Today is about remembering Mom. Losing a parent is never easy. She would have been 93 today.
It has now been six years since she has been gone, and somehow, it does not seem that long. But it has been long enough to get through the work she left behind and finally begin to see the person she was, the life she lived, and how both shaped who I have become.
We certainly did not have a typical mother-daughter relationship.
Her Beginning
She was the third of seven children and the oldest daughter, so she naturally helped look after “the little ones.” Her father was an alcoholic, and her mother was declared unfit by the courts. In spite of that, her mother still tried to keep some, but not all, of her children.
Just not my mother.
When she was ten, the family was broken up, and she was sent to an orphanage, where she lived for about two years. Out of all the stories she could have told, the ones I heard were about sliding down the fire escapes. It was not until much later that I realized they were probably not allowed to do that.
That was the first sign that she could be a rebel.
She was eventually adopted by a professor at the University of Illinois and his wife. Suddenly, she was an only child. After high school, it seemed only natural that she would attend the same university. She studied secretarial science, and it was there that she met my father.
They married after graduation. Since he had enlisted in the Army, they spent the next two years in Colorado. I was born there, and after he left the Army, we moved to Ohio.
Building a Family and Helping Others
By 1959, we were living in Parma Heights. My brother was born that February, and I started preschool the next fall.
Our family continued to grow, but not only through births. Over the next three or four years, Mom and Dad welcomed twelve foster children into our home. They were not all there at once, but each became part of the family for a time. At one point, we had a one-year-old toddler and a set of newborn twins at the same time.
Mom had been sewing for as long as I could remember, perhaps out of necessity. She made clothes, curtains, pillows, and all kinds of things for the house. At one point, she took apart my original teddy bear and used it as a pattern to make others. She made a teddy bear for each foster child to take with them when they left.
I did not realize it then, but considering Mom’s own childhood, that part of her story carries even more meaning. She knew what it was like to have adults decide where she would live and who would care for her. Years later, she opened her own home to children who needed one.
In the fall of 1964, we moved to Richfield and began building the A-frame that would become our family home. We moved into it in April 1965, when my sister was only two weeks old. One more sister arrived the following year to complete the family.
Well, not exactly complete.
Our parents had promised us a dog once the house was finished, but Dad tried to get out of it. So, while he was away on a business trip, Mom took us to get our first dog, a miniature dachshund named Marty.
Mom’s Creativity Grows
The A-frame was more than the house where our family lived. The whole idea came from Mom. A-frames are typically summer cottages, not three-bedroom houses where you raise a family. But Mom insisted.
It became one of the first places where her creativity was woven into everyday life. From the shape of the house itself to the way she made it feel like home, she was always creating something.
That creativity showed up in smaller ways too. She made silk-screened Christmas cards, worked on her artwork, and found ways to turn ordinary things into something personal.
As Mom’s creativity grew, so did her sense of who she was. She was becoming more independent, more confident, and more fully her own person.
Eventually, that growth led to the end of her marriage.
Divorce and Responsibility
What made the divorce especially confusing was that we never saw or heard Mom and Dad fight. There were no shouting matches or obvious warning signs, at least not where we could see or hear them. From our perspective, the divorce seemed to come out of nowhere.
Looking back now, I think Mom simply outgrew Dad.
For the first time in years, Mom had to find a job and begin supporting herself. But she already had an idea of at least one thing she wanted for her new life: a purple car.
She had first mentioned wanting one in 1969. It was a little out of my budget, so I bought her the only purple car I could afford, a Hot Wheels car. I still have it today.
That may sound like a small detail, but it was very Mom. She was not only leaving a marriage. She was deciding what she wanted her own life to look like.
The changes in the family started slowly, and at first, things were still fairly peaceful. Dad bought a trailer and moved to the local trailer park. He would pick us up and take us to Dairy Queen, and during that first year or so, he was even around for birthdays and holidays.
Then he remarried, and the fireworks started.
I am the oldest of four children, and by then I was fourteen. Suddenly my responsibilities grew immensely.
