Mom: Happy 71st!

A repost from last year

Repost of Seventy: Moms & Their Passing (slightly edited)

Today, my mother would have clocked in at 71 years of age. She left this Earth in 2011 on June 27th. She grew up in Indiana of the 1960s. She developed the bug of rooting for the Chicago Cubs which never won the World Series during her lifetime. The fascination with sport was a family tradition – my mom taught me how to catch, throw, and hit a baseball – while her father once tried out for the estimable Brooklyn Dodgers prior to heading off to World War 2 in 1944. My mother found her own set of combat boots in 1970 as she graduated high school and then signed up the U.S. Marine Corps. By late 1970, she was at Parris Island.

Donna Mae Clark was 4’11-1/2” and 105 lbs., “soaking wet.” She made the most of her time in – becoming a logistics corporal, and later, gave birth to this scribbler. She carried on through the 1970s, those tumultuous and inflationary times, working at a fancy boot stitching factory, attending Motlow State Community College for a semester, before spending nearly thirty years working in retail clothing sales and consignment shop ownership.

She was the hardest worker I ever met. She did multiple side jobs (cleaning the Lowell Public Library) to get us through rough times, which were many. We didn’t always have a car; or one that worked well. Or the best clothes – thus the consignment shop helped – or the latest gadgets (black-white TV even as late as Bush’s 1988 campaign), but we did have each other. We’d watch that 13” TV at night – Simon & Simon, Remington Steele, Stingray, LA Law, Moonlighting, The Wonder Years, China Beach – and talk Cubs baseball when she wasn’t snoozing in her favorite chair or in bed by 10pm.

My mom nearly completed her 2-year accounting-related degree in 1989 right before she “bought out” her job – Neat Repeats – as its owner for $6,500. She spent the next 16 plus years working 50-60 hours per week running the operations, doing the books, and sorting through clothes. She sold over $1,000,000 worth of clothes over that timespan in a town of (6,500 est.) in 1990.

My mom’s health declined in the 2000s and with the recent medical and political events, it reminded me of how those life decisions matter. She had a necrotic kidney removed in 2004. Her plight as a type II diabetic – she ate too much fast food and sweets – came about due to reliance on sugar and caffeine to get her through long workdays. Try as I might – she was stubborn to a fault – she didn’t change that over the next six years until it was too late.

My mother loved her country: the United States of America. She was never a hard person to understand about vital things such as loyalty, trust, devotion, or perseverance. She survived abuse from the only man she married and the last guy ever to enter her life. She was Catholic – and tried to raise me that way as well. She made a business out of nothing. She was the heart and soul of Neat Repeats – and didn’t fret about helping others, often, barely known. My mom just wanted happiness for all of us. She would be so disappointed about today’s rhetoric and radicalism.

She made fast friends too. When in Tennessee, her co-workers at Hammer’s helped when they could even as a divorce crisis loomed in her life. The store did what her in-laws would not, including sheltering us for a couple of weeks. She met a gal, Janice, on a Greyhound Bus in 1983 as we came north to Indiana – who became a pen pal for a number of years. We all kept in contact due, in part, to being Genesis and Phil Collins fans. (Tony Banks shares the same birthday.)

My mom though was not well known or that outgoing – but that was more due to keeping to herself. She interacted with the public daily, but never went out with them. Life didn’t afford that – she didn’t get the opportunity to watch her son play baseball, but encouraged me always to pursue dreams (like playing baseball) or attending college. I satisfied the latter in going to Purdue University, graduating in an unspectacular fashion, but doing it, nonetheless. She was so proud of that.

Her time here was not about her. She gave to people to the very last.

As her shop was failing in 2005, a lady came in one afternoon with a bag of items that probably was not going to sell for much, if anything. The lady, as I was there, talked with my mom about getting $20 dollars for the items. The story turned on her frazzled demeanor and a swollen eye. My mom gave her $100 and reassured her about the situation. I don’t think we sold one item from that consignment. It didn’t matter.

My mom closed Neat Repeats several months later.

She was never quite the same happy spirit again.

We spent a lot of time together in her last months on this Earth as early onset dementia followed from brain cancer that originated in her renal system. During that time, her care fell to me after her older sibling struggled to process or consider her sister’s situation as it laid ahead. That was trying, but expected. (The story is complex and not for this remembrance.)

My mother trooped through nine months of progressive decline, bringing great courage along the way. She was strong in the face of a terminal illness. A mom I had received so much from now needed so much more than I could possibly give her back. The hospitals from Chicago (Northwestern, Loyola, UIC) to NW Indiana (St. Anthony’s) to West Lafayette (St. Elizabeth’s) came into play over the course of that time. The story there is complicated too, and the result will stay the same. She spent all but the last 4 weeks in my care. Hazel Crest, Illinois Hospice was her final stop.

My mom was born in Hammond, Indiana on March 27, 1952, and never stopped smiling or giving it her all.

God Bless You Mom!

Her Parents: Grandpa & Grandma Clark