Requiem

She was a depression baby, born to a family hit hard, dressed in homemade clothes and love.

She was a tomboy, playing baseball and mumbledy peg and shooting marbles in the cinders in the alley. She drew, sketches in notebooks and on scrap paper. And she read: Zane Grey and Frank Yerby, adventure stories, history, biography. New books relished, and old favorites cherished.

She was smart. Took her five years to graduate college, the first in her family, but she had 4 degrees when she was done. Math. Physics. History. Government. Everything’s worth knowing, and there's no such thing as wasted education.

She was married, to the boy she met in her high school geometry class, the swimmer with the wavy hair and ice blue eyes. Together they raised three children: demanding, challenging, and inordinately proud parents.

She was a "doer." ECW and Sunday School teacher, golf lessons and painting lessons, garden club president and PTA room mother. Everything's a challenge: find the most efficient way, get it done quicker, so there's time for more of what you want to do.

She was a survivor. Diagnosed and put to bed at 38, and told to stay there or she might not see 40. The kids were 13, 10 and 6. No more doing, except in her head. And she smiled, and continued loving and learning. The master bedroom became the family room, and stayed that way. She kept track of the world, figured out the stock market, and taught those kids to deal with life, all from the left side of the mattress. And eventually got better, although never truly well. Like everything else, she learned to manage, to get the most out of what she had. That's life-- deal with it.

Five years ago a heart attack, and she died, leaving pieces of memory. Her hands on my keyboard. Her voice when I answer the phone. Her scent on the blouse in the back of my closet.

Love you, Mama.