Raising Your Mother
When Dad remarried, things got ugly. I was fourteen, but suddenly I became the second adult in the house.
I was Mom’s sounding board, especially when she wanted to talk about Dad. At the same time, she often told me I was “just like him.” Since she was usually angry with him, I began to wonder if that meant she hated me too.
My responsibilities were not only emotional. I became an additional handyman. One time, the washing machine stopped working, so Mom called a repairman. He pulled half a pair of underwear out of the pump, declared it fixed, and left. When it quit again, Mom and I took it apart ourselves, pulled out the other half, and finally fixed it.
I was also responsible for my younger sisters. During the school year, I had to be home after volleyball, basketball, or softball practice in time to get them off the bus. In the summers, I was their full-time babysitter.
I cooked dinner and had it ready when Mom came home from work. When she could not find a $100 difference in her checkbook, I helped her balance it, even though I did not yet have a checking account of my own.
She was fired from her first job after turning off the office lights to keep the room cooler during the summer. After almost a month of job hunting, she was unsure whether to accept a position she had been offered. I reminded her that she had children to support and told her she needed to take the job.
I was still her daughter, but I was also helping her make adult decisions, manage a household, and raise the rest of the family. In many ways, I was helping raise my mother while I was still growing up myself.
After a few years, Mom started dating…
Dating and Moving On With Her Life
It was weird. By now, I was out of high school, but I wasn’t even dating. Yet I was now in the position of asking Mom where she was going, who she was with, and what time she would be home.
The first man she dated had moved out of state, so she drove about an hour on Friday nights to meet him. I do not remember the details, but that relationship did not last very long. That was okay. At least Mom was moving forward with her life.
After a while, Mom changed jobs again, this time taking a much better-paying position as secretary to the director of research at a local steel company. Not long after she started there, she began telling us about the “mathematician down the hall.”
At first, they were simply friends, and the two families spent time together. He, his wife, and their three children came to our house, most likely for dinner, although I do not remember the details. His wife even hired Mom to type her master’s thesis.
Eventually, one thing led to another, and the mathematician down the hall became Mom’s second husband. Before they got married, I had told Mom that if he moved in, then I would move out. By then I was 21. There were things he said to me in a “father” tone that just did not go well. And I knew at that point she needed him more than I needed to continue living there.
She was happy.
They married. I sublet his apartment. He moved in and I moved out. Simultaneously.
Okay. Not exactly how I would have drawn it up….
Life Goes On…
Mom had always been pretty independent and did what needed to be done. Late one afternoon, I stopped by to talk to her. I did not see her right away, but Donald was in the kitchen cooking dinner. He was actually a very good cook.
So I asked him where Mom was.
“Out back. Chopping firewood.”
Okay. What was wrong with this picture?
At first, I thought it was strange. But considering all the traditionally male things I have done over the years, it really should not have surprised me.
But it did anyway.
Finally Her Creativity Blossomed
One of the things Mom found in Donald was someone who also appreciated art and music. At one point, she signed up for an evening business class. It happened to be taught by a woman who owned a small business selling art and doing professional picture framing. This was high-quality, museum-preservation framing.
It turned out that she was ready to sell the business.
Mom was much more of an artist than a businesswoman. Remember that part about balancing her checkbook? But this time, she had Donald’s support and backing. So they bought Kistler Art & Framing and ran it for more than sixteen years.
That was one of the happiest times of her life.
She became a Certified Professional Picture Framer. I did not even know there was such a thing, but I was impressed with what she was doing.
She created in many different ways. She used her sewing background to make tapestries and pillows that were more art than decor. She sewed purses and even made vests. “Wearable art,” she called it. What had once been practical became another creative medium.
She tried paper collages and silk screening. She knitted too, sometimes incorporating those pieces into other artwork. She not only ran the business but also took her work to art shows.
I had never seen anyone with so much creativity. And it had been bottled up for years. With Donald beside her, she finally had the freedom, encouragement, and support to let it out.
