It's hard to believe that a year has gone by since Mom died. We have gone through our first celebration of birthdays and holidays without her. But even more than spending the holidays with her, it is just the every day things that I miss about her. I picture her sitting at the kitchen table doing crossword puzzles or in the TV room watching the Giants or the Warriors. I remember how her face would light up when she answered the door and greeted you, how she loved her morning tea break with cookies at 10:00 (she was a cookie monster), how we would toast every Friday when we went out to lunch, how she would listen with interest to whatever was going on with you, how she prayed for all of us, how she had such a beautiful positive upbeat spirit, how she would do a little dance step when she heard a song that she liked, how much she missed and loved Dad, and how much she loved all of us.
I am still in the process of going through pictures and trying to separate them into piles that I can give to each of the four of us and then to pick photos to digitize for all of us. It is a very slow process, but here are some photos from a binder that she had compiled of photos of her family members and of her and Dad as children and young adults. I love seeing her beautifully precise handwriting.
Mom's maternal grandparents
Mom's mother and step-father
Remember the "Willy in the hole" story that our Nana would tell about the time that her brother fell head first into a telephone pole hole, I think? His brother ran home to tell his parents and they came and rescued him. Or the story of her sister, Veronica, who put a bullet up her nose when she was a young child, but her parents didn't believe her. She ended up having to get it removed when it caused problems in her late teens or early 20s. She might have also been the one who had a buzzing insect stuck in her ear, but they managed to get that out with some oil, I think.
Nonie is the artistic one who drew really well and could sew anything. She was a nurse and died of tuberculosis.
Our Nana's sister, Veronica
Mom's father
I love the story of our Nana and her new bathing suit. When she was a young teenager, she got a new bathing suit and went to the local swimming pool. She didn't know how to swim, but she wanted to show off her bathing suit, so she walked out to the edge of the diving board modeling her stylish suit and jumped into the deep water. I think the life guard saved her or maybe it was one of her brothers who was there. I think she got in trouble for that one. I have often thought of that story and how different our mother was from her mother, in that regard anyway. Our mother, fortunately, would never have done something like that. She had two feet on the ground. Our grandmother was a character though.
Mom with Nana
Mom is 2 years old in Alton, Illinois.
Mom's mother and father divorced when she was in her late teens. He was having an affair. He remarried, maybe to the woman that he left our Nana for. Mom's relationship with her Dad became strained, but she tried to keep in contact with him after she moved to San Francisco. She wanted him to come to her wedding, but he wrote her a letter saying that he decided not to. Mom's stepfather, Gene, walked her down the aisle. When Mom and Dad went to Chicago for a business trip, she wrote to him asking if they could get together. Her father had never met Dad. He wrote her back saying that in light of the fact that Mom and Nancy never acknowledged his wife, that he thought it better that they not meet. She never saw him again. Her aunt, Sister Mary Francine, who was her father's sister, sent her pictures of her Dad when he was an older man. How sad that must have been for Mom.
The scarlet fever that Mom had as a three-year-old caused a lasting hearing loss. That became such an isolating factor in the last few years of her life when even her hearing aids didn't allow her to follow the conversation of more than one person talking at a time for the most part.
His second wife
Mom and Nancy
What a little sweetheart. He was a life-long Catholic as was Mom. Mom told the story of when Dad was a little boy and his mom saw that he was limping. It turned out that he had put a stone in his shoe. I'm not sure if he was emulating one of the saints or just offering his pain up for the poor souls in purgatory.
Mom and Nana
Grandpa Gene- Mom's step-father- I think he died in 1952 or 1953
Mom and Nancy in Yosemite
A perfect match- March 31, 1951 at St. Mary's Church in Chinatown.
