Sisu: A Finnish word meaning inner strength, grit and resilience A Tribute to My Mom

 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

 After my first husband was killed in 1989, Mom spent many weekends driving across the state to help me with my young children. She’d work all week and then get in the car on Friday at five o’clock and drive 250 miles, only to head back home on Sunday to be at work on Monday morning. Sisu She told my aunt that my husband’s death (he’d died in a fire) was the worst thing she’d ever gone through, which with everything she’d endured, said a lot. She was deeply grieving herself, yet she was there for me and for my girls. 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 86^th 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.