The Mother
When Mom owned Kistler Art, my sister worked for her along with another young woman about the same age. The two of them acted very much like sisters, and they even looked enough alike that people often assumed they were related.
Whenever I stopped by, if someone was told that two of the three of us were sisters, I was usually the one left out.
That created a small problem at work. Should my sister call her “Mom” while the other girl called her “Betty”? Or should they both call her the same thing?
So Mom became “The Mother.”
Losing Donald and Living Alone
That made losing Donald especially hard. She did not only lose her husband of twenty-five years. She lost the person who had encouraged her creativity and helped her build one of the happiest chapters of her life.
Donald was diagnosed with cancer in early 2001. By 2003, they both knew it was time to close Kistler Art. Mom had turned seventy that year and would not be able to run the business without him. They tried to find a buyer, but none could be found. So they held an auction and sold everything. Donald died that December, just two weeks after the final auction.
Mom was now seventy years old, and for the first time in her life, she was living completely on her own.
She had gone from her childhood home to an orphanage, then to her adoptive parents’ home, college, marriage, and eventually a second marriage. Even during the years between husbands, she still had children living at home. Now there was no one else in the house. Not even a dog.
The A-frame had always been her idea, but it was a lot of house and property for one person to manage. One day, I stopped by, and she said to me, “Do you know how hard it is to take care of a house by yourself?”
“Really, Mom? I have nooooo idea.”
I laughed. Of course I knew.
I had been taking care of my own house for more than fifteen years. But this was new for Mom. She had lost Donald and, with him, the person who shared the everyday work, decisions, and responsibilities of their life together.
After he died, she took all of his neckties apart and used the fabric to make pillows for each of the seven children, the four of us and his three. Even in grief, she found a way to create something meaningful and make sure each of us had a piece of him to keep.
She was still independent and determined to remain that way. But little by little, she began needing more help, and once again, I became the person she turned to.
When the Roles Reversed Again
The first thing Mom needed help with was all the paperwork that comes with losing a spouse. Donald’s father was still living, so she had some help from him too. For a while, she also helped take care of him, since his other children all lived out of state.
That was my first real baptism into handling an estate. There were forms to complete, accounts to sort out, decisions to make, and all the loose ends that follow a death. At the time, I did not realize how much that experience would prepare me for what was still ahead.
Staying Independent for Now
Once those immediate tasks were handled, Mom continued living on her own for many years. She still took care of the A-frame, made her own decisions, and remained fiercely independent.
In 2006, she took care of my dogs after my car accident.
Sometime after that, I helped her get set up with a financial advisor. Financially, Mom was fine. Donald had taken good care of her. But it was time to simplify things and make plans for the future. We also knew that when Mom was gone, everything would eventually need to be divided among the seven children in their combined family.
In 2010, she even adopted a dog. Her name was Bunny, and interestingly enough, Bunny had been with the same foster family as my dog, Bandit. Mom adopted her about ten days after I brought Bandit home. She was in her late seventies by then, but she was still walking her every day.
She continued driving, taking care of herself, and staying involved with her church well into her eighties. We noticed a few changes, but nothing that seemed especially concerning at first. Each one could be explained away on its own.
Then suddenly, they could not.
Noticeable Changes
The first unmistakable sign was that she forgot to renew her driver’s license. By itself, that was not a big deal. Anyone can forget something like that. So we took her in to renew it. She failed the eye test.
That meant a trip to the eye doctor. She had cataracts and needed surgery on both eyes. The first surgery was scheduled and completed. Then the wheels started falling off.
A few days after surgery, things went haywire. She ended up in the hospital with a reaction that affected more than just her eyes. They kept her for several days, but when she was released, she suddenly needed round-the-clock care.
No advance notice. No preparation time. And the only help available was family, or not. My brother. One sister. A few of her granddaughters.
Now that someone was with her around the clock, we all began noticing the changes. Mom still believed she was fine and did not need anyone there. She fought us on it.
