There  are a few stories that could  fall into this category, but this is one of my favorites and i have told it often.  So much so that my older daughter reminded me of it this weekend.

My Mother did not use curse words.  She was not angel, but in all my years, I only heard my mother say a curse word one time.   In fact, in her car she carried a small wooden carving of a hand with its middle finger flying solo out of its fist.  Yes, a wooden carving of a hand giving “the bird”.  When people would make her angry (aka-cut her off), she would grab that wooden hand and hold it up for all to see.  But there was this one time the hand just wasn’t going to do the trick……..

My mom worked at the Deerfield Animal Hospital on Waukegan Road in Deerfield, Il.  To get there from our house, it was a left out of the neighborhood, drive down Deerfield Road to Waukegan, take a left in town at the light and go about 2 miles down, past the Sara Lee plant to her work.  Pretty simple.  The speed limit was 35 on Deerfield Road and there was a school zone along the way.

One day on her short drive to work, some “lunatic” as she called him, was following her too close to her bumper in an obvious attempt to get her to move over so he could go by.  My mom checked her speed, she is going the speed limit, so she stuck to her lane, didn’t speed up and followed all the rules of the road.  But, this guy just wouldn’t give up.  He resorted to honking and finally he got an opening to the right and shot around her.  Once in front of her car he slowed down to a crawl; to make a point, we assume.

Unfortunately for him, they came to a red light at Deerfield and Waukegan roads.  While sitting in the turn lane, my mother put her car in park, got out and walked up to the offending vehicle and tapped on the window.  I can only imagine (and do every so often with a giggle) the look on this guys face when looks up to see this middle aged woman in her white uniform standing outside his car signaling him to roll down his window.   After some hesitation, he finally cracks the car window to see what she wants.  This is when my mother proceeds to read him the riot act.   “Do you KNOW what the speed limit is on this road?”  “Are you going to a fire that you have to ride my bumper like that?” “What if I had to suddenly slam on my breaks, I could have been hurt!”  “Not only that, but your erratic driving could have killed someone!”  By the end of her rant, the man was looking at his shoes and apologizing for his behavior, promising never to do it again.

Standing tall and proud of herself, my mother walked back to her car, got in and proceeded to finish her drive to work.  As they both turned onto Waukegan road, a police officer followed them.  He got behind the vehicle that was harassing my mom, turned on his flashers and pulled the guy over.   My mom looked in the rear view mirror, smiled and whistled a happy tune all the way to work.  🙂

I can still hear her voice when she told me the story that night.  My response was “You did WHAT?”  “What if the guy tried to run you over, what if he had a gun, over or jumped out of his car?”.  I guess (back then at least) that her response was so unexpected he reverted back to a 5 year old being scolded by his mother.  I can sure tell you,  if it happened to me even back then,  I sure as heck wouldn’t roll down my window – even for a middle aged lady in a white uniform.

Mom….you crack me up!

I mentioned before my Mother had quite a knack for “expanding” the truth on a story.  One such story was the one where my bedroom ceiling fell in….

The house I grew up in was built in 1957 as a single story 2-bedroom  home.  When my mother became pregnant with me, a fourth child,  my parents added on a “Dormer”.  Essentially, a 2nd floor with 2 more bedrooms and another bathroom.   A Dormer typically has a flat roof-top, which is important to this story.

Fast forward about 15 years of snow, rain, heat, home roof repair work and  I am now in the 7th grade.  Over the summer, my ceiling had been dripping on me whenever we had a heavy rain.  So much so, that when it rained, I had to put a bucket on my bed and slept on an old cot we had for the boys for camping.

One night, I am  on the cot because the rain had been so bad and now the ceiling is sagging over my bed and dripping.  My cat Goliath, a beautiful dark gray tabby, is sleeping on the end of the bed.   I had just turned off the light to go to sleep and there was a CRASH!  It scared the heck out of me!  I jumped off the cot, flipped on the light to see the ceiling had crashed in on the bed along with a lot of water.  There was dry-wall and insulation on the bed as well as hanging from the ceiling.   Poor Goliath was hiding somewhere in the room.  By the time I quickly assessed and opened the door to the hall, my brother Keith was there too, trying to figure out where the noise came from.  We went downstairs together and told my mom what happened.  She helped me clean up a bit, I was already set up on the cot and went to sleep.  I still didn’t know where Goliath was.

By noon the next day, a friend and neighbor down the street, Lynnie, comes by to see what all the fuss is about.  When she came over, she said ” I came to see what REALLY happened to your ceiling and room”.  We all knew about my mother’s knack for making things bigger and better.  I take her upstairs to show her and tell her what happened.  She starts to giggle.  “Well,” she says, “Your mom is down at Margaret’s telling the story that you were in the bed, the ceiling creaked so it woke you and you were already downstairs telling her about it when it crashed in.  The crash was so loud the whole house shook and when you came back upstairs together, there was Keith sifting through the rubble on top of the bed calling  JILL!, JILL!.  Where are you?”

