My Mom

My mom died four years ago this Thursday. She developed a septic infection and was unable to fight it off - she fell into a coma and eleven days before her 78th birthday she quietly slipped away.

The Thursday evening before she played cards at my aunt's house and left early because she wasn't feeling well. Later that night she asked her boyfriend Ramon (I always refer to him as her Latin Lover) to take her to the hospital. Early Friday morning my aunt called to tell me I needed to get to Arizona, my mom was dying.

My mom didn't speak English until she was six years old. Her parents were Canadian French and that was the language spoken at home. Shortly before her six birthday my grandparents bought a logging camp and because it wasn't a suitable place for two young girls to live she and my aunt were sent to a Catholic boarding school in Vancouver B.C. where she lived until she was 16 years old. My grandparents decided to move to the States and my mom completed her high school education at Broadway High School.

By her own account she was boy-crazy. She met my father, a sailor on leave, while riding with a girl friend down Broadway Avenue. "Hey sailor, sailor, sailor!" It must have been enough to impress my father - I have no idea how long they courted or any of the other details of their romance. I do know that she and my aunt were married on June 29, 1946, in a double Catholic ceremony wearing the exact same wedding dress that my mom hated. She and my father, Walter Medan, left for a week long honeymoon at Yellowstone Park.  They stopped in Butte, Montana to meet Walt's parents who refused to come to the wedding because it was in a Catholic church. Somehow they ended up going with my mom and dad on their honeymoon - is it any surprise that their marriage ended in divorce 16 years later?

In 1963 she married Richard Moody - they met while she was working as a hostess at Marie's in Greenwood. He was an interesting fellow and at 33 years old he was to begin his third marriage. Somehow that was not discouraging to my mom - they remained married until his death in 1996.

To this day I am still surprised that she is gone. She was a daughter, sister, wife, mother, grandmother and friend.  Although she gave me fits, I still miss her.