Mi Madre

I received the following lovely note from an old family friend today:

Danielle, M said your mother had died. I am SOOO sorry. I saw your dad last spring in Dr. L's office. (Opthalmologist) He was getting prescriptions that he would be able to fill in France. It sounded like he planned to be there for a while. Is that right? He is retired, right?
Can you tell me about your mom? Since you moved from Northfield I lost touch with all of you, except for running into your dad now and then on campus. What happened? If it is too sensitive to talk about I understand.
I retired from teaching in 1997, but they called me back several times, so I used the money to go on missions trips to Russia 5 times and Ukraine 7 times.
What are you and your sisters doing now? Do you have families? I think M said you have children.
Hearing news of you made me want to sign up for Facebook. When you talk to your sisters, be sure to greet them for me.
By the way one of the people on this couch photo looks like you. Then I noticed the date of the photo is 1954.

I was compelled to respond; somehow, this gentle soul touched me.

I am very glad you wrote. I will write you an email (posted here as part of this note) about some of the things you have mentioned, but will answer more briefly here.

My Dad retired just last year, and no spends most of his time abroad. From what my sisters have told me, he may be in MN longer next year, I don't know.

My Mom and Dad divorced in 1990. My Mom remarried in 2001. She survived a bout with breast cancer, only to be diagnosed with ALS shortly thereafter. I was living in CA at the time and would come visit about once a month. It was wonderful in that we were able to work through those things that parents and children rarely get to work through. But it was horrible to see her condition so obviously deteriorate at every visit. She passed away on July 30, 2005. It still seems like it was just last week. She lived about 2 years after her diagnosis. She went from being as happy as she had ever been, working for NWA, and living in Burnsville, to being imprisoned in her own body....

.... unable to move anything beyond her arms and eyes, unable to swallow, or speak, or stand, or kiss her grandchildren in basically 2 years.

I will write more in a Facebook email, and I am very glad that you joined. I am also happy that you have been able to go on so many mission trips, what experiences you must have had!

M is married, lives in Lakeville, and has 2 daughters. M also lives at M's house.

I have two kids, too, a 22-year old son, who is a senior in college, and a 14-year old daughter who is a freshman in high school. I just came back to MN from CA, where I was living, last week, to try and take advantage of the relatively lower cost of living and higher chances of keeping employment.

Stay tuned for my email, and thank you for getting back in touch.

The longer email is what follows:
We moved away from Northfield to Apple Valley in 1979. My Mom was working in Minneapolis at the time, and so my parents decided to move between their two places of employment. My Mom taught in Minneapolis and then at Apple Valley High School, and then went to work for Northwest after the budget cuts of the mid-1980s.

My Dad finished his career with the 2007-2008 academic year. He and I are not close, and haven't spoken in a few years. He was here from France for about a month after the holidays, and spent a bit of time with my sisters. I was still in CA, then.

My Mom and Dad were not their best when they were together. That may be putting it mildly. Probably. All three of us were placed in foster homes in the early 1980s. My Mom and Dad finally got divorced in 1990 or 1991, thankfully.

Before they were in foster care, my parents had changed the dates on my sisters' birth certificates, and sent them to work at night at a granola bar factory. Needless to say, that didn't bode well for their studies, and they both dropped out of high school. They *did* get their high school diplomas on their own, though, which was no small feat, under the circumstances.

I had my son when I had just turned 21. He is an extremely intelligent, albeit troubled young man. He is going through his second round of drug and alcohol rehabilitation right now. He is currently intent on blaming me for most everything, so our relationship is a bit strained. I am trying to give him the space and time that he needs, without accepting his premise that I am to blame for his addiction problems.

I have an MA in Political Science, but was ill myself throughout all of the 1990s, through to 2002. After my last surgery in February 2002, I decided to go back to school and move back out to CA, where I had studied for my BA. I received a second MA there, in Teaching Foreign Language, along with a Certificate in Computer-Assisted Language Learning in 2005. After that, I worked in Language Test Development in Monterey, CA. In 2007, I married a French federal police officer, and moved to France. My daughter's father would not allow her to go with me, and she wanted the chance to spend some time living with him, his new wife, and their two baby daughters. Now, my daughter wants to finish high school there. That is less than thrilling to me, but I think it might be best for her not to move again at this point in time.

My Mom and I had our problems throughout the years. But, her illnesses afforded us certain opportunities that not everyone has with their parents. We were able to talk through all of those past hurts, misunderstandings, and mistakes, to work through them, and to forgive one another. In that respect, her breast cancer, and ALS were a blessing. But the shock of losing her does not abate. Not at all. I am happy knowing that one of my sisters took advantage of the same opportunities as I did vis à vis our mother and the past. It was not easy for her, or us, to talk through the horrible issues of my father's alcoholism and abusiveness, or my mother's complicity therein. Not to mention her own demons. Or ours. My other sister refused to accept that my mother was really going to die until the last 2 or 3 months. But, at least she had that.

It was such a terrible thing, and so heart breaking. But my mother suffered so much, trapped in that body, not even able to swallow. Before she was diagnosed, she had trouble controlling one of her feet. She jokingly said that she had "floppy footitis of the worst kind." She knew what it was, though, but ALS was the once disease she was most afraid of having. She actually prayed for cancer! She was so afraid of suffocating to death... and that is, indeed, exactly how she died. In her husband's, arms.

Before she passed, she was even able to talk with my father about the damage he had done, to all of us, and of the damage that she did. He asked her to forgive him. She had a machine she could type into, that would talk for her. Her response to him was, "I already have." It was very moving. My sister and I were at her house, in another room, when this happened.

My Mom became a Catholic and had a firm belief in God and Jesus, forgiveness and redemption, before she passed away.

I can't tell you how much I miss her. So much more than I ever thought I would.