Posted 3:35 PM by Robert Ronald Smith

Back to life

Ah, that we could always understand what we see. Sitting here at my computer, I watched a young couple meet, going in opposite directions, in the middle of the railroad tracks. They hugged a few times, chatted, kissed, then continued on their respective ways. It's possible that they live in the same building and were each walking between there and the Hub, but on different schedules, one coming, the other going. I would rather think that the truth is a bit more romantic than that, though... that it was quite coincidental that they met, allowing them to renew a friendship that had been vacated for some time.

Coincidences do occur, and can be striking. My mother died on Oct. 5th, which is the same day her mother died. Yes, I realize the odds are 365 to 1, not outrageous, but it's still a little spooky.

Yesterday I worked on a bunch of old photos I'll put on the web. One of them is a group photo of my Navy boot camp company. The original has a lot of signatures I collected at the time, and the photo represents one of the highlights of my life, not because it was important, but because getting out of boot camp represents a sense of relief akin to walking out the prison door. Boot camp is (thank goodness) a "unique" experience. Even though it's been 47 years since that photo was taken, I still recognize many of the faces I knew for only 2 months. Just for fun, I entered "Company 345" into a Google search. Yep, up popped the web page for someone else in my boot camp company... another web designer who has a very complete resume' on his home page. I had a hard time finding "Company 345" there, but there it was, in tiny text, mixed in with hundreds of other items. I wrote to him, haven't heard back yet.

Posted 2:40 AM by Robert Ronald Smith

Evelyn Smith is gone

At 1:00 AM on October 5th, 2005, the life of Evelyn Smith, my mother, ended peacefully, after an illness of just a few weeks. It was just 20 days ago that her doctor said she was terminally ill. At that time he suggested that she had a couple of weeks to live. As I predicted, she outlasted his expectations. My mother was a tough lady. She was always able to do more than I expected, and near the end, she surprised even her nurses with her tenacity and strength.

Just 4 days ago, weak from her illness, groggy from medication, and confused by dementia, she had been in a dream world in which she thought I was her father and my daughter was her mother. Nevertheless, later that day, she recognized both of us. Most of the time, regardless of her illness, she recognized my voice; a fact that pleased me, but there was a even more significant test of her touch with reality... when I asked her if she remembered the name of that cat whose picture was on her wall, she declared emphatically "Of course I do... Squirt". Over the past few months, my cat had become, for some odd reason, a test of her grasp on reality, and a way to focus her mind in the here and now... a sort of touchstone that would allow her to "come back to us".

As I write this, I really cannot comprehend that my mother is actually gone. I feel relieved that she is done with a life that had become so much less than what she considered normal. She was an active woman, and she fought the frailness that had come over her. At times, she became surprisingly angry, even violent, at the physical state she had come to, and took that anger out on the unknown nurses and aides trying to care for her. She refused to submit quietly to her condition.

I feel fortunate that my daughters and I had the experience of being with my mother while knowing that she was going to die soon. It's a reality that smacks you across the face, and puts life and death into context. It forces one to face the dying person in a new way. It eliminates facade and pretense, for there is no time or excuse left for such things. Over the past couple of months, I became close enough to my mother to wonder why we weren't closer sooner.

Eighty-nine years is a long lifetime, especially when so much of it was difficult. A year ago, there was nothing wrong with her... she cared for herself and was as bright and ornery as people half her age. Much of her life was spent taking care of others... of me as a child, of my father during his illness and passing 31 years ago, and of her twin sister through various serious problems. For almost all of my mother's life, she was the caretaker for others. It was almost impossible for her to accept being the one to be taken care of during the past year.

I will be thinking about how best to remember my mother, but it's tough for me to separate Mom from the woman Evelyn, and she deserves to be remembered as much more than just my mother. To her surviving twin sister Ellen, she is another person, and one I can only imagine. I have a hunch that my daughters may have the best view of her, as their grandmother... and their last grandparent.

For me, it IS the end of an era... my parents are gone, and I am now the family elder. Until my mother's passing, I was still her kid... her baby boy. I know I'll feel older tomorrow.