(Excuse me Dad, I loved you and know what you did so selflessly for our Country! But during your never-ending absence, this is about Mom!)
I'd like to describe a photo I just saw on FB, of an elderly woman sitting by her favorite window, gazing out in the distance with an abandoned look. A look that portrayed her exactly like my Mother! Clothes and all!
It was a gaze that for the moment, took her away from the overwhelming, everyday realities she faced with no reasonable end for her in sight! The look on that Lady's face described several things eerily familiar to me in a family of 8 boys and 3 girls. It was a very special place in her mind where she would suddenly force herself from the never-ending toil of the day to sit and ponder, to forever wonder where my Dad (she never quit loving) was, but never knowing, and where the next meal would come from, also not knowing! She never quit wondering what she could do about it as well!
It was usually while the rest of us would eat the often-times meager meal she managed to scrape up at the close of each never-ending hungry day!
I'm sure she thanked God often for all the children available to tend to the Guernsey, milk supplying cow, chickens for meat and eggs, along with the strength he gave her to accomplish an otherwise seemingly impossible task she was confronted with every waking morning.
Every morning, would find her up preparing our breakfast while one of us was also up, starting the fires in the Coal and wood stove in the kitchen during Summer and the furnace in the basement as well in the Winters where we would have durations of Below-zero Fahrenheit, quite excessively!
Thank you Mom! Thank you for our only dependable strength in guiding this family through the Great Depression, then the 2nd World War and the "Forgotten" Korean War.
I personally remember your added chores of the wars, the baking of endless cookies and such to send them to my older brothers in the Canadian and the American Military Posts in which they dutifully served, Both Canadian and American!
I remember you leading and giving us a lending hand in digging and planting the large garden that was our sole source of vegetables until the following year. At which time we were back at it again.
I reflect back to the times I was little and Jeannie was a baby, as busy as you were, how you always took the time to love us when we hurt and when you could still find the time to show us soothing sympathy.
Readers of these stories might wonder in amazement, how you came through your episodes in your busy times and still on Sunday, herd all of us still at home, to Church every Sunday without fail?? To tell us to pray that we would by some Act of God, receive answers and a means to carry on??
Well,......., The question might be in someone else's mind when reading this; Why didn't she "Break" and give up on this "GOD" thing and all the endless chores that came along with it?? Just as I thought of myself a couple of times in my life???.........The answer in her Religious-taught beliefs was simple; "Ask and you shall receive!" We DID both!! It worked for us, didn't it Mom!?
You never drank alcohol or smoked, but never do I remember you scolding us severely when the rest of this family did, and believe me, we did!
I must say also, one of your many attributes was the ability to turn a mistake into a laughing matter, turning the situation into a 'positive' from what would have surely been a prolonging 'Negative'!
Many times, you entertained yourself and us that way, by attending our family gatherings, while you took the deserved position of Matriarch as we partied on!
Memories of the past were 'aplenty; We saw you blacken a female neighbor's eye when she entered our yard to do harm to our sister June in a dispute the neighbor had started to begin with, by deliberately lighting a yard-trash fire next door after you had just hung out a wash on the 75 ft. Clothes-line! (Sister June had just put it out with the hose to save the clothes!)
That incident rubbed off on the rest of us throughout our lives, in protecting each other! We DID indeed, do that!!
After that, circa 1958, the last one of us left you to that quiet home alone, You sold the house in Fernie, B.C. and fullfilled an unbelievable desire to follow through on a professional path you were called by God and your conscience to do; You took up a position in a retarded Children's home in Boulder, Montana! (You just weren't ready to GIVE UP!!)
You decided after 5 years of that, to return to Eureka Mont. to live by your younger Sister Alice and Tommy Price. (My favorite Aunt and Uncle)
Were you done yet?? NOPE!!
You lived in your own little cottage there that you had built by your Nephew, Tom Price JR. and took in our Grandmother Voem until she passed away at 86 years of age. You sold your home and moved here to Seattle, where you entered a Senior Citizen's assisted living facility and died peacefully in your sleep, (As you always expressed your desire to do) at the approaching age of 99 years!
HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY, MOM!!!!
God bless and keep you until the rest of us can be there with you too!! Just sayin'!
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