For Mother's Day

It's Mother's Day and I know many people are going to mark it with a blog post or something, and I'm no exception.

I want to pay tribute to my own mother, Gerda Edith Koschnitzke Collette, who died too young at 51 in 1974, 9 days after my 14th birthday.

My mom, circa 1947

My mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer two or three years before - I don't remember exactly.  She had one breast removed via mastectomy, then the cancer returned and the other breast was also removed.   I remember, though I may be wrong, that she developed some type of reaction to anesthesia OR medication in the course of her treatment which weakened her heart.  It didn't help that she developed pneumonia in the months after the surgery.

She suffered a heart attack in May of 1974, and died from heart failure a few months later.

It shattered my life and the lives of my brothers.  It's affected me for 40 years.  Many things might not have happened in our lives if she'd lived.  On the other hand, I do believe that it was best that she died when she did.

You see, my mom came here in early 1949 to marry my father whom she'd met in Berlin after WWII.  He was a soldier stationed there in the US Occupation Forces.  Supposedly they met on a train.  Supposedly he proposed to her numerous times before she accepted him.  I'm told that shortly after she arrived here she wanted to go back home, but was persuaded to stay since there wasn't much to go back to.

She suffered numerous miscarriages and stillbirths, but managed to have three children.  She was in poor health much of her life, thanks to years of deprivation in her childhood and teens.  

And she was abused by my father.  

She did her best to be the best mom she knew how, and she strived to protect her children.  Her demons often got the best of her, and there were times she wasn't present because she was in the hospital.

But she was a good mom, and even as a child I don't think I ever questioned that.  She wanted her children to be educated.  Books and music were a big part of my childhood.  I loved that I always got books in my Easter basket and at Christmas and birthdays.  She encouraged me to be creative.

Years later, I have forgotten the sound of her voice.  I have few of her things.  But I have the memory of her, and I miss her greatly.

Happy Mother's Day, Mommy - for me it's always Mother's Day when it comes to you.

My mom with my brother and me in the backyard, summer of 1961