TWELVE YEARS AGO TODAY

"One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind." (Romans 14:5)

I have become like many "over 50" folks in that I frequently forgot what the date is, and occasionally I even forget the DAY of the week it is. I do, however, remember certain days vividly. I must give credit to my sister Dianne for this one, because it's possible I would have forgotten: Today is August 2, 2012 and it's exactly twelve years since my mother, Virginia M. (Richard) Baril passed away. My father had died just a few weeks earlier. They're buried at Knollwood Memorial Park in Canton.

I have written about my father on this blog a lot. He was a very strong personality. He would definitely qualify as an "Alpha male". I've also written that he was a very complicated personality, and he was. Well, my mother was just as complicated. (For anyone who wonders about where my eccentricities come from, I inherited all of the most extreme characteristics of EACH parent!)

Virginia was born on May 1, 1924. She loved being a "May basket". Her folks were on the older side when she was born. I think her Mom was around 36 and her Dad was around 42 at the time. They had only been married about a year at the time. They later had a son, Frank, four years later. Mom got meningitis when she was very young. She was hospitalized, and very close to death. Her very devout Catholic parents prayed for a miracle. In fact, a miracle took place. She was suddenly and dramatically healed with no ill effects! The doctors and nurses were "completely blown away"!

Mom was intense. She said many relatives described her as "high strung". She worried about, well, everything. She feared, well, everything. She desperately wanted to please others and do what was right. Mom was a very devout Catholic. She truly WAS, "more Catholic than the Pope" as they say. Immediately following graduation from a small girls' Catholic high school in 1941, she entered the convent! She was only seventeen. The convent was in New Jersey. As Mom told it, her father cautioned her that if at ANY time she wanted to leave the convent and come home, it was perfectly O.K. Mom desperately wanted to become a missionary nun to China. Knowing her as I did, I don't think that ever would have "worked" for a myriad of reasons. After around two or three years she did leave the convent and come home. She took classes at Northeastern University and had the equivalent of about a year of college. Her father believed college was no place for a woman, and strongly discouraged her getting any further education. Mom worked for a few years at an engineering firm named Holtzer-Cabot and then for several years for New England Telephone (now Verizon). My parents grew up on the same blue-collar street in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood. Their houses were only about a hundred yards apart- if that. They were not close at all as young children. My father had dated all these (frankly) very sexy girls who were nothing like my mother. I suspect his family steered him towards her and away from them. I know they began dating in the late 1940s and that their first date was to a restaurant in Framingham which was no more than a mile from the house I lived in for twenty-four years.

My mother was an avid reader. I don't think I've ever known such an avid reader. She loved European history, poetry of almost all kinds, and was fascinated by English royalty. I think my sister Dianne would agree that our mother had the equivalent of a Master's Degree in English literature and in medieval European history.

I gave the euology at her funeral. In that euology, I compared her to George Bailey of the famous film, "It's a Wonderful Life". Like George Bailey, she wanted to travel all over the world. In fact, the only foreign countries she ever visited were Canada and Mexico. She wanted to see Prince Edward Island, but she never got there. She very much wanted to visit France, and that trip also was never to be. Mom would love to have earned at least a Bachelor's degree, but due to circumstances beyond her control, she didn't. Mom struggled with depression for most of her adult life, particulary during her years over 40. I think in a lot of ways she felt trapped and that her life was out of control. (Honestly, I have struggled with some of those same feelings and I can relate.) Mom worked as a Payroll Clerk at Draper Mills in Canton. She made a lot of friends there, but she pretty much hated her job.
Mom longed to enjoy a happy retirement, but she did not. For years, she took care of my father who had severe dementia, and then she got cancer from which she died.

I think it would have surprised her very much that far more people came to her funeral than to my father's and that SO many people talked about how powerfully she had touched their lives. When my father died, I was honestly just kind of matter-of-fact about it. When my mother died, I completely fell apart, sobbing like a baby.

Yes, I remember the morning of August 2, 2000 very well; the passing of my Mom.