It is hard to believe that my Mother has been gone for a year today. I will never forget the day she passed away. It was a very hard thing for her family to endure but knowing she is in Heaven with Jesus makes it easier. She is happy in the glory of our Lord. It's her family left here on earth that suffers the void left now that she is gone.
I want to share some memories of her with you.
She married my Father when she was 21 years old. She met him at a Marine Base in Jersey City, New Jersey as he was working at the gate there and she was going to a dance at the Armory one evening with a girlfriend and was to meet her date there. She and a friend had taken jobs there in Jersey City on the Marine base picking up parts of wrecked planes to be repaired.
She told me as she passed through the gate my Father gave out a wolf call that everyone could hear. When his shift was over he found her at the dance and even though she had another date he convinced her that she needed to be with him. So to make a long story short she left with him and they dated for several months and she had to come back to Idaho where she was from and he followed her. They married and actually moved back to New Jersey after I was born and lived there for 2 years. We moved back to Nampa Idaho when I was 2 1/2 years old.
Mom and Daddy raised chickens on a rented farm while my Father drove a logging truck and was a paint and body man for Chrysler for years. She used to catch the chickens and wring their necks to kill them and then chop their heads off and it scared me because sometimes the chicken would take off running without a head! She would dunk them in a bucket of boiling water to prepare the feathers to be removed and then she would clean them at the kitchen sink. It was always a treat for me to watch her clean the gizzard. It was fascinating.
She would make cookies and use a special cookie cutter. The kind that you squeeze the dough through. That was special for me. When she could afford it she would make homemade doughnuts and doughnut holes were my favorite. I ate them all once and made myself sick. I don't like them much now.
She would bake a pie and always make me a cinnamon crisp with the left over dough.
Golly, I miss those days.My Father as you may remember was in five major battles during WWII and he suffered from "shell shock" and had a weakened heart caused by malaria that he contacted while fighting in the jungles of Guam. He was actually missing in action and was hospitalized in New Zealand for 9 months
At the age of 34 years old his weakened heart caused him to have congestive heart failure and he had a heart attack and passed away . My Mother was only 32 years old and left to raise me age 7 and my younger brother age 3 with no Father.
We moved to our Auntie Maxine's farm where she had an apartment upstairs for us to live in for awhile.
Mom had a friend that offered to sell her a house at a reasonable price of...$1500.00!
She saved for the down payment and soon we were living in our own place. My brother and I shared a bedroom having bunk beds. I took the bottom bunk and my brother took the top. I remember he fell out of it one night while fooling around instead of sleeping and cut his lip really bad on a toy tin telephone that was on the night stand next to the bed.
She worked hard all of her life. She worked her way through high school cooking and taking care of a family in town who became life long friends and the children of that family attended her funeral. She cleaned floors at the local hospital and then became a nurses aide there working at night so she could be home with us during the days. She slept while we were at school and always had a warm meal ready for us when we came home. We didn't want for anything. We may have had handmade or hand-me-down clothes or second hand items but we were fine.
I remember Christmas when I was 10 years old, I wanted a bike so bad so my dear Mother got together enough money to buy a second hand bike and she spent all night painting it for me so I would have a shinny blue bike under the tree when I woke up.
One winter it was very cold and we had oil heating and run out of oil in the middle of the night and she hung up blankets in the kitchen door and turned on the electric oven so we would be warm until morning so she could get more oil.
She did what she had to do to make sure her children were cared for and loved.
She met a nice man 5 years after my Father passed away and talked to my brother and I about how we liked this man. It was important because he had asked her to marry him. They married and had a baby boy so now I had two brothers.
In later years my step Father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and she was there right by his side all the way. She cared for him as he deteriorated more each year. He had a gambling problem and over the years with his Alzheimer's he lost all of their money. They had moved from a 3 acre place in the country to a small mobile home in town just before he was diagnosed. After a few years they sold that place and moved to an assisted living facility due to her diabetes and his Alzheimer's. He passed away the very evening they moved in there. He was sitting by her bed in his chair and she found him the next morning.
She didn't like it there and thought she wanted to be in a different place. A place more private and more like an apartment. So at my step Father's funeral my brothers and I got her on a waiting list at a retirement home. She moved in about 6 months later and was content in her little place. It was small but it was okay with her and had everything she needed. She seemed to be happy there.
She had nothing when she passed away. It was so sad to go through her belongings and see that she truly had NOTHING.
My Mother was such a giving person and loved her Children and Grand and Great Grand Children so much. I don't know what I would have done without her while I worked as a young Mother. She worked nights and I worked afternoons so she would care for my boys until their Father got off work. There were many times we had no money to buy food so she would come over and bring a sack full of things like bread, peanut butter and jelly and soup.
One Christmas my husband was out of work and we had no money for a tree so here comes my Mother with a tree and all the fixin's for a Christmas dinner and also gifts for the boys to put under the tree.
She was loved by so many but never thought people liked her. She would have been surprised to see the church FULL of people at her funeral.
This is her oldest friend Hilma at her 80th Birthday Party in 2004. Hilma was with my Mother when my Father passed away.
I have lots of wonderful memories of my Mother and I will hold on to them until I can see her again in Heaven.
I miss you Mom but I am content that you are in a better place and at peace with no pain, diabetes, blindness or worries and that I will see you again in Heaven.
The Lord is my Sheppard, I shall not want.He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul.He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake.Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.You prepare a table before me, in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Psalm 23:2
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