89

Strange title for a post, but read on, and you’ll see why.

My mother was born in 1936. Yup. She would have been 89 years old today if she had lived.

This is her high school graduation picture. She never graduated, though. She had to leave high school with just six months left to graduate to take care of her ailing mother and younger sister.

At 17, she had to go to work full-time. Back in the 1950’s there weren’t many jobs an uneducated woman could get that would actually help support a family. She wound up in a bank as a junior teller.

For the rest of her life, that missed high school diploma followed her from menial job to menial job. Did we live in poverty? By today’s definition, yeah. In the 1960’s and 70’s, we were considered lower middle class. A two-income household that barely paid its bills each month and had a lot of debt. We didn’t have extras, sometimes had just a sandwich for dinner.

But my mother persevered. She tried to get her GED twice, but the work didn’t compute in her brain and she couldn’t pass the test.

She died suddenly two years ago. She’d just turned 87 a week before her death.

Today, I honor her life, so hard lived. She never lost her capacity to love, though. She had her issues, mental and physical. But she was my mother, and even though our relationship was tortured at times, I loved, and love her, with everything in me.

Happy Heavenly Birthday, Mommie. If I can’t have you here with me, I’m glad you’re one of my guardian angels in Heaven now.