My mom would have been one hundred years old today

This is the centenary of my mom’s birth. Lucille’s one hundredth birthday, had she not died some thirteen years ago. I’ve been thinking a lot about what she lived through.

World War I just not two years gone when she was born. I wish I would have had a chance to talk with my grandma and my mom about what it was like to have a German surname in those days. I can imagine that it didn’t always feel safe.

She was a young girl during the Great Depression and scarcity and poverty are hard taskmasters. I’m pretty sure the family kept a cow and had chickens in the village of Dexter, and so they had food, if not money.

She was married the summer of the 1939, the start of World War II, although it would take over two years before the US would get involved. Her first child, John, was born when she was only 22, and young men were enlisting or being drafted into military service. My dad waited until he was drafted into the Army, then shipped off to Burma for the duration plus six months.

Sometime later, her in-laws moved in and stayed with them until they died in the early 1960’s. I love my in-laws, but I can’t imagine six, then seven, and finally eight people in a four bedroom house with one bathroom – let alone in-laws that probably were clear about how things must be done.

Parents are a product of all that they lived through before becoming parents, and they do the best they can. I don’t think my mom met all the needs of her children, but she did the best she could, was loving, wasn’t abusive, was consistent and kind. One might want more, but kids rarely know what their parents are dealing with.

She was amazingly graceful as it came time to sell the big four bedroom house as her driving skills became worse and needed additional care. When it became more difficult for her to manage, and more difficult for Marcia and I to spare the hours of travel to get her to appointments, we moved her closer to us. And when she finally moved in a nursing home, again, she accepted it with grace (or at least never let on that it was less than good).

Whenever musicians came to the nursing home, she always had two requests: Jesus Loves Me, and When The Saints Go Marching In.

The last words she said to us were ‘Happy Anniversary!’ as she died on our 25th wedding anniversary. The solemnity of the minutes after she died with three of her four children present (the fourth had transportation issues) was completely broken by a television suddenly blaring from down the hallway a scene from My Fair Lady, the musical number ‘I Could Have Danced All Night’.

Remembering my mom on her birthday, and the anniversary of her death is always with a smile and a laugh of that time.