It's the depression. A father leaves to find work. The mother and two young daughters never know if he met his demise or simply chose not to return. At 23, the mother dies from a streptococcal infection about a decade before mass-produced penicillin was available to tame it. The girls, four and six, lived with their grandparents for a time, but due to the hard times, were ultimately put in the care of the Baptist Orphanage in Jackson, Mississippi. When the eldest graduated from high school, they moved to Baton Rouge to live with a great aunt.
In the year following high school graduation, the youngest marries and 11 days shy of a year later gives birth to a son. Four and a half years afterward, the couple is blessed with a daughter. In fourteen months, the girl child is stricken with encephalitis and is left with severe brain damage and destined to live out her years in a persistent vegetative state. The young couple dutifully commit to attending to their ill daughter. It is initially assumed at the time that she will not linger beyond a year or so. In truth, she lived and was lovingly provided with home care until just short of her thirty-ninth birthday. A deep and abiding love enabled this good woman and this good man to live a life close to home, one much less footloose and fancy free than their contemporaries, despite the hardship.
So rich was the woman’s caring for her husband that she took in her mother-in-law, a victim of a stroke, a little more than a decade before the death of her daughter. With the need for around-the-clock care, she handled the eight-hour overnights while private nurses helped with the other 16 hours a day. Also in a persistent vegetative state, the mother-in-law eventually passed four months later.
I am the son. Three months after my parents’ marriage, my conception signaled an abbreviation of carefree days. My birth truly made carefree a term of their past. Not until the passing of my little sister did Mom and Dad have the simple pleasure of just being alone together once again. Regrettably, that togetherness was all too short, as Dad went to meet his maker only five and a half years later. I miss, think about, and talk to that good man every day of my life. They were the closest and most loving couple I have ever known, and I can only imagine the size of the hole his absence leaves in each and every one of Mom’s days.
It is my great blessing to have twin daughters, Erin and Regan. Despite having an invalid child for whom to care, Mom provided daycare for those two rascals during their first few years. Through them, she finally got to enjoy some of the fun things, such as girly toys and frilly attire, missed as a result of my sister’s illness. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Regan and her husband, Brad, are now expecting a little one. Whether she’ll get to see the pink side of things again rather than the blue is not yet determined, but it will be fun to see Mom enjoy this addition to the family. There will be sadness in my heart that Dad will not be physically present to share in the joy, but gladness will be there, as well, in the knowledge that he’ll be smiling with us in spirit.
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