She was still fiercely independent and did not appreciate being reminded that she needed help. More than once, she told me, “You are not the mother.”
And I would answer, “You are right. But I am in charge now. And you chose me.”
As long as I acknowledged that she was still the mother, we were okay.
Fortunately, years earlier, when I introduced Mom to the financial advisor, we had also handled the important legal paperwork. Her will had been updated, I had been granted power of attorney, and a trust had been established. She may not have enjoyed having me take charge, but she had already chosen me to do it.
Time to Bring in Caregivers
By then, it was obvious that we needed outside help. Mom still believed that once her eyes were fixed, she would be able to renew her driver’s license.
In the meantime, we started looking for caregivers. Mom wanted no part of that. We had someone come to the house to talk with Mom, my sister, my niece, and me. Once Mom figured out what was happening, she stomped out of the house, went to the garage, put the dog in the car, and apparently decided to run away.
She forgot her keys.
We finished talking with the visitors, told them we would call, and went to check on Mom.
I had to tell her that either someone would come to the house or we would have to move her somewhere. I knew from past conversations that she was adamant about never going to a nursing home.
I understood. I had spent two months in one after my accident. And she had spent two years in an orphanage.
She was still feisty and independent. But faced with those two choices, she relented. A caregiver began coming three days a week.
Back to the License
Her license had expired in July. The first eye surgery was in September, followed by the second a few weeks later. After that, she still needed new glasses.
In Ohio, if a license has been expired for more than six months, you have to be completely retested. And by then, everything was computerized. It was obvious to us that Mom should no longer be driving, and we were quietly hoping the state would make that decision for us.
By the time both eyes had healed and she had her new glasses, only two weeks remained before the six-month deadline.
We said nothing. And just in case, we disconnected the battery in her car.
She asked about renewing her license later, and we explained that she would have to take the tests on a computer. She wanted nothing to do with that.
Driving privileges successfully removed.
Whew!
Still Safe at Home?
By now it was early 2018. We knew Mom had dementia, most likely vascular dementia because she had battled high blood pressure for years. With all the changes we had observed, the looming question became: Was Mom still safe at home?
There were differing opinions.
We continued having caregivers come during the day, and as time went on, we increased the number of days each week. We also shared our concerns with the manager of the caregiving service. Because they dealt with situations like this regularly, we asked them to give us honest feedback based on what they were seeing.
Most importantly, Mom was adjusting to having the caregivers around. Since I worked only five minutes from her house, I would often stop in at lunchtime. Sometimes, on days when no one was scheduled, she would tell me that “nobody came.”
I took that as a positive sign. She was getting used to having someone there, and maybe even beginning to miss them when they were not.
Things were not always smooth, but at least a rhythm had developed, and Mom seemed to be doing okay. Sometimes there were personality conflicts, just like anywhere else, and the service would make a change.
That fall, something suddenly happened with Bunny. I do not remember all the details, only that she did not make it. It may have been some kind of seizure.
Mom was devastated. So much so that one day I dropped off my dog while I was at work, just so she would have a dog there. Even though we knew where the dementia would eventually lead, we got her another dog, a beagle mix named Midge. I told the rescue from the beginning that if anything happened to Mom, Midge would not be returned. I would take her.
Mom was very happy with Midge.
Is It Time for Memory Care?
For a while, the combination of caregivers and Midge seemed to be working. Mom was still in her beloved A-frame, had settled into a routine, and was happy to have a dog beside her again. We knew the arrangement would not last forever, but for the moment, it felt manageable.
Then, in February 2019, Mom had a stroke.
She was taken to the hospital, where she made it very clear that she had no intention of staying. She pulled out her IV, got dressed, and told the staff she was going home.
At 2:00 a.m.
That was Mom. Still feisty. Still independent. Still certain she could take care of herself.
This time, it was different. Round-the-clock care was no longer optional, and the question was changing. It was no longer only whether she was safe at home with caregivers. We had to ask whether home was still the right place for her at all.
