On Being an Orphan

My father died many years ago. I miss him still. I have done so many things I want him to know about and so many things I would love to talk with him about.

My mother died last Saturday. She was a good woman and I loved her, but we didn't have a relationship like my Dad and I did. Mom was always the person who set the rules and Dad enforced them. When we were young enforcement could mean getting a butt whipping.

Somehow, I always knew that he didn't like being the "cop", but felt that was his role or maybe just his lot in life. When I was very young he started treating me more like an adult than his son. I don't mean that there weren't rules, but he let me learn more by experience than keeping me out of trouble.

After I moved out and he and mom were alone, he started to drink to much. I was having the same problem. We both quit. He quit earlier than I did, but he did it and it gave me strength when I finally faced the reality of my addiction.

Mom was a women, I think, who feared life beyond the very close area of security that Dad built around her. She was dependent on him for most everything. She never worked and she stuck as close to her family as she could. Mom was oddly uninformed about the larger world. She had opinions about things, but for the most part they were constructed from opinions she formed in her youth. She did not change her opinion about anyone or anything easily.

I say this is odd because my father was much the opposite. He was always interested in new things and new ways of thinking. He was a salesperson and traveled extensively throughout Minnesota and Iowa. For a few years, we moved to Cleveland, Ohio where he managed a manufacturing plant that produced tubular steel scaffolding.

It might sound like I'm being tough on my mom, but from my perspective she was a tough person to get to know. To be fair, she was a conservative Catholic and my two divorces and drinking did not endear me to her. I understand that aspect.

When Dad died and I became the man in the family, I did my best. For the first few years, she got along fine in her apartment. I truly think she was happy even though I did the mean thing and convinced her to quit driving. My frequent business trips allowed me to see her regularly and she would travel to Texas to visit my sister and visit me in Wisconsin at least once a year.

It started to become obvious she was having more and more trouble taking care of herself. Her memory slips stopped being funny and incontinence became a problem she wouldn't deal with on her own. We got her some help, but eventually constant care was required.

Very quickly, my mother became someone nobody knew. She became wheelchair bound, lost what little hearing she had and became remote and private.

She had tenacity. I do not know what she was getting out of life, because her mind was in place where no one else could go But there was something worthwhile for her because she lived in
Franciscan Care & Rehab for almost nine years before she let go.

Mary Jane Blaylock-Jordan died at approximately 2:00am on Saturday, March 24, 2007. She would have been ninety on May 6, 2007. She left behind my sister, Marie and me,. ten grandchildren and nine grandchildren. Unfortunately she hadn't met them or wouldn't recognize them if she did. She is in a better place, if my Dad is by her side and the Vikings are winning Super Bowls