April 13, 1929, the year my mom was born. She was the sixth child of eight and the second daughter born to my grandparents, Martin and Clara (Heitgerd) Ehlmann. Mom’s been gone since 1987. She’s been out of my life longer than she was in it. I’m always somewhat jealous of my friends who still have their parents, some of whom are well into their 90s. I wonder what it would have been like to have had my mom all these years.
I wish I could say I have all these warm and fuzzy memories of Mom, but I don’t. She wasn’t a bad mother, but she definitely wasn’t “warm and fuzzy”. I got the distinct feeling that she wished she were something else. I don’t know what, but especially after Dad died and left her with four children to raise.

Darrell and I, maybe 1956, sitting on Mom’s sewing machine cabinet

When I think back on memories of my mom, the first one that comes to mind was her teaching me to sew on her 1947 Singer sewing machine. That sewing machine, in its original cabinet, is sitting in the basement at Bruce and Dave’s house waiting for me to claim it, along with any other family items that Bruce had that belonged to Mom. (Damn you Bruce.) We lived in a large brick two-story duplex and the middle room on the first floor that she kept the sewing machine in we called the “playroom.” In my mind’s eye, I can still see her sitting at the sewing machine hemming all these pastel slips for a lady who needed them shortened because skirts got much shorter in the early sixties. Oh, and making Barbie doll clothes that she sold at Christmas.

She taught me to cook. I remember one specific time I made the entire dinner myself. I don’t know what it was, maybe pork chops and mashed potatoes.

I remember she got really mad at me when I said “no” to her one time and once she caught me biting my toenail and she yelled at me. (I was fairly young, lol). One memory I have is that for some reason, she kept an empty laundry basket in my bedroom closet and she told me not to put anything in it, but I did. I distinctly remember her calling me into the bedroom and she opened the closet door and immediately began spanking me, telling me she’d told me not to do that. It was a total kamikaze attack. And she never spanked with her hand, it was always a wooden spoon. I never did think that what I’d done warranted that spanking.

We used to get a kiss on the cheek at bedtime. I remember going to the basement where we had the television and we’d tell both Mom and Dad good night and we’d get a kiss on the cheek.

I remember she wore bobby socks with her loafers and I was so embarrassed.

I remember she was visibly pregnant with Bruce and she took me to my softball game…and I was embarrassed.

I have a memory of her holding my hand once. I think it was in a church and I remember it was a funeral, at least I think it was. Maybe it was Dad’s funeral, but I really don’t remember anything about it. I remember at the cemetery, walking back from the gravesite and Mom was being escorted by two of her brothers and she stumbled and almost went down.

I remember her crying while cooking breakfast on Christmas morning the year after Dad died. She didn’t cry, at least not in front of us. I guess that’s why I never knew how much she grieved for Dad and maybe I thought she didn’t.

She made me take Shorthand in high school. I didn’t want to but she insisted. It was probably the best thing she ever did for me. It turned out that I enjoyed it and was very good at it. I had the second fastest time in the class (I think it was 100 wpm–words per minute). Her insistence that I take shorthand gave me a start in the working world. First as a clerk in the Probate Court working for an elderly judge who still dictated his letters. In the Probate Court I met lawyers and later started working for them. From the lawyers, I met the Director of the Police Academy and the rest is history. So thank you, Mom. You made my career.

When I was a senior in high school, I went to a friend’s house and this friend was married and I got drunk as a skunk.  I came home late and my boyfriend (later my husband and then my ex-husband) had been waiting for me but I  didn’t come home. My friend lived in a duplex and on the other side of the duplex was a single guy who’d also been drinking with us. After I came home, he came to the house and wanted me to go out with him. Mom told me no but I told her I was going to go anyway. She slapped me really hard in the face, but the funny thing was, I was so drunk it only just tingled. I remember she sent my older brother up to talk to me. I don’t have any idea what he said, but the next day, I was mortified by what I’d done. I’d never acted that way before (and I never did again). I was so ashamed, I bought Mom a bouquet of flowers as an apology. We never spoke of that incident again.

I remember going to the fabric store to pick out fabric for my wedding dress that she made for me (and it’s still hanging in the basement closet). I remember going to the church with her on my wedding day and she told me she hoped I would be as happy as she and my dad had been. (I wasn’t, it lasted only seven years.)

After Dad died, she started dating a man whom she had wanted to marry before she met my dad, but because he was Catholic and she was Lutheran, her parents forbade it. She dated him then for several years and I have a picture of him and me dancing at my wedding. After they broke up (and I don’t know why) she had a meltdown. The first one I ever knew that she’d had. She locked herself in her bedroom and wouldn’t come out. I didn’t know what to do. I asked her if she wanted me to call the Pastor and she said no, because she blamed God for taking Dad from us.

I remember when she told me she’d found a lump in her breast and I remember telling her “Mom, they don’t have to take your breast anymore, you could get a lumpectomy.” I remember my graduation from the police academy in 1986. For some reason, I think it was a Thursday night. She came to graduation with my stepdad, Stew Swan, and she had a bandaid on the top of her hand. I asked her what had happened and she said she’d just had some tests done. It was the next day that she told me that her cancer had spread. I don’t remember if my children were at graduation, but for some reason, she needed to leave. I had wanted to get a photograph of us together, but we didn’t. And we never did.

I remember a lot of things from the last few months of her life. Maybe it was because I was older so the memories aren’t so old. We bought her a cordless phone so she wouldn’t have to get up to answer the phone. I remember her in the hospital bed in the middle bedroom. I’d moisten her lips with some kind of pink jelly-like stuff and once I asked her if there was anything I could do to help her and she asked me to put some cream on her hemorrhoid.

I remember refusing to leave the room when the funeral directors came to take her body. I wanted to help put her on the gurney. I know it was early February 1987, but for some reason, I can never remember the exact date. Maybe I blocked it.

I remember when we met with the funeral director and were planning her service, I told them I wanted Psalm 121:

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord; which made heaven and earth.

I was working in the County jail when she died and because the jail was small, we got to know a number of the inmates who were in there for long periods of time. One particular inmate was being held for murdering his wife and burying her in his basement. It sounds funny to say that even though he was in jail for murder, he was a really nice guy. He hand-drew a sympathy card for me and included this Bible vers. I was so touched by it and the verse, I wanted to include it in her service.

I remember her lying in her casket and they had such artificial, pointy breasts on her. Dumb thing to remember. That and there were more flowers in that room than I’d ever seen at any other funeral. There were so many that they were stacked up on one of the walls. I remember her casket sitting in the front of the church and when I got there, my mother-in-law had already brought my children and they were standing together at her casket. All the family gathered together in the fellowship hall to process down to the front of the church and I remember almost collapsing in the chair.

I remember when my stepdad retired a few months after Mom died. They’d set up tables in the cafeteria at the church and at the head table was my stepdad and beside him, an empty chair. I saw that chair and it was like a bomb went off in my head. I started to cry and couldn’t stop. I finally had to leave the room.

I have enough memories to last a lifetime.

In 1970 I became a child with one parent and three brothers
In 1987 I became an orphan with three brothers
In 1993 I was an orphan with two brothers
In 2021 I was an orphan with one brother
In 2024 I was an orphan