Happy Birthday, Mom
Today would have been my mother's 90th birthday were she still among the living. She was born Goldie Octavia Mickey on March 4, 1916 in the Yadkin County town of Smithtown, the next to last child of Jacob Henry Mickey and Eliza Jane Wall. Her father -- my grandfather -- was 56 years old when she was born, making his birth year 1860. He lived to an age of 83, dying 3 years before I was born.
My mother was of the old-fashioned kind. She came to town (Winston-Salem) to work in the factories during WWII, marrying my father during the war years. I was born about 9 months after VE Day. For the remainder of her life, she was a full-time wife and mother.
With the possible exception of my fraternal grandmother, I never knew anyone who did not like her. Perhaps their differences all started with my naming. My grandmother wanted me to be Lewis, my father's name and the name of many old grandfathers. My mother wanted it to be David. A neighbor moderated the dispute and I was given an entirely different first name that has long been abandoned in favor of David, my middle name.
Always religious, Mom adopted the Elm Grove Methodist Church as her child after my sister and I grew up and moved away. It was on the front steps of that church that she suffered a small stroke and fell backwards onto the back of her head, producing irreparable brain damage that caused her constant pain for the final 8 years of her life.
Visits with my physically broken Mom in the long-term care center during those last years were the most painful and difficult experiences of my life. She finally grew weary of the fight and died in 1998.
If suffering without complaint plays in any part in getting one into the Kingdom of Heaven, she was a shoo-in. But, I'm pretty sure she would have made it even without the pain.
Happy Birthday, Mom.
My mother was of the old-fashioned kind. She came to town (Winston-Salem) to work in the factories during WWII, marrying my father during the war years. I was born about 9 months after VE Day. For the remainder of her life, she was a full-time wife and mother.
With the possible exception of my fraternal grandmother, I never knew anyone who did not like her. Perhaps their differences all started with my naming. My grandmother wanted me to be Lewis, my father's name and the name of many old grandfathers. My mother wanted it to be David. A neighbor moderated the dispute and I was given an entirely different first name that has long been abandoned in favor of David, my middle name.
Always religious, Mom adopted the Elm Grove Methodist Church as her child after my sister and I grew up and moved away. It was on the front steps of that church that she suffered a small stroke and fell backwards onto the back of her head, producing irreparable brain damage that caused her constant pain for the final 8 years of her life.
Visits with my physically broken Mom in the long-term care center during those last years were the most painful and difficult experiences of my life. She finally grew weary of the fight and died in 1998.
If suffering without complaint plays in any part in getting one into the Kingdom of Heaven, she was a shoo-in. But, I'm pretty sure she would have made it even without the pain.
Happy Birthday, Mom.
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