My mom's story through my eyes

Several scenes come to mind when I think of my first impressions of Mommy. It's hard to believe I can remember back that far, but these bits and pieces are ingrained in my mind and as vivid today as they were 65 years ago. I was just an infant, laying on top of her stomach on a bed while she and her sister, who we all called Dutch, were getting ready to go out for the evening. My cousin, Mary Elizabeth, was being called on to watch me. She showed up at the door, a stylish young woman in her early 20s. When Dutch was through dressing, she took over holding me so Mom could get ready, and I could feel the difference. Mom didn't normally wear nail polish but Mary Elizabeth polished her nails and I can remember the distinct smell of the polish. They were chatting and taking turns singing. Mom loved to sing. She often sang at parties and the like and she always sang while cleaning the house. She'd be tooling around the wood floors with her dust mop, reaching under my bed, all the while singing the latest hit song of the 1940s. I was about 3 years old and I remember seeing the dust particles floating in the sunlight on the way to the floor and I thought it must be a never-ending job.

We were living in a place called Richmond Hills, N.Y., in a second-story apartment when my sister, Marilyn, was born. We were just 14 months apart. I was in the backyard with Mommy while Marilyn napped and Mom was hanging out laundry to dry. Every few minutes she'd take my hand and we'd walk to the area just below the window to listen for the baby. One day we were out back when the neighbor lady next door was visiting with Mom. She pointed out a small tree she had just planted. Even at my small size I could see that it wasn't much bigger than a twig. She had put a rickety little white picket fence around it. The woman said to me, "Gail, you wouldn't kick over that little fence, would you?" I remember thinking very proudly, "I know what that means!" and looking down at my little white high-topped shoes (the same kind that Mom kept me in until the kids made fun of me in kindergarten), I sprung into action. I made short work of the little white fence. I felt confused when the woman started to yell at me. Isn't that what she wanted me to do? Mom gave her a piece of her mind. "You damned fool, what'd you expect? You're the one who gave her the idea!" she reprimanded. No matter what any of us did, Mom was always on our side, and that same unconditional love was later applied to all her grandkids and great-grandkids as well.

Mom was expecting her third child when her mother passed away. It was during the middle of World War II and Dad had been drafted into the Army and was awaiting his final induction papers. Mom was beside herself with worry. Here she was with a 3-year-old, a 2-year-old, and one soon on the way, and with her mom recently deceased she didn't know where to turn. Marilyn and I were with her in the basement while she was hanging clothes one winter day, when Marilyn got into a box of something and was playing with her findings on the floor. Mom looked down, and there at Marilyn's foot was a Novena to the Blessed Mother. "There's my answer," Mom thought. She said the Novena religiously and on the ninth day she had just finished the final prayer when she watched out the window as the mailman crossed the street with a big brown envelope. She went to the mailbox, believing my dad's induction papers had arrived. She got the surprise of her life when she opened the mail and found that Dad's induction had been canceled! Nobody we know has ever heard of that happening! Since then, whenever anyone has been in need, we would "Get Nanny on it." Even though she's no longer with us, we still do. For some reason, her prayers were always answered.

Dad belonged to the East Rockaway, N.Y., Volunteer Fire Department and it was a love-hate relationship in our family. Dad, ever the responsible one, would never let down on a job, no matter what the hour or the occasion. This didn't set well with mom and she made no bones about it, causing many an argument, such as the time we were just sitting down the Christmas dinner when the fire whistle blew. The ensuing squabble was no way to spend Christmas, especially since the cause was just a grease fire in someone's kitchen. The fire department was the center of Mom and Dad's social life. They hosted a picnic every year we all loved attending. Everyone would board a bus and go to a state park where we'd enjoy a day of sun, clambakes and 3-legged races. On the way back, Mom lead the bus in song, the whole busload singing all the way home, "Shine on Harvest Moon," and "Show Me the Way to Go Home; I'm Tired and I Want to Go to Bed."

