I think it really started when I lost Mom. And I lost Mom probably 3 years before she died in 2003. She was the strongest person I ever knew. Her mom died in 1945 when Mom was 16. Grandma Betty, who I never knew, died at age 37. Mom was the oldest child still left at home, Uncle T was about 11 and Uncle D only 3. And Grandaddy climbed into a bottle it took him 25 years to crawl back out of. Mom had to quit school and take care of things at home. Then at 17, she married Daddy in 1945. Cathy was born in 1946, Jo in 1947, a stillbirth son Michael in 1956 and then me, in 1957. Along the way, over the years, she took care of her brothers, her nephew, her grandson Steve and a lot of others along the way. She and daddy moved numerous times over the years and she did not have a home of her own that they purchased until about 1980. After I was out of school. she had a couple of jobs but before that she was home with us.
Jo died in 1970, a victim of domestic violence. She had a 2 year old at the time and Mom and Daddy raised him. We used to tease her that with the difference in our ages she was a room mother for 30 years I do know she was a great mom and grandma. She made our clothes (well, not Steve's), she made our lunches, she made our school brownies. She was the money person and took not much money over the years and sent us all to college. Not all stayed but we all went. And I only know now how poor we were and how hard it must have been. There were always people worse off than us, people mom managed to give to.
Mom told a story of about 1947, it was the 20th of the month and daddy's payday wasn't til the 1st of the month. She had 2 little girls and she had used her last cup of flour that morning to make biscuits. She said she sat down at the table and began to pray because she did not know how she was going to feed everyone for the next 10 days. While she was sitting there, there was a knock on the door and outside was a stranger. He needed a refrigerator and had heard she had one to sell. About a month before, she had put an ad in the paper but only had money for 1 week. There was no response and it was all but forgotten. Now, as an answer to her prayer, God had sent a stranger with cash to buy that refrigerator. She took that money--I don't remember how much--and bought groceries and she said never again were they in that much trouble. She had enough then and managed to save some after that. We all made it through with no health insurance, no 401k, no welfare, no earned income tax credit, no food stamps.
After I left for college, she worked at a sewing factory and later she had a job driving a bus to bring older people to Lubbock. She also had her office where she administered Green Thumb, a clothing dropoff and she helped people fill out government forms She did not make a lot of money but she loved that job more than anything. She was happiest because it was not a job that had her cooking or sewing. She felt she really did an important job. And the people loved her. Then she had her first little mini stroke and basically they grounded her because she was a driving liability. And it broke her heart.
Then in 1997, Cathy died of breast cancer. And while losing her job bent her, losing Cathy broke her. Burying 3 of her 4 children took it's toll. Her health began to fail pretty quickly and she was at a point where she could no longer walk and daddy could no longer take care of her. We had talked over the years about the nursing home, how it can be a prison or a home and she always agreed with that but when the time came, it was horribly hard on her. I had thought about quitting my job to go take care of them but the reality was in 20 years I'd have nothing...no family, no home, no retirement...and she would not have wanted that So we did the best we could and for the 1st year we cried a lot. But she eventually settled in, a lot by her mind checking out. She died in 2003.
My niece asked me if she thought Mom was happy and the truth is I think she was. I think she would have liked some things to be different. She would have like to finish school She would have liked to keep her job. She loved her family and was a great mom, a great anchor for all of us. I do think in some ways she thought her choices were limited and they were. I tried in her later years to help her try new things. We got manicures, we went to Vegas, she'd come to my house (which she was extremely proud of) to spend the weekend and we'd go out to eat. She loved eating out because she did not have to cook it and people served her. Before she got sick, we were friends too and those are memories that I will cherish always.
In my fluid and unending journey for self improvement I will work hard to solve my anchor problem.
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