Twelve years ago, on this particular morning, I suffered a terrible loss. My mother died. It’s a universal experience, and yet, to each of us who go through it, it is deeply personal and unique. Our mother is the one who has known us and loved us the longest. And when she passes, there is a hole that cannot be filled. For me, it was a grief that could not be comforted for a very, very long time.
I remember a friend, in an attempt to console me, leaning
in and saying, “Isn’t it wonderful that our mothers are always with us?” She
was referring to the spiritual sense of being, but all I could feel was the absence
and the desire to slap the friend.
There is nothing that compares to losing your mother. And,
today is an anniversary reserved for remembering that loss. And her.
My mom was an incredible woman of strength and tenacity. Sisu She
lost her own mother at the age of eleven. My grandma died after birthing her
sixth child, a son, who was then given to a relative to raise. So my mom’s
brother became his cousin. He was always Uncle Gil to me and I loved him
dearly. He, too, is gone. They all are. The brothers and sisters. But I
digress. This post is about my mom.
Gene Strickler Haatainen Wagner was a happy-to-be
stay-at-home mom until she couldn’t be anymore. At the age of 45, my father, 6.5
years her senior, had two major life-threatening heart attacks. It was 1965 and
medicine wasn’t as evolved as it is today. My mother was told he had five
years, at the most, to live. Sisu
Depressed and trying to cope with an uncertain future, Mom
visited her doctor to ask for a sedative.
“Absolutely not,” Dr. Brenner said. “You have three girls
to raise on your own after Harold dies. You don’t need a sedative. You need a
job. You need to find a way to support your family.”
The wisdom of that small town doctor changed our lives.
Mom worked at two companies close enough during my elementary school years that
she could come home and be there for me at lunchtime. Sisu I don’t think I
realized how special that truly was as I was growing up. Moms often make
sacrifices we only appreciate in hindsight.
My Uncle Gil took her out and taught her to drive and at
the age of 38, out of necessity, she got her driver’s license. Sisu As the youngest of her
three daughters and the one who wasn’t yet busy with after school activities, I
was the one who spent my evenings riding with her on her many adventures getting
lost in our Lancaster County community. Mom had zero sense of direction! Some of
my best childhood memories happened in the car with mom on back country roads. We’d
be hopelessly lost and she’d just laugh. It was all an adventure to her. Sisu
She also enrolled in night school and took college business
courses when I was in junior and senior high. Sisu My memories from those years are of her
not being home much. By then, she had moved on to another company and a higher
up position in HR. Mom went on business trips and was well-respected in the
industry. In the meantime, my dad defied the odds, and went on to live another
18 years (not five, as doctors predicted). But during those years, he survived
eleven more heart attacks, some of them being quite serious. I grew up accustomed
to ambulances and paramedics and paddles and CPR and ICUs and constant worry.
It took quite a toll on my mom. Sisu
My mom was widowed when she was 55. It seems so young to
me now. She continued to work another ten years, and following retirement, she
traveled, both cross-country and internationally. Sisu She enjoyed
her life. She spent time with her daughters and grandchildren and,
at the age of 69, married a wonderful man in a beautiful ceremony in Las Vegas.
When he developed dementia, she had to place him in a home and endure that
heartbreak. The final years with Dan were difficult. Sisu But the earlier years
were wonderful and we were all elated.
Mom spent her final widowed years alone in her house. She
kept busy. She gardened. Did water aerobics. Walked. Read. Read. Read. Did I
mention that she read? Mom was an avid reader and instilled that love of
reading in all of us. She also had the gift of hospitality that inspired her
daughters to open our homes in the same way. Despite her own trials, she was
welcoming to others and people loved spending time in her home, especially
around her kitchen or dining room table. Sisu
Her heart started beating sporadically in 2012, and,
wanting to get back to being active again and just plain feel better, Mom chose
to have a cardioversion done a few days after her 86th birthday. At
the hospital, she asked me to bring in her lipstick when I came to visit the
next day and she remarked about her thinning eyebrows. “I used to have such thick
eyebrows. Look at them now,” she complained. I marveled at the fact that she
still cared about lipstick and eyebrows at her age and wondered if I’d be the
same.
I arrived at the hospital the next day empty-handed. Her
lipstick wasn’t in the downstairs bathroom medicine chest where she said it
would be.
“Oh well,” she said, resigned to go bare-lipped. I felt bad
about it as I said goodbye and headed back to Pittsburgh. She’d had the
procedure the day before and was doing well. Sisu My sister was coming in that day and
would take her home. She and her husband played cards with Mom that night
before heading to bed. Mom’s competitive spirit was very much intact. Sisu
Early the next morning, I got the call. My sister was
inconsolable. Her words were jumbled. The bottom line was that Mom suffered three
strokes that morning and never regained consciousness. The cardioversion threw
the blood clots that caused the strokes. We were devastated. Mom died a few days
later.
I started this post with a Finnish word: Sisu. I’ve chosen
this as my Word of the Year for 2025. While my mother was not Finnish, my father
was. And his mother was not at all thrilled he was marrying a non-Finn, and she
never let my mother forget it. Yet looking back on her life, Mom proved again
and again to remain true to the Finnish attribute of Sisu. Perhaps, she
was a true Finn by default, after all.
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