A month or so after she returned home, Mom helped us answer that question.
The Answer Was Yes
She began telling me that she did not know whose dog Midge was and thought one of the caregivers had brought her. Then she started wandering away from the house.
One day, I received a call at work from the caregivers. Mom had taken off down the road. I left to find her and discovered her about a quarter of a mile away, with no shoes on. She told me she did not live at the A-frame anymore.
At one point, I asked where she did live and told her I would take her there if she could tell me.
We had already begun looking at facilities in the area. A brand-new memory-care community, The Inn at Apple Ridge, had opened directly across from where I worked. It was not even a year old yet.
Over Memorial Day weekend, my sister and I made the decision. In June, we moved Mom in.
The night before the move, I took Midge home with me after work. I told Mom I was taking her to the groomer the next day.
The following morning, we took Mom to Apple Ridge. When we pulled up to the entrance, the staff was waiting for us.
Mom said, “This isn’t where I live.”
But she went inside with them anyway.
Feisty all the way in.
Letting Go of the A-Frame
Once we moved Mom into Apple Ridge, we had to do something with the A-frame. For fifty-four years, it had been the center of her life. It was the home she had insisted on building, and she and Dad had done a lot of the finishing work. It was also the place where she raised her family, welcomed foster children, created art, cared for dogs, and then spent so many years with Donald.
Now no one lived there anymore. But it was not empty yet.
There was still plenty to do. We had to sort through decades of belongings and decide what to keep, what to give away, and what could finally be released. Every room held pieces of her life, and every decision seemed to carry more weight than the object itself.
Eventually, the house was listed for sale.
On Christmas Day 2019, I left the key behind for the final time. Then, on December 27, the sale closed.
The A-frame had always been Mom’s idea. Letting it go felt like the end of far more than a real-estate transaction. It was the closing of the longest chapter of her life.
In fact, it was harder for me to leave that key behind than it was to bury Mom the following year.
Losing Her During a Pandemic
When we sold the A-frame around the holidays, we put a lot of things in storage and figured we would have a yard sale in the spring.
COVID had other ideas.
By March, Mom had been at Apple Ridge for about nine months. She had adjusted in her own way, but she was still stubborn, independent, and not especially interested in doing things simply because someone told her to.
On my first day working from home, Apple Ridge called. Mom had refused to use her walker, had fallen, and broken her hip. Surgery to pin it was scheduled for the next day, and I planned to be there after speaking with the surgeon.
When I arrived the following morning, all the rules had changed. About an hour before I got there, the hospital had stopped allowing visitors.
No visitors whatsoever.
Because of that, I called the nurses’ station to give them some of her history, including the fact that she had pulled out an IV before. They assured me they could handle it.
When I called the next day to check on her, I was told she had pulled out her IV and was swinging it at the staff.
Still feisty.
But I had warned them.
After surgery, she went to rehab. I could do nothing except check in by phone. She eventually returned to Apple Ridge, but she had little interest in physical therapy. Instead, she scooted herself around in a wheelchair, and she was like one of those impatient cars behind you in traffic.
Then one day, she crashed into someone in the hallway coming out of his room.
The staff: “Miss Betty. Miss Betty. You can’t do that.”
Mom’s response: “That was my mission today.”
Even then, Mom was still Mom.
Just Two Months Later
In mid-June, Apple Ridge called again. This time, Mom had severe abdominal pain and vomiting. The doctor thought it might be a bleeding ulcer. Because she had a DNR, the question was how much we wanted them to do.
Since she had been whizzing around in her wheelchair just two days earlier, I suggested taking her in for blood work and scans. Nothing more.
It turned out to be a bowel obstruction, and she was not likely to survive surgery. She was eighty-six years old and barely weighed ninety pounds.
So back to Apple Ridge she went, and we brought hospice in. They thought she had only a day or two.
My sister drove up from Tennessee. We were allowed to visit, but only in Mom’s room.
On the second morning, I returned to Apple Ridge. My sister was in the room, but Mom was not.
What?
