VIRGINIA M. BARIL - MAYDAY

“But when Herod’s birthday was kept, the daughter of Herodias danced before them, and pleased Herod.” (Matthew 14:6)

As far as I know, that’s the only Scripture verse in the entire Bible which used the word “birthday”.  I’m using it today, because today, May 1, 2008 would have been my mother’s 84th birthday.

I think I wrote about my mother on the blog on one of her previous birthdays...maybe two years ago.  My parents’ birthdays were always easy to remember because they each had first day of the month birthdays.  (My father was born on December 1, 1922.)  Like my late brother’s birthday of a few weeks ago, my mother’s birthday has put me in a very reflective mood.  I honestly wasn’t planning on writing anything on the blog today, but here I go!  Shaving and showering a little while ago, all I could think about was my mother’s birthday.

My mother, Virginia M. “Ginny” (Richard) Baril was originally from the Roxbury section of Boston.  My mother and father grew up in the same neighborhood on the same street, just a few houses apart!  It was a 90% Irish Catholic neighborhood.  Both my Mom’s and Dad’s families were Catholic but neither were Irish.  All four of my grandparents were immigrants from Canada.  (Have no fear, Michael Graham, they were LEGAL immigrants!)  Three out of four spoke French as their first language; the exception was my mother’s mother who grew up as Mary MacDonald in rural Prince Edward Island.

My mother and father were as different as night and day.  They loved “dating” and traveling, but I honestly don’t think they did all that well getting along in day to day life.  From photos of my Dad when he was a teenager and young adult, you can tell he was one of the “cool” kids...or whatever they called “cool” kids in 1940.  He was confident, athletic, mechanically inclined,  hung around with the popular kids and dated some (frankly) very sexy looking girls.  In high school my mother thought my father was a jerk.  She entered the CONVENT (no kidding) immediately upon graduating from high school.  Mom’s father, who was also a very religious person, thought that she might be making a mistake.  He assured her that if she decided she wanted to change her mind about it at any time, it was OK.  Mom went off to northern New Jersey to begin her “nun training” (or whatever they called it).  She was determined to become a missionary nun to China.  

You see, my mother was not only very religious but she was very idealistic.  She fully expected to experience miracles on a daily basis.  Now, as a Pentecostal, I definitely believe in miracles.  And, the basis for her belief in frequent miracles and supernatural interventions was based on something very important from her early childhood.  As a very young child (I think it was at 2 years old; my sister thinks it was at 2 months old) she was in the hospital at death’s door with meningitis.  The prognosis was virtually hopeless.  Mom suddenly and MIRACULOUSLY got completely well.  This astounded her doctors at the time!

Sadly, the reality of a strict, rigid, ascetic convent was just not something my mother was prepared for.  She tried and tried to make the convent work, but she dropped out after about two years.  Sadly, she regretted that decision for the rest of her life and often believed the decades of depression and disappointments she later faced were a punishment from an angry God.  Mom did not come to understand about the God of grace, mercy, love and forgiveness until she was around 70-years-old!

My sister and I still can’t understand how my parents ever got together.  Ironically, their first date was at a restaurant in FRAMINGHAM of all places!  I believe it was right off Route 9 at the “Junction” section of Framingham- only about a mile from where I live today!  My father on the one hand had an outstanding sense of humor, was a great storyteller, and was a practical joker.  On the other hand, he could have a very authoritarian  personality and was one of the most stubborn people I’ve ever known.  He was the “It’s my way or the highway!” type and he got his way on just about everything.  Mom kind of sadly and dutifully lived her life.

My sister has found journal after journal of my mother’s from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s in which she writes about how depressed she was.  That was a shock to my sister Dianne, but it really wasn’t to me.  Mom worked as a payroll clerk at Draper Mills in Canton.  She really liked most of the people she worked with but she HATED the job.  She worked there for around twenty years.  In her spare time she read books...non-fiction books about European history and fictional mystery stories.  In my opinion, my mother had the equivalent of a Master’s Degree in European history.  She desperately wanted to travel to Europe.  She never did.  She desperately wanted to visit Prince Edward Island, her mother’s birthplace.  She never did.  (I have visited Prince Edward Island.  It’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been to, but it really saddens me she never made it there.)  Many of you know my late brother Eddie was an alcoholic.  His death at age 27 in 1983 devastated both of my parents.  Mom also felt like a failure because two of her kids “turned Protestant”.  (Catholics of her age group would say someone “turned Protestant” the way you’d say something like “the milk has turned sour.”)

Exactly ten years ago, in 1998, (in the midst of being the caretaker for my Dad who had Alzheimer’s Disease and was still at home at that point) Mom began having serious health problems.  In September of 1998 she was diagnosed as having multiple-myeloma (“bone cancer”).  In August 2000 she died...seven weeks after my father’s death.

I remember at the time of her cancer diagnosis (privately) being inconsolable.  I voiced to my wife, “I couldn’t rescue her...I couldn’t rescue her...”  And I couldn’t.  Mary Ann said it wasn’t my job to rescue her.  It wasn’t, I know, but ten years later, on this occasion of what would have been her 84th birthday it’s all coming back to my mind, and although this is a beautiful spring day, it’s kind of a sad one for me...