Family matters

This post is about mothers, and families.

In January my mother, Ruth Gustin, passed away at the age of 96. She was one of the lucky ones and was bright and engaged right up till the end. She lived on her own until last fall when her body started to reach the point where it had had enough.

Mom had always been pretty independent and had gone out to live on her own after finishing school. She worked as a medical secretary at one of the first “modern” mental health hospitals prior to marrying dad around 1939. After dad died in 1986 she lived quite happily in Florida by herself for 15 years until a fall and a broken arm convinced her to move back to New England where two of my sisters lived.

My sisters were great and mom did not want for care, company or friends. We could see the end coming so I was able to go down and spend time with her in December. We had a good time visiting and talking, and continued to talk on the phone every day after I came back to Saskatchewan for Christmas. All in all, I couldn’t have asked for a better exit for her, and for this I am extraordinarily grateful. What did surprise me was that in spite of my thinking that I was prepared for her death, how her last couple of months just took over and became the focus of my world, to the point of other things just falling to the wayside until this was finished.

Now she is gone, and my world is returning to normal. although I am keenly aware of the void that exists where the idea of mom used to be. This changes my whole sense of family. I’m not alone, as several of my friends are going through, or have recently gone through their own version of this drama. My three sisters live in the eastern United States, so they are not as close as I would sometimes like, but I’m pleased because of how other “families” show up in our lives as required.

It’s interesting how we become connected to the people in our lives. Sometimes you can see it coming or want it to happen, but there are other times when you find that someone you just sort of collected on the way becomes more and more important or special. For me one of these people is Magorie Towstego from Saskatoon.

I first met Marge a good 10 – 15 years ago as she tried to maintain some order in the business life of her son Tony. Marge had come in to run the office, and over the next several years our friendship grew to the point of me thinking of Marge as my second mother and her calling me her other son. Although Marge and I are now both retired, I still try to get in a visit with her every time I go to Saskatoon.

Isn’t it strange and interesting and wonderful that we can invent these new families. Tomorrow we celebrate spring with our annual easter feast, and expect around 20 people to show up to eat and drink and enjoy each other’s company. They are all our friends, but may not see each other except at the three times a year we do something like this. And thus we become each others cousins and aunts and uncles

I hope you all are enjoying your families, both the ones you are stuck with, and the ones you make up.