Mom had awakened that morning, gotten dressed, and gone cruising through the halls in her wheelchair.
So they kicked us out again.
Two weeks later, that was it.
The Work Left Behind
There are no instructions for losing a parent.
There is also no instruction manual for losing one during a pandemic.
The funeral was outdoors at the cemetery, family only. There was only a small outdoor gathering afterward. In a park, with Subway sandwiches. No sitting around a kitchen table together, sharing stories and deciding what to do with what remained of fifty-four years in the A-frame.
Donald’s three children and one of my sisters lived out of state. My other sister was just done. My brother was not particularly invested either way. So the storage unit sat, full of what remained from the A-frame, waiting for a yard sale that was never going to happen.
After a few months, I realized that and did what I had always done.
I went and got it myself.
Fifty-four years of her belongings were added to thirty-five years of my own. I finally finished going through most of it about a year ago.
The belongings were not the only things that needed sorting out. There was a trust, multiple investments, and a rental house my brother was living in. Those were actually the easier parts and only took about eighteen months to finish.
I had been Mom’s power of attorney. After she died, I became the trustee and executor. The forms did not pause to let me grieve first, and neither did everything else she left behind. By then, there was no one left to hand any of it to. I was the oldest, and I was also the one who knew what Mom wanted done.
Grief, when you are the responsible one, does not arrive as an empty afternoon to sit and feel it. It arrives between phone calls and in boxes you keep meaning to open.
And sometimes you find yourself just sitting around, lost in games on your phone.
What I See Now
It is only after you finally get through all of the things someone leaves behind that you begin to realize she was not just Mom.
Before I ever came along, she had already been a daughter, a sister, a caretaker, an orphan, a college student, and a young woman with ideas of her own. She had dreams, talents, disappointments, and parts of herself that had nothing to do with being my mother.
For most of my life, I knew her through the role she played in mine. First, she was the person who took care of me and made the rules. Then, almost without warning, I became the one helping her make decisions and hold the family together. After I grew up and moved out, she changed again. She became Donald’s wife, an artist, a business owner, a widow, and eventually someone who needed me to take care of her.
Looking back now, I can see pieces of the woman she had been all along.
The Parts That Shaped Me
She was a rebel before I ever knew the word for it. She slid down fire escapes at an orphanage. She insisted on building an A-frame instead of a normal house. She wanted a purple car. She chopped her own firewood.
I got my own version of that.
A nontraditional woman who decides what she is going to do and then does it.
She was an artist, even when life did not leave her much room to be one. Tapestries, silk screening, wearable art, and picture framing eventually poured out of her once she had the freedom and encouragement to let them.
My version looks different.
Mine is wood, not fabric.
A table I built as a gift to her now sits in my house, doing the same thing her tapestries did. Taking something raw and turning it into something useful, personal, and meaningful.
She fixed things herself or found someone who could. Either way, she did not sit around waiting. I started by helping her wrestle a washing machine apart when I was a teenager. Since then, I have gutted my own kitchen and bathroom, built walkways, sided my house, built a shed, survived a car accident, and trained for half marathons.
I do not know how much of that came from her and how much is simply who I became.
Probably both.
She Saw Me
One of my favorite memories begins with Wilson. My football.
During one of Grandma’s visits, Mom bought me a football. I named it Wilson. It may not sound like a particularly important gift, but it was.
At a time when girls were often expected to want dolls or other more traditional things, Mom saw that I wanted a football and bought one for me.
For the record, Grandma was livid.
But that is another story.
Mom did not always get it right. Neither did I.
But in that moment, and in enough others that it mattered, she saw me for who I was, not simply for who others thought I should be.
Her creativity, independence, determination, and willingness to do things her own way helped shape the woman I became.
And now, six years later, I can finally see that clearly.
Mom had a framed copy of Warning by Jenny Joseph hanging in her house. Of course, she had framed it herself. Its opening lines suited her, so I read it at her funeral:
“When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.”
—Jenny Joseph, Warning