she gave each of us a gift.  After all the hard work and graduating we were given one summer to do as we pleased, with the understanding come September 1 we either had a job or were in school.  Three months to just explore and/or do nothing.  How did she know the gift of a last summer as a child could be a memorable bridge between childhood and adulthood.

          Money was short and she was one of the worst money managers you could ever meet.  She would always be behind on something.  She wanted us to have enough.  New school clothes, a bit of something to open at Christmas, money for school activities.  She once went three years without buying herself any new clothing, even though she was in retail.  She drove an old green maverick that didn’t have a heater in the middle of a Midwestern winter and the stick shift gears had somehow changed positions.  When she finally got rid of that car she made the purchase of a very old 2^nd hand pinto seem as if we had gotten a brand new Mercedes.

          She did the best she could.  On our birthdays we would have cake, real icing, none of that whipped fru fru stuff. When we became teenagers she couldn’t afford to take all of us out for dinner.  So she would have a one on one night.  The birthday person would get to choose the restaurant.  For one evening to be able to have that alone time with her, to be the center of her attention, to have nothing to distract her attention from you, was an awesome feeling. For my birthday I chose a nearby Chinese restaurant.  For a woman who literally could not eat rice it had to have been the worst choice, but she never batted an eye and we had a wonderful, memorable evening.

          She made Easter baskets for us long into our adulthood.  The holidays were a time to gather around and be fed.  Turkeys, hams, potatoes in all it’s forms, green beans, lima beans and baked beans, devilled eggs and salads, pies and cakes, especially the banana split cake. Granted holidays were celebrated at my Grandma's, but Mom often had to get up at 4 am to dance with the bird before it was put in the oven.

          When she had some time off she would make huge country breakfasts and dinners.  When money was tight we would have lots of tuna noodle casserole and spaghetti. In the summer she would make vanilla wafer banana pudding pie and in the winter she would make fudge using the recipe on the back of the Hershey’s can of cocoa. 

          Even after she retired she got a new job.  By this time she was a grandmother and due to several reasons she decided to get her GED.  At the ripe age of 56 she went back to school.  She wanted to prove to her grandchildren how important education was to her. 

          She loved her grandchildren.  She would bend over for all of them.  It didn’t mean she was a pushover, because she wasn’t shy about explaining what she expected of them.  In time they bent over backwards for her.  She worked hard to make her gifts to them even, fearing that one would ever feel that she loved one more than the other.  She knew how it felt to be the mother of the non-favorite grandkids.  She worked to have a relationship with each of them, to create memories. Whether it was eating five flavor ices, trying to learn a new language, attending the games and concerts for the grandchildren that she had been unable to attend for her children, she entered into their worlds and celebrated what they loved.

          It surprised her how children raised in the same house could take such different roads.  She didn’t like or approve of all the choices her children and then grandchildren made, but she always supported them in chasing their dreams.  She helped to discover options, but in the end she let each one choose their own path.

          When she got sick, we all cried and then she began the fight.  We were given extra years of her being healthy because she did fight.  Then it returned and each time she would fight it back, but each bout made her weaker susceptible to other illnesses.  And still she fought.  She fought to cook her granddaughter’s rehearsal dinner.  Spending days cutting up vegetables, baking, arranging a few decorations, pushing herself to the brink, collapsing after the wedding with yet another bout of pneumonia.  Still she worked to get better, but I think she knew she was failing. In this she taught us how to greet Death.  She would tell me, “ I don’t want to go, but I’m fine if it is my time.  I’ve lived a good life, I am proud of my children and grandchildren”. 

  Learning she was to be a great grandmother perked her up again, but for every two steps forward it was one step back, until it became for every step forward two steps back.  She insisted she would see her little Rosie.  The doctors told us that it was highly unlikely that she would.  Until the end, there was a small part of me that truly believed she would walk out of the hospital.  However, I think she was ready to go, she had fought for so long and had been in pain even longer.  For five weeks I sat in her hospital room.  Every time she would look at me she would say “I Love You”, even after the tracheostomy took her voice. She would love and scold.  She held on even as her body failed bit by bit.  She was sleeping probably 20 hours a day when Rosie was born.  We showed her videos and photos.  It killed us that she couldn’t hold Rosie, but MRSA made us keep her away.  She was able to meet all of her loved ones, far and near.  Friends who she hadn’t seen in years came to tell her they loved her.  Old coworkers came with flowers and cards.  Children and their spouses, grandchildren and their spouses came.  She called each to her side to tell them how much she loved them.  Each got the chance to tell her they loved her.  She got to know that Rosie was healthy.  She got to leave on her own terms.  She was surrounded by her children holding her hands.  We let her know that we loved her and we knew she wanted to go.  With a simple twist of her face and the pursing of her lips, we felt her soul detach from her body so she could go home to the ones who had gone before her. 

          She was a much loved woman.  We had her funeral the way she would have wanted. Simple followed by lunch.  We dispersed her things where she wanted them to go.  Her pet went to one of her children.  Her children’s inheritance was not great wealth.  Her children’s inheritance was what she taught them.

          She wasn’t perfect, oh but she loved.  It wasn’t that she believed that her children and grandchildren were angels.  It was that she accepted each and everyone just as they were, unconditional love.  Oh, she would call you to the carpet if it was required, but in the end she let each walk their own paths.  She worked very hard to raise independent adults, she taught us how to think about the consequences of our actions.  She taught us how to take responsibility for our thoughts and deeds.  She taught us how to live, how to love, and at the end she taught us how to die.