By Helen K., January 30, 2019 — When I was eleven my mother died. You’re lucky because you still have your mother, a wonderful mother, and you have a grandmother. Your mother didn’t have a grandmother. I had no one to teach me the things mothers teach you.
I remember we had people over to see my mother. She just had some kind of procedure done, they didn’t tell me what, they didn’t discuss those things back then. She made chicken soup for everyone, she was on bedrest. Years later Teti Anne told me something about it being a procedure on her ovaries. I’m not sure — we didn’t talk about things like that back then.
I remember I was in my bedroom reading comic books. I heard everyone making a fuss in the living room and ran to see what the screaming was about. I saw my mother dead, with her face in the chicken soup. She had a blood clot, that’s what killed her.
It was so hard to lose your mother at that age. They laid her out in the living room for the funeral, it was terrible. So sad. My poor father was so heartbroken. And everyone felt bad for me because I was left without a mother.
We had to make a hole in the wall to get her out of the apartment building. The door was too small to fit her casket, the boys carried her down the stairs. They couldn’t patch the hole up well enough, so there was always a mark in the wall. We had to look at that mark and remember every day.
The week before she died my mother bought me a beautiful orange suit. You know, to wear for school, we had the suits like that, we had to dress up for school. It was so nice, nice material, and I looked so swell in it. We took the train into the city, to the department store to pick it out. My mother had excellent taste, even though we didn’t have a lot of money she always had beautiful shoes. Anyway, I never got to wear that suit because after she died I had to wear only dark colors. You know, to show others we were grieving. My father wore a black band on his sleeve, and he wore black the whole rest of his life.
My father was a wonderful man. He was the kindest man I have ever known. He used to make me give him money from my paycheck when I was older and working in the city. I was so mad with him because I was young and wanted to spend it all on smart new clothes. He put all that money into savings for me. He always took care of me. He was the gentlest man.