Saturday Nite Soup for the Soul (20)

as it already been one year since the cascading and tragic events finally stole the remaining life from my mother? Maxine Geraldine. B. July 25th, 1917. D. April 21st, 2006. The kindest human being I have met in this world. Teacher of so many life lessons by example. One more link to the past, a citizen from a great generation that is rapidly vanishing from this sweet earth. Above she is shown with her parents: Herman Rudolph Woellner and Esther Alvira Johansson , and her brother Edward. About 1921. Stage left is Maxine at age 18 in 1935. Below is Maxine and the love of her life, her first husband William Quentin Lee., circa 1940 or so. She was married twice. Her first marriage was very happy, but ended in tragedy when he died of tuberculosis in 1942, two weeks before their daughter Judith Rae Lee, my sister, was born. Then she married my dad (Robert Roy, shown to the left in 1947) later saying the reason was "he was very handsome". Maxine produced two sons from her second and unhappy marriage (the husband, my father, was selfish and emotionally abusive). Robert Allen: named after the father and favoring him in looks and habit, and William Michael: named after...hum...either the first husband, or her own Grandfather Wilhelm Woellner from Deutschland, or ???, and favoring her in looks and habit, plus a whole sparkly load of other traits and talents that appear to come from the "ether world of free spirits". William Michael of the Universe, Daddy Dearest holding Robert Allen, and two pictures from a rare car trip in 1954 around the Olympic Peninsula, where I almost drowned when someone threw a rock into the lake and told me to go get it and I walked into the lake to retrieve it. As you can see, like my mother, I was waaaaay too trusting. We were a boating family. We went boating most every weekend and vacations were always these dangerous adventures up thru the wilds of British Columbia in small boats. I must have at least 10,000 pictures, slides, and negatives to go thru. Here are a few of the ones I have scanned of Maxine over those years when she alone made us into "a family", while my selfish dad did what he wanted to do. The picture above is of MISS MAXINE, when her pretty sky blue eyes are become "Black Eyes of Death". She is obviously pissed off at my father no doubt. Below she is seen sitting at the kitchen table in the family abode having her Saturday Night toot (Whiskey and Squirt pop,). She knew how to enjoy herself and have a good time. This man is a family friend, Elwood a/k/a/ "Dagwood". Though happily married to Kay, a kick ass wonderful character of a wife, I think he always has a bit of a crush on my mother which would come out when he was sloshed on his case of Olympia beer. He would take Maxine aside and say "Us Aryans, we need to stick together" (he was a Norwegian). When my dad walked out on the family (Christmas day, 1965), Elwood and Kay were the only mutual friends to choose to stick by my mother, including her in their legendarily wild gatherings on Hartstine Island. They dropped my dad seeing him as the stupid idiot that he was. This is one of my all time favorite pics of my mother. She has her Rayban shades on, her drink and cigarettes, and is looking at Rhodes department store High Heel shoe ads. The woman loved clothes, color, and style. After my dad walked out for greener pastures (he met and married Alice, a five time divorcee and gold digger who did to him what he had done to Maxine), she had her happiest years. She went back to work, and lived an independent life. She worked six days a week (missed one day or work in 14 years), put on all the family dinners, painted the house, kept the yard up, went dancing every Saturday night with a gentleman friend who she went with for 30 years. But I do think that my dad killed something in her, deep inside her heart. I will never know for sure, but my own personal experiences have shown me how excruciating emotional experiences, especially when you are the target of intentional hate and cruelty, can kill off parts of one’s heart. Maxine and me age 20 or so. She was finally free of an abusive husband, glowed with happiness, and on the top of her game. Maxine with her two great grand daughters, Crystal and Debby Fishing at her surviving sister's house (Beverly) in Spokane More fishing with my elder brother, Bobby. A rare reunion picture of Maxine and my dad, at his moble home in Puyallup In 1994, I was on a jury for wrongful death. A man's mother had died in a nursing home. I was foreman of the Jury. The trial was a travesty with a crooked criminal judge on the take who made so many errors that he should be sent to a Turkish Bum Phuck prison for reconditioning. I was so horrified by this experience that I made a promise to my mother that when the time came, I would move back home to take care of her. In 1997, fulfilled this promise, bought a house, and moved her into the main floor. I lived in the basement, where I continue to live, and gave her free run of the main floor with the view. Here she was at age 84. Before the medical mistakes took her life. Maxine's dream was to live in a brick home. She thought she would never achieve her dream -- but at age 80 she did! She loved living with me, and the cats. She drove up until age 85 and came and went as she liked. However, in 2004 a leg infection was misdiagnosed as "water retention" and treated with water pills. This started a whole cascade of medical mishaps that rapidly wore down her remaining ten years of life and vitality, and this untimately killed her. The picture below was taken on March 29th, 2005, the day her daughter, my sister Judy, died. Here she is, waving goodbye to all who loved her, and to all who have read this post. She was a treasure of a human being. Not a day goews by that I am not inspired by her simple example to be a kinder, and