Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad!

My parents met through a friend, my dad’s friend, who asked my dad to look after my mom while he went away on business. My dad must have done a REALLY good job looking after my mother and my parents were married on January 9th 1959.

My parents didn’t have a lot of money when they first married. My dad never finished school because he needed to help support his family as a boy. But my dad was street smart and he liked to read. When they first married, he had to work three jobs to keep our family afloat. We lived in a few very gritty apartments in Boston and were poor. We had shelter and we had food. We played kickball and tag outside in the street. Through a kids eyes were were fine; we lived like our neighbors lived.

Eventually my dad ‘expanded’ on his education and aced a test that got him a good job as an insurance underwriter. He could now quit 2 of the 3 jobs and we got a house in the suburbs.

My mom was a smoker and she had a hard time quitting .My dad had also smoked but was able to quit soon after my older sister was born. My mother didn’t and the smoking caught up with her in the early 1980’s. It was hard on us kids watching as my mom had to pull an oxygen tank behind her but to my dad it was devastating.

Around Thanksgiving 1988, my mom was hospitalized unable to get enough oxygen. Before this happened she had told us that she didn’t want to be put on any life support to prolong her life.

The doctors said that her only chance was to have a breathing tube inserted down her throat. We had to decide quickly what to do. My brother, two sisters, my dad and I went into a room to vote on what was to happen next. My sisters wanted to honor my mother’s wishes and let her go. My brother and I looked to my father for guidance. My dad who seldom cried, broke down and said ” I feel I would regret it if I didn’t try just one last thing.” We all wanted whatever worked for my dad so the tube was inserted.

Soon after that, my mother was released to what was not going to be said out loud, to die at home.
My dad had exhausted vacation time and sick days to be with my mom. I quit my job and took the day shift and my dad took the night shift.

One day my mother and I were folding clothes and with her voice still raspy from the tube in her throat she asked me why we had done that, after she had told us not to do it. I told her how difficult a decision it was and that to dad she was his world. She nodded as if to agree and we never spoke of it again.

My mother made it through Thanksgiving, Christmas, and her 30th wedding anniversary on January 9th 1989. She died at home on January 25th 1989, one month before her 60th birthday.
But to my dad that meant everything.

Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad! I miss you both very much.

photo courtesy Yahoo photo library


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