Mom would trick us into bed, telling us we were going to "Lily White's Birthday Party." We'd go to bed all excited with visions of cake and ice cream in our heads, and pretty soon would fall asleep waiting. It amazes me that we fell for it night after night! It was years later we found out that "Lily White" was our sheets! Then she had another scheme. She'd whisper into each of our ears, "You're the best girl I've got." Being one of six girls and one boy, that was quite an honor ... until one day we compared notes. Somehow, she was able to pull it off on her grandkids, too. They all grew up thinking the same thing my son has always believed, "It's a well-known fact that I'm Nanny's favorite." They all thought that!

The day I started kindergarten my teacher, Mrs. Hilliard, had to all but kick her out of the classroom and she cried all the way home. I truly believed the day her youngest great-grandchild went to kindergarten she did the same. If mom had any great fault it was that she never wanted us to grow up. I remember feeling guilty when I was going through adolescence because I was so mixed up. I wanted to be small for her, plus life was much easier as a little kid, but nature wouldn't comply. She told me before she died that she sometimes cried for hours, wishing we were all small again. She loved us so much.

She kept the house and family chores up pretty well until after the sixth child was born. Then she often lost it. The laundry became overwhelming, so we went in a new direction. We went from taking our freshly starched and ironed cotton dresses from the closet, to choosing our clothes from the clean laundry basket, going with the iron-as-you-go plan. Once, when Marilyn couldn't find anything to wear to school, she improvised. While mom was at the bus stop taking my brother Billy to kindergarten, Marilyn, who was in seventh grade by then, whipped up a little number of high style out of whatever she could find around the house. Mom passed her on the street that day. She was walking from the bus stop as we were walking towards it. Marilyn had on my brother's pea-coat that on her looked like a Little Lord Fauntleroy jacket, and a very tightly fashioned straight skirt that she'd just hand-stitched. The only problem she had was she couldn't get on the school bus without a running start! It was too late to stop her, but mom didn't let her hear the end of it.

From the time she was a child, mom was full of laughter and fun and at times quite a cut-up. A product of Catholic schools, she drove the poor nuns crazy. Once, when she was told to sell candy, she tried to explain to the nun that she wasn't allowed to go door-to-door. The nun told her to just do the best she could. When it came time to turn the money in, she told the nun she didn't have it. "You don't have it? Well, I need the candy back, then," the good sister replied. "I don't have the candy, either. You told me to do the best I could, so I ate it!" she retorted. The nun turned and walked down the hall, her veil bobbing as she moved out of sight so my mother couldn't see her laughing. But, she still did. She could make a good time out of almost anything. Pretty ignorant of most sports, she found herself rooting along with my brother Bill during a TV football game. A player on the opposing team had made a brutal, out-of-bounds tackle, and was penalized. At this, her Irish temper prevailed, and she was quite irate. Seconds later, she caught the instant replay, and, livid at the brazenness of the tackler, shouted out, "Look at that ... the bugger just did it again!"

In October 2000, mom was given six months to live, and she beat all their odds. During that hospital stay she was diagnosed with lung cancer and a stroke. Confused, she was seeing little kids everywhere. She gave me a good scolding for invading these people's "lovely home," who we didn't even know. The lovely home she was referring to was the hospital. My husband, Larry, had taken dad home for the night, because he was on the verge of being hospitalized himself, and it was just mom and me in her room. She was feeling lonely and she patted the space beside her in her hospital bed and told me to climb in. She'd been talking about there being triplets in the room, and I thought I'd go along with it rather than trying to correct her. She had always been fascinated by multiple births and often told us the story of the Dionne quintuplets. I lay on the pillow beside her and looked up. "There they are, one, two, three triplets," she said. Looking up, I saw what she was seeing. The fasteners to the privacy curtain around the hospital bed were shaped in the form of paper dolls and there were three loose ones in a row. "I see them, too, mom" I assured her. "You know, Larry is working right now for a young Rabbi in Reno who has little triplet boys, just 18 months old," I told her. That excited her, and from that moment on, I could see mom was back and she would be okay for some time to come. If she were here now, she would be so excited because our youngest daughter, April, is expecting twin girls in June!

