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I lost my
biggest fan New Year’s Eve day; the call came an hour after I turned in the
first column she will never see. Coriene Morrison Miller passed away after a
short struggle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s
disease.
This may
surprise regular readers as I have mentioned my mother often but not the
disease. This was out of respect for her privacy, though when folks are
critically ill it is human nature to link them with their affliction, as if the
two somehow become one. I didn’t wish readers to think of her that way, even as
a nameless character in a newspaper column.
No one has more
lasting influence on us than our parents. As the father of two teenagers and a
former teen myself (difficult as that is for the current Morrison adolescents to
imagine), I know painfully well the power of social forces and peers. There are
times when it is easy to wonder if we are making any impact at all, but in the
end most acorns don’t root too far from the tree.
If my childhood
wasn’t an episode of “Ozzie & Harriet” it was only because Ozzie died young. My
father perished in an automobile accident when my sister and I were 6 and 8,
leaving a full-time mother who never wished to be anything else to raise us
alone. Having lost her own father to the Kings River at 14, she knew the
territory even if she dreaded it.
Raising a family by yourself while working full-time ranges from being a calling
to an endurance test, much like running the Iditarod without the dogs. My
grandmother helped as she could but it was not often easy and Mom didn’t fear
owning up to the occasional misstep. Those seem trivial and few now, 14 years
of parenthood having blessed me with a comeuppance or two.
My sister and I both married at childhood’s end, I to the girl Mom tried to
steer me toward in high school. My wife likes to joke that she took up raising
me where my mother left off, and the two made a running joke of debating who
botched the job worse.
As a grandmother she was a joy to her grandchildren and a gift of strength to
all of us. When my sister’s husband succumbed to cancer at 37, Mom stepped into
the role her mother once filled, unasked and uncomplaining. She remained active
in all her grandchildren’s lives and until recently was our main respite when we
needed to leave the kids overnight.
She moved to Paradise five years ago and married long-time friend Tom Miller
three years later. His devotion these last months blessed us all, setting a
standard that will inspire me as long as I live.
Mom fretted over her family to the end, as we saw again while sorting through
her belongings. For me, the most memorable illustration came while I was taking
a moment to rest and gather my spirits.
“Oh Bre-ent,” my sister’s voice floated from the back room. “Come he-ere.”
Seated on the floor next to my eldest niece, surrounded by knickknacks and
photos I’ve known all my life, she somberly handed me a large white envelope
while choking back – something. A sob?
As my niece turned away I gripped the package and shook out a video titled “The
Thinking Man’s Guide To Hair Restoration.” There could have been only one
intended recipient, and now I had it. And now my sister lost it, laughing so
hard I thought we might have to arrange for a double funeral.
Mom often said that “life is for the living,” an outlook that helped her through
the too-young deaths of her father, husband, and beloved son-in law. That her
passing at age 74 seems likewise sudden is a testimony to the continued and
lasting impact she had on those she loved.
I
miss her intensely yet cannot count having had such a mother as loss even now.
Life is indeed for the living, and, in God’s great scheme of things, I know our
parting is but for an instant.
© 1997 – 2002 Brent Morrison
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