Mother’s Life From 1958 –1976

Life went on for Flora and her "kids." Dolores finished nursing and married in 1958. Frank apprenticed to our dad after high s chool and became a fine journeyman carpenter. "Little" Celeste married on our parents' Thirtieth Wedding Anniversary and Flora's nest was finally empty.

She doted on her grandchildren as they came along, loving each of them. Dad and she began to take vacations to Maine and elsewhere and were active in the Franco American Club.

I went back to Graduate School in 1965 and in 1968 earned my Doctorate Degree. My mom and especially my dad told me it was the highpoint of their lives. My dad's "You're going to school boy" had come true. Their oldest son, the first to do so among all my dad's brothers and sister's children, had climbed to the top of the educational ladder.

In 1963, at the age of fifty-five my dad began to lose his balance more and more often, falling once through the cellar stairs hole in a house he, and his brother were building. After numerous tests he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and had to go on disability because he could no longer be considered safe on the job. He was one of the first to be placed on Leva Dopa. It worked for a while and he could walk almost completely normally.

Mom loved him dearly and we all sorrowed. She waited on him hand and foot even to cutting his meat on his plate and trying his shoes as the disease progressed. Dad was a proud man - he continued as long as he could to sharpen saws and do small jobs in our house's basement to earn money to supplement his disability benefit. His Carpenter Union friends whom he had served as Secretary/Treasure at the local and county level, saw to it that he had many saws to sharpen and as long as his hands allowed him he continued to build fine pieces of furniture like small tables and desks.

Finally, when Leva Dopa stopped working and he became increasingly physically helpless, he just gave up. One day, mother returned from a hairdressing appointment to find him dead - it was about ten in the morning when she called me and I rushed across town to find my dad with his arms crossed on his chest and stone cold. He was gone from us in this life forever, on August 7, 1976.

My brother and sisters came to see him before the undertaker took him away and ma retired to the kitchen and continued to furiously mix cake batter for a cake. It was her way to cope with grief.

I cried for months. My mom soldiered on - finally having to sell her house and move to an apartment.

She continued to love us all but started a life of her own for the first time since dad's death. She joined Parents Without Partners and became one of their most popular members - everyone wanted Flora to do the cooking for their parties.

She and Lida grew closer. I was in my eighth year as a college professor when my dad died - earning my way through the ranks of assistant and associate professor to full professor that my dad lived to see in 1973.

Ma was proud of all her children and grandchildren, but she always held a special place in my heart as her "Sonny Boy". She kept track of my every move, mostly through Lida, as she was at our house or we at hers for every major holiday, birthdays, baptisms, and other significant family events.