It seems to be a common theme lately. It first made an appearance when my mom came up for Connor's birthday. She and her husband has recently redone their wills and she wanted to talk about it with Ashley and me. Because she was staying here she and I talked about it quite a bit, more about the individual pieces we might want for their sentimental value than about who gets how much money, yada yada. This led to talking about memories of travels where she and my dad got certain pieces of furniture and which pieces of jewelry she got on which trip and so forth. This was one of the best trips we'd had with her visiting. She was very engaged with her grandchildren, very present the entire trip. I have to say that hasn't always been the case. She's just not a very maternal woman; that is not one of her strengths. As I get older (and hopefully wiser) it is easier to see how she was shaped into the person she was by life's circumstances. She was the only girl of 6 children, the next to youngest. Her mother died when she was 12, dropping dead suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 44. This didn't leave my mother with much feminine influence. My grandfather remarried, and Oretha was a wonderful woman but not the type of strong personality to try to help model motherly behavior.
Growing up, and in reflecting back on my childhood, it was all too easy to see the absence of my mother. She was already in management by the time I came along which meant long workdays and frequent traveling. You have to know that my mother worked at Delta before you can understand just how much she travelled. She began her career as a flight attendant and ended it as an executive in charge of In Flight Service. I can remember when I would fly somewhere alone and get asked by the flight attendants if I was Jenny Poole's daughter. I got wonderful service because Mama was the 'Big Boss.' It was all too easy to forget that these people saw a completely different side of her; she was highly respected and well liked by her employees and her peers. I think I finally realized how important her job was when we started attending all the different retirement functions held for her. She had employees write poems for her, create or commission relevant artwork, perform songs, and present her with jewelry. They told stories about her that presented a completely different side of the woman I knew. It's still easy to forget all of that when I'm consumed with my own life and wishing she'd be a more engaged grandmother. It came back to me when we were talking about her things, in part because we were discussing two bracelets given to her upon her retirement. One is a gold charm bracelet covered with charms given to her by each base as she visited them for the last time. Each of the thirty plus charms is unique to the base so you can pretty much tell where each charm came from. The other bracelet was given to her by her staff and contains a diamond for each year she worked at Delta. She was there for 30 years.
Who my mother was as a career woman at the expense of who she was as a wife and mother has directly influenced my own choices. I opted not to choose, instead devoting my time to creating a home and raising our children. Perhaps I didn't believe I could create a good balance trying to do both. Or perhaps I knew that if I tried to do both it would be at the expense of my own personal time and I wasn't willing to do that if I didn't have to. Who knows now? What I do know is that it looks like I may have to make a decision at some point in the future as to whether I want to have a career. My father in law is redoing his will as well. I suppose his recent health scares as well as the changes in their business have caused him to revisit the current setup. Because it is a family owned business (owned primarily by him but a small percentage owned by Chase and his sister) what he does with the business upon his death greatly affects me and mine. I won't go into detail at this point, but I will say that after we met with the financial planner this week and realized what is currently in place and talked about what we would like and what we are willing to do, etc, I felt like the wicked witch after the house lands on her.
While all this talk was going on this week I was also aware of the fact that my uncle, one of my mother's brothers, was in the hospital with a dim prognosis. He died yesterday morning. I am, in part, so very happy for him. The rest of me is sorry for me, and for the rest of his family. He was, in so many ways, the center of his family. He was certainly the light of the family. There are some people who are happy souls, who simply exude a peace and contentment with life, regardless of what life's circumstances may be. It's when I realize that we are now missing this presence that my tears start again. I am so sorry for those who will miss him even more than I will. What does it say about a man that his elder son, adopted after Uncle Allen married his mother, wanted to legally change his name to Walter Allen Jr.? They convinced him to just change his middle name. Now every son and grandson carries the middle name Allen.
I have decided that it really doesn't matter at what age a person dies; for those left behind it's nearly always too young.
We were fortunate enough to have Uncle Allen marry us. It made the ceremony, already a momentous occasion, even more special.
