The Early Years....................................
Mom Married Dad
When they were very young. My sister Betty came along not long afterward, then brother Dickie and Billy and then me. The youngest boy was in high school when I came along so basically I was an only child.
I had it pretty easy growing up, my parents were established and I lived in a nice big house. It took Mom 5 hours to just mow the yard, but she never hired anybody to take care of it for her. Mom and Daddy had a good life, looking forward to Daddy's retirement and watching the boys run the company. Had these nice rocking chairs on the front porch just waiting.
In 1972 Daddy got sick. The doctors didn't know what it was. Test after test was run and they just couldn't find anything. In 1973 Daddy had a cup of coffee that he wasn't supposed to have before the X-rays and guess what? There it was, way down low in his stomach. The Doctors called it Pancretitis. It had taken too long to find it.
Later that year on October 10th, just 11 days before my 13th birthday, Daddy died. For the year that Daddy spent in the hospital, Mom lost weight and the skin hung on her bones. You would have thought that she had Pancreatic Cancer too.
Mom almost lost her mind then. Here she was a widow with a 13 y/o child to raise. This woman, my mother, who had never wrote a check, Never did taxes, or paid bills. A woman who at 49 y/o had a Corporation to run and a little girl who thought Daddy was the sunlight of her existence, to raise alone.
The next few years was bad for Mom, she lost her way. Anti-depressants led to alcohol. I graduated High School, fell in love and moved to another state. After a few months, Mom sold the house and moved to the same state, South Carolina. Mom bought a nice home on the beach and moved in. My husband traveled a lot in his work and I would meet him here and there, every few weeks.
Finally, we settled in North Carolina for a year. It was there I got Pregnant with our first child. When he was 4 days old, we moved back to the beach. By this time my sister had divorced and bought her a place on the Beach and my brother Billy had moved to South Carolina too, further up state. Dickie stayed in Virginia, where we all were born.
Mom and Betty, Sis we called her, were inseparable. Where you found one, you would find the other. They were best friends as well as mother and daughter.
Mom had developed a Heart Condition not long after my son was born but it never slowed her down. She could throw her Heart out of rhythm at the drop of a hat. Sis and I worried about her a lot, the whole family did. But she was strong and healthy and active. She had stopped drinking because she said she didn't want Chris, my son, to smell it on her breath. She was always a well dressed ,classy lady. And Sis and I took care of her behind her back, she was very independent.
In 1990 , her Heart condition worsened and she was in and out of Hospitals. We knew we would loose her to this bad Heart. She was slowing down.
In 1991, May 12th, Sis took Mom and Chris and I out for a nice dinner. It was Sis's 49th Birthday. It was a big Party, with just us. We ate Prime Rib and watched Sis and Chris dance on the dance floor. Every Dance you see this Classy lady ( she got it from Mom) and this 3 y/o child dancing. Mom and I wound up sitting by ourselves at the table. Mom was miffed to say the least.
Two weeks later Sis passed quietly away in her sleep. She also had a Heart condition and had told no one. She had known that she only had a couple years to live but Sis being who she was, didn't want to worry anybody.
07 August, 2004 04:33:48 PM
mailto:cancer_memorial@hotmail.com
