FINDING TREASURE

I'm only going to add a couple more posts on my time in Southern California. I'm doing it for selfish reasons, but hopefully you'll get something out of it too. My daughter is away at sea and I'm hoping she can capture some of the flavor of what happened last week as we said farewell to my mom. That's my mom on the left on her 90th birthday. She's pictured with my younger sister Patty and her daughter Lindsay.

Today I'm writing about the treasure chest. It doesn't look like it though. I've spent some time there. My siblings have been there too. It's a small apartment, nothing to speak of really, but it's a treasure chest to all of us.

I volunteered to help my sister Patty box up items to give away to Goodwill. It's so funny as you pick through these items an untrained eye would think most of it could go to Goodwill. A coffee cup here, a small little curio there, but all of these things are treasures to me. I remember when they arrived in my life, I remember the shelf they landed on. I remember who gave them to my parents. I remember it all.

I found myself grabbing this and that and tucking it away in the box that will be sent back to me here in Washington. At one point I found some old documents. A letter of recommendation for my dad written before he left Nebraska in the 1940's. I was supposed to be helping with the cleanup effort, but I was useless. Each item I came across I would marvel over. I punctuated every half hour with an expression like this one, "Hey look at this!"

But my sister Patty found the real treasure a journal written by my mom. It became the basis for her eulogy...which I'm printing below. Perhaps by learning a little more about my mom, you'll learn a little bit more about me. We are a product of those that raise us. I'll share my eulogy in the next post.

Patty: "In celebrating my mother’s life today I want to begin by sharing some thoughts and memories I came across in a journal I found in her apartment this week.

Her story began when she was born in January 1916 at her grandfather’s farmhouse in Madison, Nebraska. She noted the temperature on that day was 28 degrees below zero and her godparents were Mary Sweeney and Jo Malone, which is why she was named Mary Jo.

Her younger brother John Edmund was very dear to her and they spent their childhood together. He passed away in 1997. Growing up she enjoyed playing hopscotch and reading, which she said “was her thing” and dreamed of becoming a teacher like her father who was the superintendent of the Humphrey School District.

She also noted that growing up her nickname was “Baloney” which gave my daughter Lindsay and I a good laugh, because that was also one of her catchphrases when she didn’t agree with someone.

She wrote that one of the hardest times growing up was living through the Depression, but there were good times as well, as she remembered that they led a simple life and they went on small trips and camped.

When she was 17 she went to live in a college dormitory with 250 girls at Wayne State Teacher’s College. She returned home to teach in a country school. She was paid $45 a month and did everything from starting the fire in the morning to sweeping the floor at night. She had 26 pupils in grades 1-8 with one needing to learn English.

She met my father on a blind date when her friend Cora insisted she go along so Cora could meet the other boy. Looking back she remembered her favorite years being those when she was Mrs. Walter and the mother of all her children.

And I can attest to the fact that she was a wonderful mother to all of her children. Most of you have known my mom for some time, and therefore know that she was a very strong woman. I suspect much of that strength was purely because of the cards she had been dealt in life. She was a widow at a young age with 8 children and she had to find inner strength to deal with that.

Another well known fact about mom was that she did not think much of the medical profession…specifically the doctors. She would say that they just wanted to fill you up with pills, and she took chemistry so she knew better than that. As you can imagine, against her strong will, it was not an easy task to get her to go to the doctor. A week before she went into the hospital, she caught a flu virus and my sister Janet called her to say she was taking her to get checked out by the doctor. My mom announced that that was a crock and she would have to make her go, which is what my sister ultimately had to do…make her go.

As my mother’s physical condition became more fragile in the following week I struggled with the decision to take her to the hospital because deep down I knew that if I took her she probably would not be coming back home. When she offered no resistance as I told her the plan, I realized that she had to be in tremendous pain. She never complained, and never wanted to be a burden to any of us.

When at the hospital, it did not surprise any of us when the doctor came into her room and announced to my brother that my mother had a very strong heart. He attributed it to good DNA, and though he may have been partially right, I know her heart was strong because it was filled with love. I am the baby of the family and have sometimes been labeled as “the favorite”. But I am here to tell all of my siblings that she loved each one of you dearly. When I would sit with her at her apartment she would go down the list and tell me who she had heard from and what they were doing. She was so proud of all of us and I think that is what gave her such a strong heart. She loved many things but most of all her family. As we gathered to visit her at the hospital she counted all the heads in the room and said “look at all I created.”

I’m sure all of her dear friends at Canyon Villas heard the many stories about all of us…so at this time I would like to take a moment and show you what she always said was her biggest accomplishment…her family.
My mother was a friend, sister in law, mother, grandmother and great grandmother. Although my heart is broken with her passing and I will miss her desperately, I know she will forever be our guardian angel and I find peace in knowing that she has reunited with our dad in heaven and is looking down on all of us now saying, “look at all we created.”