MY HERO....MY MOTHER

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• " You've had a tough life, Rog," my mother said, looking up at me from a nursing home bed in Yuma, Arizona just a week before she died. She gave up 93 wrinkled, well worn years of one of the most weathered lives I could have lived. She had been through it all.
•    Stubborn as hell, the little 5 foot, 4 inch German girl married a punk from west Philly, in  1936, and within 10 years regretted it. She hung in til the end. What a drag. I would have killed him. She did it for us. Dad died, 2 Mays before - we had to get a liquor license first. 
• Mom hung had every right to leave, but you didn't do that in 1948. You stayed, endured, and  fought back. She would holler at him, " stay away from me tonight. Keep your nickle. Tomorrow, maybe worth a dime, maybe worth a quarter." She was the smartest one in the family and taught my sister & I, common sense
• The summer of 49, they had a blow up, Mom packed Pat and I up and we took the train up to Mom's home-Altoona, and spent the summer there. I slept on the sun porch w/my sister and during the day we went climbing peach orchards and picking fruit. That was fun. Dad finally came up Labor Day, picked us all up, drove us back, we went to church, things got back to "normal." She got between us and our father from then on.
• He had a bad habit of asking me to fetch stuff. Go get me the double/triple, fly-over, tri-mo wench, he'd say. No idea what the hell he was talking about, and he knew it. I'd ask, he would have a class A temper tantrum, rush past me, charge over to the work table and find it, shake it under my nose and holler for me to go upstairs ...with the rest of the girls.
• When I wanted to go to the local Y, get a lifeguard badge - maybe I could get some summer jobs at local pools. I was up for it. Dad said no, you can't do it. What a downer he was: NOT maybe you CAN do it, you ought to TRY to do it: just NO.
• So, I went anyway and failed at it. I called Mom to tell her and she said - "don't you DARE come home without that badge. Get back in that pool til you get it."  I did. I got it, The coach helped me a lot. It wasn't til years later I discovered Mom called the coach and demanded he take me back and push the hell out of me until I did it. I was a good Life Guard that summer, saving a few lives.
• When my father retired, he had a choice: fix his retirement so that he drew out less money and when he died, mom still could draw on it. Or, take it all out WHILE he was a live, he gets more. Then, when he dies, it stops.  " The kids can take care of you," he told us. That's when I began to learned he was a contemptable prick. 

Alcoholism was his favorite job. Everything and everyone came second. He wasn't happy until he converted everyone he could to a bottle. He turned my first wife, Mary into an alcoholic, in my opinion. "Dad remember when I said Martinis tasted like bug-spray? Well, I drink them all the time, now," My youngest daughter Laura got her first drink there. I can remember my mother coming home from dinner out with Dad she coming in to my bedroom smelling of alcohol and slurring her words in 1958 and 59. They were married just a squidge over 20 years at that point. My sister Pat had trouble with alcohol all her life, and gave it up in her fifties.
The only person I ever had looking out for me, loving me unconditionally, rooting for me, was my mother. She was my mother, father, my fairy Godmother, my advisor, chief confidant, she knew almost everything. What she didn't know, she guessed, and usually was right. When she died, it left a huge hole in my heart, and in some way, I accept it as her spirit walking about  somewhere, hopefully finding peace, a place to rest, retire, until we meet again, God Willing. I can't wait to meet with her again, nestled in the arms of God, hear her voice and speak with her again. If I can't then nothing is right in the world. If we don't, nothing in the universe will ever seem right to me.
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My Mother and daughter