As I sat here on post-Mother’s Day 2015, I got to
thinking about Mom and all the wonderful things she was and did for the family.
For one, she was Mom and Dad to Gene, Becky, and me
during the mid-1950’s both when we lived in West Virginia and later in the DC
suburbs. Dad had taken a job with the
Bureau of Information of the Southeastern Railways, based in Washington. This was during the school year and, rather
than pulling Gene and me out of school mid-term, we stayed in Huntington while
Dad commuted, first to DC and then to Chicago. The Chicago commute was to be for only a few
weeks, but those weeks turned into a total of four years. We moved to Alexandria, VA in the summer of
1954. Dad was doing his weekly commute,
coming home by train on Saturday mornings and leaving on Sunday evenings. We lived in Alex for two years before the
folks purchased their first home in Woodbridge, a developing community about 20
miles south of DC.
It was there that Mom really came alive. She was involved in a good bit of community
service—President of the Occoquan Elementary School PTA; on the board of the
Marumsco Village HOA; and on the advisory board of the local teen club she
helped to found. Probably the thing I
most remember of our three years in Woodbridge was her determining the public
schooling offered there was less than stellar.
Probably the last straw was the time I was sent home for a suspension
because my pants were too tight. This
was in the spring of my ninth grade year.
The principal of Gar-Field High School was Herbert Saunders. He flagged me down in the hallway near the
office one morning saying, “Please come with me Mr. Hilsheimer. You have a three day vacation on us.” Mom was incensed when I showed up back at the
house somewhere around 9 AM because I had been wearing the same pants all year
long and they had never been questioned by anyone. She called Dad (who was finally through with
his weekly commutes) and he came home, went to Saunders, and got me back in
school the following day.
I only heard Mom talk disparagingly of only one person in
my life and that was Mr. Saunders. She
said of him that he was “the nearest thing to nothing of a principal" she had ever encountered.” It was
at that time apparently she and Dad had a discussion about, among other
things, the Prince William County school system, They decided to move to Arlington because of its excellent school system and to be closer to his
job in DC. So, in the summer of 1959 we
moved to Arlington, a move that, thanks to Mom, changed all our lives. For one, even though I had to repeat ninth
grade (thanks to the shitty Gar-Field HS experience) it was a key decision in
my own life. I was a so-so student
before and expressed an interest in joining the Navy upon graduation—a desire
that was overcome by Mom and Dad’s opposition.
I really came to dig the Arlington high school scene. It was there that I decided to major in
history when I went off to college.
Several years late,r after I had joined the Air Force to
avoid being drafted, I had asked Pam to marry me and she accepted. The folks were living in the Chicago area and
had not met Pam. Mom was in the hospital
recovering from a surgery when she first met Pam. She was enamored with Pam and we told her of
our plans. The following day I went to
visit her alone and, as we were discussing our plans upon my return from
Vietnam, she asked me if marrying Pam was really what I wanted to do. Of course I replied “Yes, it really is.” Thinking on this conversation in the years
gone by, I realized that Mom had my best interests at heart and, after I had
gone to Vietnam, Pam disclosed to the folks that we had, in fact, eloped while
I was home on leave. Mom was more
accepting of the fact than Dad—who came around in short order.
Over the intervening years, Mom remained the backbone of
the family. She was ever present during
the easy and the hard times. This was
especially true when Dad developed Parkinson’s and had to restrict his
activities—especially his part-time job on a local golf course in Daytona Beach
after they retired. Unfortunately, Dad developed prostate cancer which had to
be operated on. The doctors told them
that one of the possible side effects of the surgery would be that he might not
fully recover from the anesthetic.
Sadly, such proved to be true.
After the surgery Dad was not the man he had been before. He was in a constant stupor and suffered from
Parkinson’s related dementia from that point on. More correctly, Dad and Mom suffered through it.
She was on the constant lookout for him.
He had a habit of going outside and taking walks without telling
her. At one point, he walked toward
downtown Daytona Beach—a distance of about 4-5 miles—before a man who knew him
from the golf course happened upon him and gave him a life back home. Throughout it all, Mom remained the woman of
steel.
I knew she was overburdened with Dad, so I moved in with
them for six months in mid-1998. I was
able to get a job as a nursing assistant and helped Mom as best I could. At one point I bathed him and, while drying
him off, I noticed that he had developed a hernia, so it was off to the
surgeon’s knife once again. Having
undergone hernia surgery myself, I knew and insisted that he not be fully under
but treated with a local anesthetic. He
came home the following day and I was amazed that he seemed impervious to
pain. I had been laid up for two
weeks—the first one being the worst—after my surgery, but Dad just took it in
stride. Toward November, I realized that
I could no longer stay with them but to return to Wisconsin. I felt a bit guilty, leaving Mom to tend to
Dad on her own, but she took it in stride and maintained her wits and dignity
until the day she died.
I am so glad I had her for as long as I did—longer than
my siblings did—and will cherish her love and memory forever.
