RIP: Mom

My mother, Mary Nielsen, died on Monday, December 8, around 4:30 p.m. from an aortic dissection, possibly brought on by a genetic predisposition (Marfan Syndrome) and stress to the aorta induced by a partial lung infection (and subsequent collapse) a few weeks prior. Mom experienced excruciating pain on Sunday night, but the pain subsided while she was at the hospital, and it is very likely that she suffered little, if any, pain at the very end; all three of us sons got to talk to her, individually, in the hospital while we thought she was recovering. Such are the tiny mercies.

Mom was born in 1944 in Buffalo, NY, and her father, a WW2 vet, brought the family out to Vista, California when she was in elementary school. She graduated from Vista High School and intended to become an elementary school teacher like her mother, but varicose veins prevented her from standing in front of a classroom for hours at a time (all three of her sons, however, have taught at one point or another, so the genes will out, I suppose). She got a job with Sears instead, and soon after met and married my father. His naval career took them back to the East Coast, but she continued working for Sears until I was three or so; she then raised us full-time until I was 13 and we were living in Okinawa. In Okinawa, Mom took over management of the Navy Officers' Wives' Gift Shop in the hospital on Camp Lester (nee Kuwae). As manager and purchaser, she traveled to Korea several times; she once got too close to a student protest and got teargassed. In 1986, we returned to California, and Mom went to work for the San Marcos Unified School District; in 1988, just after I graduated, she became the Principal's Secretary at San Marcos High School, and she kept that ship running for several years. She later moved to Res Med, a company that specializes in medical equipment for dealing with sleep apnea, and then Tri-ad, an insurance packaging company.

Mom's main hobby was genealogy; she tracked down a "lost" branch of the Teclaws in Wisconsin, and she and her siblings went there for a family reunion. She was amazingly resourceful; she got me into Berkeley when I was passed up as being borderline interesting to them, and she fought the administration tooth and nail to get me credit for my AP classes. And while I like to joke about how she was always asking me to fix her computer or install things when I visited, she was the one who copied thousands of lines of code from magazines into the TI-99/4A that I first learned to program on; she knew how to set up printers and scanners, and she was tenacious when it came to a problem.

She was also clever and funny, and she could organize the hell out just about anything requiring personnel and materials. I think that my own inordinate frustration with incompetence stems from having grown up with an example of how smoothly things can go if you just put some thought and planning into it.

Mom was also open to new ideas and experiences; she loved taking tours around Okinawa, Korea, and the PI when we lived in the region (in the 80s), and she and my dad took cruises to Mexico, Northern Europe, and Alaska in recent years. She even dragged Yoko and me along on a wine-tasting tour bus to the Baja wine country (a trip I heartily recommend to one and all). Most impressive of all, Mom and my mother-in-law, Noriko, spent an entire day alone together, despite neither of them speaking the other's language; they relied on pictures, a dictionary, patience, and an awful lot of good humor.

Mom was raised and remained a devout but intellectual Catholic throughout her life. The scandalous behavior of the molesting priests and the Church's inaction made her shake with anger and drove wedge between her and the organization, but she maintained her peace with God; she believed in a merciful, compassionate, and all-embracing Lord, not the infallibility of Pope and Church.

Mom went quickly and relatively painlessly, without much fuss, and I think she would have appreciated that. We had a lovely graveside ceremony for family on Friday, December 12, and then we had a public Celebration of Life for her on Saturday, December 13; we were expecting 70 or so people, but over a hundred showed up, and they all had lovely things to say about her.

It's been three weeks now, and, of course, the pain hasn't gotten any better; I don't expect it to. I wish I could cry more often, and I try not to fight it when the feelings well up. Mostly I just miss her. I think of things I want to tell her, and then I remember that I can't call her anymore, and, well, that's when it hits me over and over again. She's gone. She's gone, and I miss her.