By JOHN JAMES MARSHALL/Designated Writers
She was gravely ill, but it was a late Sunday afternoon, so she got out of her bed and drove herself to St. Joseph Catholic Church for 6 o’clock Mass. No matter how poorly she felt, she never missed.
When it was over, she drove the three blocks home, got back in her bed, re-attached the tubes that were supporting her in the struggle that had become her life.
Fifteen minutes later, she called across the house for help.
Thirty minutes later she was dead. She was 42.
It was the night of April 18, 1971, that my mother died in her bed and 50 years later, that date falls again on a Sunday. It may just be a coincidental calendar quirk, but it is not lost on me on how everything has circled back.
It was only recently that I fully realized how that final chapter unfolded — literally the last thing she did was go to church.
What was going through her mind that night?
Obviously, she knew she was terminal, but did she know it was imminent?
What were the prayers she said after she arrived at church that night?
It is the most significant date in my life, though I have often tried to pretend that it isn’t.
This is not about what happened 50 years ago but more about what’s happened since. Certainly, I remember every detail of that night, in particular, standing outside and looking through the window as my father and later the medical personnel tried to revive her.
In the months leading up to it, I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know details. I think I was at the exact age (11) where my parents didn’t know whether to tell me everything or tell me nothing. So they told me nothing, and I don’t blame them one bit.
Though I didn’t actually think of it in these terms, I was determined to not let what had happened define me. And I lived the next few years of my childhood with that in mind.
Make no mistake about it – mine was a happy childhood, both before and after April 18, 1971. It was just wasn’t like everybody else’s.
There were some changes – I vividly remember making my own lunch box every day in elementary school – and my father quickly learned about 5 or 6 things they he could easily cook after he got home from work.
I loved school, I loved sports and I loved everybody who loved me. I felt insulated in my little world with relatives who looked after me, great friends and the ability to live as normal of a life as possible.
I just didn’t want anybody to feel sorry for me.
I was determined that I would continue to live the same life that I had before. I know that I violated all tenants of the grieving process, but that’s how I dealt with it.
As you might imagine, the day after my mother died, people were constantly coming over to the house. It felt so unnatural and so uncomfortable. All I was worried about was my baseball game that night. (It was called off). My father and brother were all receiving guest after guest and it seemed like the three of us were isolated from each other. Then, an angel appeared in the form of one of my friend’s mother, who rescued me and took me to her house when I spent the day with her son as if nothing ever happened.
It was exactly the kind of normalcy this 11-year-old needed.
After the services were over that week, I really didn’t find it necessary to “deal” with anything. Yes, it was sad, but I didn’t spend much time thinking about it.
Until I did.
The first time I really felt it was when I was a senior in high school – five years later – and my football teammates all received a necklace to give to their mother’s inscribed “I am the Mom of a Jesuit football player.”
I noticed.
About 10 years later, our family moved into the house next door to the one where I grew up. It took me months to get over a feeling that I still can’t really explain. Emptiness is about the only word I could use it describe it. Though I was living next door to my father, which was great, my mother wasn’t there to share in that “first home” experience.
I took particular note of turning 42 years old. There was a certain amount of guilt – kind of a different spin on “survivor’s guilt” — that didn’t go away for a while. It taught me – and continues to teach me – to appreciate every day.
In the last 20 years, as my mother’s contemporaries have grown older, I see her in them. What would her life have been like had she not become sick?
It’s only been recently that I have thought about the milestones in my life that I never got a chance to share with her. Graduation. Children. New job. Grandchildren. Dozens of others.
For the longest time, I resisted the temptation to tell a friend who was complaining about their mother “at least you have a mother to complain about it.” But I do feel that way … and I’ve let them know it.
I have cried very few tears in the last 50 years over the death of my mother. I’m not saying that’s good or it’s bad; it’s just how it is. Maybe I’ve been able to handle adversity a little better than I otherwise would have. But here I am 50 years later with a great life, knowing full well that my mother has guided me through it just as much in the last 50 years as she did in the first 11.
So I guess you know how this story ends.
April 18, 2021, falls on a Sunday, just like it did on April 18, 1971. And there is still a 6 p.m. Mass at St. Joseph Catholic Church. Though it is not a time that I regularly attend Mass, I can’t ignore the significance.
It was the last thing Dorothy Rodrigue Marshall did before she died. This time, I’ll get the opportunity to sit by her once again.