I’ve been thinking about my mother a lot this past month. First of all, because it was Mother’s Day a few weeks ago. Secondly because she was a veteran and this week was Memorial Day. And finally because the 22^nd of this month was the anniversary of when she passed away in 1983.

My mother grew up Irish-Catholic near the Philadelphia Art Museum and was one of 12 children. One thing that amazes me is that, not only did my grandparents have 12 children, but they also took in boarders! She was close with her siblings and she had a twin brother.

She became a nurse and served in the Navy on the USS Repose (AH-16). The Repose was commissioned 70 years ago yesterday and was active from May 1945 to January 1950, from October 1950 to December 1954 and from October 1965 to May 1970. My mother served on that second stint, when it went to Korea.

Mom was working for a good bit of the time that I knew her. She worked the night shift (11 PM – 7 AM) at one hospital and then got regular daytime hours when she moved to another neighborhood hospital. When she was working the night shift, she would sleep during the day. So, you might say my sister and I were latchkey kids.

Because I was a baseball fan, she would follow the home team’s players. She liked the feisty ones. Her favorite was Cookie Rojas – who always seemed to be getting into some sort of rhubarb. I once told her I was going to take her to Ireland. Unfortunately, that never happened.
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Later in life, my mother contracted systemic lupus erythematosus or SLE. It was very debilitating and profoundly affected her fair complexion. Being of Irish ancestry, she had always had challenges with her skin, but lupus, an autoimmune disorder where the body attacks healthy tissue by mistake, particularly took its toll. It wreaked havoc with her skin and, as a result, she became very self-conscious about her appearance. She was always going to the dermatologist and was very sensitive to sunlight.

I think by the time I got to really know her, she had had more than her share of medical challenges. I wondered about her life growing up and while in the navy. It was all a mystery to me.

What I mostly remember about my mother was she loved to socialize. She would often have people over to the house – or we would go to a friend or relative’s home, and my mother would sit at their kitchen table and have a cup of tea or coffee. That’s what she loved to do. And she deserved it. She provided for us financially with her income as a nurse so she was entitled to enjoy herself a little. She didn’t cook much as she was so busy working outside the home.

Mothers provide unconditional love for their children. I know I didn’t always deserve it. Yet she was always there for me, whether it was backing me up when I was getting into trouble or while I was graduating from school, she always supported me. She lived up to her name – Grace.