ever better human being. To get to know me at my best is to meet her every day self. I cannot show anymore pictures beyond this. I am crying my guts out as it is just posting these final pictures. And she would never have wanted people to see her when she was down on her luck, Out of respect for her, they will never see the light of day, until such a time that I too am gone. That day may come in 40 years. It may come tonight. This experience has left me feeling fragile, and with an all powerful sense of how life can be stolen away at any time. Death does that, I think, to everyone. Here is Maxine's surviving granddaughter Patty carrying her final birthday cake. I have had a total mental and emotional breakdown this past year. Oh, I put on a good front and am able to act out a reasonable facsimile of engagement, but I have not been there. And now with this post, marking the one year anniversary, I will stand back up and start climbing the Crystal Stair once again. It is what she would have wanted me to do. Live my life, and make myself happy. She literally said these exact words to me on numerous occasions. Though I did the best that I could on caring for her, I failed. My mistake was in trusting the medical system. Liars and frauds. Pill pushers who could give a shit of their patients. I did not know. I thought that doctor’s knew what they were doing. Several days before she died I broke down at her bed side crying and said all this, and much, much more to her. Confessing all my shortcomings and many, many, many imperfections. Her reply was simple, and sweet “Oh well, don’t worry about it. Nobody is perfect. Don’t cry for me. I’ve lived a good life”. My brother Bobby reminds me that she would have died a long time ago (both figuratively, and literally true) had I not stepped in and rescued her from her own home and put her here in the lap of luxury. But despite all this, including the traumas of the past three years (her death was preceded by my sister’s death, my dad’s death, and my sister’s husband’s suicide) has scarred me, permanently. I will carry the events leading to my mom’s death with me forever now. Though I will now try as hard as I can to make myself happy (a couple of your who visit me have been very helpful on this journey to personal happiness), I will always carry her in my heart, and there will always bee one small dark room of unbearable grief and sadness where the events related to her death will reside. As I finished last week’s frantic 1000 mile two day road trip, I finally entered Tacoma and all the sadness came back about my mother as if it had waited for me. I was crying very hard, and a piece of music came on that I played a lot year as she died. It is what concludes this week’s soup. And yet, as I drove into my property it was raining and sunny at the same time and there were millions of flowers in bloom covered with drops reflecting jewel like points of light everywhere I looked. I got out of my car, and smelled the perfume of the blossoms in the fresh super oxygenated air. And a great sense of serenity came over me. In all my travels I saw no more beautiful garden than my own home. And I heard her saying to me “Someday, when I am gone, this garden will remind you of me”. I felt her presence everywhere. I looked up in the sky above my home and there was a beautiful rainbow. With this, I knew that I would emotionally get thru this anniversary intact. She always went in half as I bought all these fancy Rhododendrons. Until this moment, I did not fully appreciate the great gift that she gave to me. In her doing this, Maxine has actually constructed her own living memorial, where she would live on in each flower, season after season. Maxine is survived by her two sons. Robert and William, Her granddaughter Patty and grandson Michael, her sister Beverly Jean, two great granddaughters Crystal Lee and Debra Ashley, and a great grandson Tyler Lee. In the final days, she saw her mother and father visiting her, and she spoke to them. She promised that when my time came, if she is able, she too will come to visit me and usher me out of the world of material and into the world of spirit. I believe with all my heart that this shall be. I love you mom. Thanks for all the countless things, big and small, that you did for me. I’ll see you again someday when it is my time to climb aboard the train that travels across space and time to eternity in Glory. Your baby son, William Michael. Well, son, I'll tell you: Life for me ain't been no crystal stair. It's had tacks in it, And splinters, And boards torn up, And places with no carpet on the floor -- Bare. But all the time I'se been a-climbin' on, And reachin' landin's, And turnin' corners, And sometimes goin' in the dark Where there ain't been no light. So boy, don't you turn back. Don't you set down on the steps 'Cause you finds it's kinder hard. Don't you fall now -- For I'se still goin', honey, I'se still climbin', And life for me ain't been no crystal stair. Langston Hughes' Mother to Son 1 -- 1. Crucifixion is from the film soundtrack Jesus of Nazareth. This is the saddest music you could wish to hear. It is the sound of ones heart being ripped out still beating by the hand of grief. 2. Excerpt from The Firebird by Igor Stravinsky. The sound of grief being lulled back to sleep. This is a stunning bit of music. It circles in a part of me, forever and ever. In the dark candle lit room hidden deep within my soul. 3. and 4. Vaishnava janato/Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram and Offering by Ravi Shankar. The sound of a Hindu funeral fire burning a corpse releasing the spirit to freedom, and the journey the soul takes to joy everlasting. These two pieces I will play on this site every year on this anniversary. All of this makes it's way into this week's soup. You can get your 29.2 Mb bowl of Saturday Night by clicking the jukebox.