Mom was transferred to a rehabilitation center in Carson City the same day dad was admitted to the hospital for pancreatic cancer. She took the place by storm, excelling in every test they gave her. The second day there they took her walker away from her because she teasingly chased a nurse down the hall to show them just how fast she could go. One day when I arrived, she asked me if I had any money she could borrow. "A little," I said. "Did you need something?" "No. Not for myself. It's my roommate over there," she said. "Nobody visits her and she seems so sad and lonely. I'd like you to buy her some flowers and a card so she knows somebody cares." I went to the grocery store and picked up a bouquet and a get well card that mom signed with her shaky hand. It amazed me that here she was, probably scared to death, and she concerned herself with a stranger.

A year and a half later she needed medical attention in the middle of the night and I brought her to Barton Emergency Care. Dad had passed away by then. They checked her out and were going to transfer her to the hospital at the lake. I drove home to get money to fill my truck with gas and stopped at the 7-Eleven on Highway 395, when 'round the corner came the ambulance with mom in back. I was afraid she'd be petrified without me, but as I quickly got into the truck and pulled behind the ambulance to follow them up the hill, I saw mom waving at me from the gurney out the back window of the ambulance with an amused grin on her face. It was 3 a.m. when we got to her hospital room and I was really tired. The nurse invited me to climb into the empty bed beside mom and rest until the doctor evaluated mom in the morning. She went right to sleep and so did I, until at the shift change I heard all the commotion while the nurses coming on duty were trying to find out who the new patient was in bed 5A ... me!

Mom alternated between staying at my youngest sister, Cyndy's, and my house after dad passed away. I took her to visit her home on days we visited dad at the cemetery. She asked to spend one more night there, so once when my husband Larry went south to visit his dad, I spent the night there with her. I awoke the next morning with her tugging at my big toe. "I'm staying," she said with a smile. "I feel less lonely here." From that point until a few weeks before she passed away, Cyndy ad I jugged our lives between her house and ours, making sure she was well cared for. For a lady who had never before spent a night alone or seldom left the house without dad, she was so brave!

My sister Cyndy's daughter, Brittany, may have been an eighth-grader at Pau-Wau-Lu Middle School, but that didn't stop her Nanny from watching the clock every day for the hour the bus should be dropping her off. At 2:45 sharp I'd have to dial the phone so she could check to see if Brittany had gotten home okay. She had done that will all my kids until they were out of the house, too. Her family was her life.

We could see her time was near so our purpose in life had become to make things as nice as we could for her. Even the last month or so mom had some pleasurable moments. The last week of her life we had fun watching "The Bachelorette" on TV together. We made a gave of it and when it came her time to choose a bachelor we got a kick out of it when she said she didn't like any of the options, and if she were Trista she'd choose Tim, our foreman, over all the others! Nine days before she joined dad in Heaven, we took a Sunday drive to Smith Valley with my granddaughter, Delaney, who was 18 months old at the time, and she polished off a whole bag of popcorn with a soda on the way. She spent part of that day playing peek-a-boo and tea party with her little great-granddaughter. Every day we'd get cleaned up and dressed and if the weather was nice enough we'd spend a few hours out in the January sunshine. She accompanied me to jobsites, climbing up into my truck on a step stool. Just a few days before she passed away, we stopped at Dairy Queen on the way to Carson City for a chocolate dipped ice cream cone. That night when I tucked her in, I took down the curtains in her room so she could see the stars from her bed. She said, "I love you." I said, "Love you, too." She said, "Love you three." I said, "Love you four." We went up to "I love you seven," then we giggled at our silliness and she went to sleep.

On the afternoon of January 21, 2003, Father Bill and Debbie Posnian came by and we prayed together. Father Bill anointed her and gave her Communion just as he did dad, and she smiled a big, happy smile. She performed the sign of the cross as though strength were not an issue. Afterwards, I played for her the Josh Grobin music I planned to use at her memorial service alongside silent home movies. She watched the years of her life replayed on the TV screen before her as she listened to the beautiful strains of "The Prayer," which I think was somehow written with her in mind. She had me get her some Windex and she polished up her picture of dad that was taken in the hospital on his 84th birthday, a month before he left her. She wouldn't let me help. A few hours later, she peacefully slipped away and I changed her into her favorite lavender nightie and put dad's picture on the pillow next to her head. He was waiting for her. No matter how ornery she got, in his eyes she could do no wrong. He loved her with all his heart and he was the love of her life, too. Now they were together again.

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