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| LePera's Huntington Station New Years Eve 1960 Dad, Mom, Aunt Elise, and Uncle Red |
And then she
was no more. December 2018 my Mom died. We have some inkling that certain events will
ultimately happen you know like people dying.
However, for me when it happened the thoughts I had over the years
became a reality. My Mother was Sixteen
when I was born in 1943. After leaving the hospital, we went to my grandparents
home where we would live until my Dad came home, hopefully, from WW II. The house we came home to was build in the
early ’20s and consisted of a kitchen, a bathroom, two small bedrooms, and a parlor. Living in the house was me, my Mom, her sister,
and my grandparents. Thus I became like
another child of my grandparents with my Mom and Aunt more like sisters. Thus we all grew up together of which I remember
very little.
I know we all lived in
that house together. I have pictures showing us all living together but no
memory of it. Really at this point memories of that time have been on the wane.
I look at the old back and white pictures
which stirs glimpses of memories around what was happening. When I think back, I mostly find pictures
stored in my memory of the house but no people until I’m about five years old. I can see my grandfather remodeling some part
like the bathroom. However, there are no
memories I can drum up of my Mom or Aunt at the time. I know they had to be there, but they are
not. Other family members come to mind but not them.
The reason I’m dwelling
on this is that there are lots of relatives and friends of my grandparents that
circulated through our home. Almost
every time I’d go to Florida to visit my Mom I’d make her drag out the boxes of
pictures, and we’d look at them together.
I’d look at a picture unsure of who it was, and she would provide the names. Once named I’d be able to connect to their stories
in our lives. We’d laugh or shake our
heads over the memories of those stories.
That long-ago time was a world my Mom, and I shared that none of my
brothers and sisters did.
All those people in the
pictures are now all gone. Well until December
that is. My Mom was the last of them and
her generation. Because of our combined
history, her generation was also mine more then mine was. Although I was a war baby born in 1943, I did
not grow up so much with that generation as I did with a generation of immigrants
coming to America for a better life. My
life was influenced by the Victorian age, the roaring ‘20s, the depression, and
a war.
Now her stuff has all
been sold off, and soon her house will be gone, there is nothing left to show she
was a person of flesh and blood other than a few pictures I possess. Pictures, furniture, clothes, jewelry and so
much more are now gone. A whirlwind came
and made it all disappear, poof. All the
cliches of “she will always be with you in your hear, or she lives in your
children” do not offer a person to sit with and reminisce about a life lived
together.
When my Mom died, I experience
the onset of profound loneliness. There is
no one left for me to say “Remember…”
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