Seventy-plus Years Ago Was a Different Time

To My Dead Mother on Mother’s Day: Sadly, I don’t recall ever hearing, “I love you,” from her. Neither did I ever say it to her. Those were different times, and a different world we lived in.

She was a hard working lady, raised on a farm, married pregnant to a lout who drank himself to death. Birthed seven children, all of whom lived their lives experientially. At 44 she began working as a waitress and worked until her heart gave out in 1971 that required open heart surgery. She died five years later from a cerebral embolus. She simply went to sleep without waking.

At 5:30 AM that morning, there was anywhere from eight to ten inches of snow on the streets, and I was assigned by work to drive from central Pennsylvania, to Wheeling, West Virginia, so I had to rise very early.

My wife was eight months pregnant and sleeping comfortably when the alarm sounded. Quickly switching it off, I arose, stretched, and noticed that an unusual light was visible in the hallway outside our door.

‘Why would mom be up this early…’ immediately passed through my mind. I stepped into the hallway and saw that the light beside her bed was lit, the door was opened, so I stepped in and looked around the room, but she wasn’t there.

Leaving her bedroom, I stepped over to the stairwell railing and looked down the stairs, but the entire space was dark, so I called to her, “Mom!” No answer.

The bathroom was on the other side, and the head of the stairs on the end of the hall, but it was also dark. I went round to the top of the stairs and peeked in the open door, and there she was, sitting on the toilet, her head against the wall, her cat in her lap, and her hand resting on its back.

By all appearances, she was sleeping, so I called to her, “Mom!” “Mom!” but she didn’t move. So I stepped in and put my hand on her wrist to shake her awake. The cat laid motionless as well.

As I went to shake her, the cold of her skin penetrated my palm. Her arm was stiff and immovable. Apparently, she had died a few hours before I found her.

Pyewacket, her cat (name origin: a 17th Century Indian tribe, and named after a cat she had as a young girl) refused to leave her lap.

Dumfounded, confused: I stood there trying to focus my thinking.

What should I do? My wife is pregnant…what will the shock do to her and the baby? I ran to our bedroom, blabbering, not knowing what to say. I finally told her what happened and went downstairs to the telephone.

It was beginning to lighten outside with the sun barely leaking through the frozen clouds that still covered the city. Picking up the phone, I dialed emergency services.

Until then, I was dry-eyed and numb, but when I started to say the words, tears began flowing, “My mother is dead in the bathroom,” I said. After that, it’s a blur. Address, phone number (pre-911 days).

Within minutes an ambulance arrived, and by this time my wife was sitting next to me on the sofa. Waiting for the coroner, I phoned my older brother and sobbingly told him what had happened.

It wasn’t long before he also arrived. He leapt up the stairs to the bathroom as the paramedics were about to move her, and shortly returned holding Pyewacket as they brought her down on the gurney behind him and carried her body to the ambulance.

What happened after, I cannot recall contextually. A dead mother, a grieving family, a pregnant wife, two children and one on the way, who handles what? What comes next? Do I still go to work. Have to call the boss!

Some friends arrived later; a few I recall. Mostly just fog and emptiness.

To My Dead Mother on Mother’s Day

The most difficult and emotionally corrosive aspect of my losing both parents—my father when I was very young—is that I never knew either of them. Never an, “I love you,” or the passionate need and encouragement that a child normally receives from parents. We had a few heartfelt times together, but they were few. I simply never appreciated her as I should have.

It feels that our existence was more like the movie: “Get busy livin, or get busy dyin.”

They fed us, we lived in their house until we, each of the seven, ran away to find something better, which, honestly left me with no sense of loss, no feelings of endearment or longing for their presence.

At least not consciously.

It also left me no need or desire to ever say, “Happy mother’s day” to her or anyone else, even my wife.

In my heart, Mother’s Day is every day. If you have your mother, cherish her.

NOT just because it’s a government mandated economic incentive; a judicious, sentimentalist relic, spawned to make people spend money, like so many other man-made holidays.

Every day—for the woman who used her body to give you life, should be used to praise and honor her, and for that reason I would now say to her every day: “ I LOVE YOU, MOM!”