Lynnie and I were laughing so hard by the time she finished the story.  If you had known my brother and I back then, the story my mother told would never have played out that way.  Of course, when she got telling a story, it could be so convincing….she had all the ladies in the neighborhood with their hands to their mouth gasping at the horror of it all.

My brother and I have laughed about that story over the years.  We both still have the same reaction; “right…..like he would have been digging through the rubble in a frenzy trying to save me”.   But I must say, every time I see a drip or water stain on a ceiling, I think of that story and it makes me smile.  🙂

As for Goliath, he was fine.  He was scared and didn’t come in my room for a long while.  It took my dad over a year to fix the hole the cave-in left in the ceiling, but by the time I was in the 9th grade, I had stolen Keith’s room for myself and he was stuck with the repair.   But that is a story for another time…….

This story is one of EPIC preportion that my mother would have absolutely loved to tell.  Problem is, its all about her ashes.

My mother died 13 years before my father did.  When she died, they had been married for 46 years.  They would still hold hands across the aisle of their burgundy color Ford conversion van with the velvet curtains.  It was sweet.

When my mother died, it was rather sudden.  We found out she had Leukemia in January by a fluke – some random “lump” behind her knee raised up during a wedding.  It bothered her so much my dad took her to the emergency room.  By the time the doctors were done checking her out, the lump was gone, but the Leukemia diagnosis was in its place.  She died 2 months later.

My mother was cremated at a Kelly and Spalding funeral home down the street from the house where we grew up.  I have great memories of all the neighborhood kids playing football on the beautiful lawns of the funeral home fall and spring evenings.

After my mothers death my dad lived in their “retirement house” in Waterford Wisconsin for about a year, but eventually sold that house and moved in with my middle brother Neal and his family.  Mom and Dad had lived with them before, so Dad just kind of settled into the old part of the house and puttered around trying his best to help out Robin with chores and fix-it projects.  Eventually, he moved into his own apartment literally a stones throw away from Robin and Neal and after a couple of years, moved south west to Batavia and next door to the oldest brother, Todd.

It was then that I got the first call.  “Willard?”, Neal said.  (My brothers call me Willard).  “Do you know where Mom is?”.  Odd question…..I answer, “No.  I figured Dad took her up to the lake in Minnesota and scattered her ashes there”.  “No”, Neal says.  “I was cleaning out the attic and I found this box.  It was labled Kelly and Spalding Funeral Home.”  So, my mother was in Neal’s attic for a few years, hmmmm……

Neal returned the ashes to my dad and talked to him about how he should do something with them.  I can just picture my dad looking down at his feet, shuffling like a 5 year old getting scolded for bad behavior.  The subject was dropped.  That is until………

A few years later.  Dad had gotten to a point it was better if he moved into a senior apartment complex so he could eat more than cherry pie for breakfast, lunch and dinner and Neal came down to help move him.  At the end of that weekend, I get another call.  “Willard?”, Neal says.  “Do you know where Mom is?”  I repeat, “I would have thought that BY NOW he would have done something with her”.  “No”, says Neal.  “I was doing one last sweep in the basement and found the box on a shelf”.  So…..Mom moved from the attic to the basement.  Interesting.  Neal returned the box to my Dad.

After a time at the apartments, Dad met up with a lady-friend.  Dutchie made him smile and he had a hand to hold again.  They decided to combine incomes and share an apartment.   About a year later, Dad’s heart finally gave out.

I live about 900 miles away and my family had to travel back to for the funeral.  Of course, it was held at Kelly and Spalding funeral home, yes, the same name as the label on the box my dad carried around with him 13 years.

The day of the visitation, I hade just arrived in town and get a call from Robin.  She tells me the story of she and Neal talking about getting dads stuff out of Dutchie’s apartment when they both realize – WHERE’S MOM???  They head over to see Dutchie with a story they are looking for something Dad wanted with him.   After searching drawers and closets, they finally make it out to the shared storage space,  and there they find what they are looking for.  The box.  Not knowing what to do, Robin decides to wrap the box like a gift and has the funeral home place it in the crook of my dad’s left arm.  They were worried the funeral home wouldn’t think kindly of having my mom in the casket with my dad.  I thought it was genius.

After 13 years, they were finally together again.  I asked my dad’s sister Dot later, why didn’t he ever do anything with Mom’s ashes?  She said he had told her years before that he wanted to be buried with her in his arms.  I guess he got exactly what he wanted. (though it would have been nice if he had told someone!)

An interesting twist occurred with my Dad, my Mom and the burial.  As it turns out, my dad died on the same day as his beloved older sister Margaret whom he and my mom had gone fishing with in Minnesota every year since before I was born.  Given my dad hadn’t made any plans, my brother was able to secure a burial plot right next to Margaret where they both grew up in East Peoria, Il.

I cant but help hearing that preachers voice in my head saying “Today we lay to rest Margaret Keys, her brother Gene Geitner and his wife Jean Geitner”……I bet he wondered how that happened!