REMEMBERING MY MOM

I couldn't even see the numbers on the phone, the tears had pooled up in my eyes to blur the keypad. It was the late summer of 2003, my youngest son, Jesse, had been wounded in Iraq... halfway around the world from me.
"Hello"?..Mom answered in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
"Mom? It's Tommy.... Jesse was wounded in Iraq yesterday."
"Is he okay?" she asked.
"I think so..the Army called and left a message with Aubrey"
"Keep us posted, please...I will pray for him"....I WILL PRAY FOR HIM.....Mom always said that in times like these..We all say things like that, but I knew that some time that evening my Mom, a deeply religious woman, would get down on her knees and say the words she knew would reach her God to protect her Grandson, and by extension, Me.

Mom was born Susanna Marie deSeve on February 4, 1923 in Astoria. She graduated from nursing school on D-Day,1944. She would work only briefly as a Nurse until she began to raise a family. We moved from the Bronx to Old Bethpage when I was seven and Mom hit the ground running....  organizing, decorating, managing a household that would one day have 6 children crawling, crying, jumping, laughing, bitching and moaning.

She was there for me when I would come home bloody and scraped, or when Bobby Hilsby and I stepped into a bee's nest, or beat the piss out of each other.

She was the worst driver I have known...we called her Susie boom-boom because she hit everything. She would drive with her hands thru the steering wheel of her Cutlass,..  holding a cup of tea.

Her idea of serving Italian food was 3 cans of Franco-American Spaghetti.
She was a terrible cook...but would never miss making each of us a birthday cake.
On Lincoln's Birthday she would make a Log Cabin out of chocolate cigarettes and place it on top of a cake.

We gave her a surprise birthday party for her 60th, and she walked thru the doors as Jan and Dean sang:
"IT'S THE LITTLE OLD LADY FROM PASADENA!"
A hundred of us screamed the chorus:  "GO GRANNY, GO GRANNY, GO GRANNY GO!"

She once told me to water her plants outside, and as I reluctantly did so, she came to the window to check on me through the screened window...I couldn't help myself, I sprayed her right in the face with the hose.
She screamed and slid the window closed. Then she went into the kitchen and filled up a metal bucket with water and called out to my kid brother Kevin:
"Kevin..."
"Yes?"
"Call your brother, tell him to come to the door".
Kevin went outside, and as luck would have it, saw only my older brother, John.
"Mom wants to see you"
Johnny went up the stoop and opened the front door...and was immediately drenched with a few gallons of ice cold water....... My Mother shrieked: "OH SHIT!"
And they were off to the races.., Johnny chasing her around the house and down the block, throwing toilet paper at her back.
What the neighbors thought?  Nothing...just Sue McRedmond carrying on with her boys.

She went back to work in the late 70's as a Terminal Care Nurse..nowadays they call it Hospice.          I always thought.."Thank God there are people like her"

She had to bury her youngest Son James, in 2004. It broke her heart.
She had to be helped to the coffin of her youngest sister Marie early in the 1990's, a tragic accident victim. It too broke her heart.
But She never lost her faith.

I went to see her in Pennsylvania in 2006, after hearing from my Dad that she had become very forgetful and sometimes didn't recognize some of the family.

When I walked in the door, she looked at me blankly and my heart sank. Then she reached for her glasses, blinked and said:
"Tommy!"
"Hi Mom"
It would be okay..this was my Mom.

Mom died in 2007. I miss her. If there's a twinkle in my eye, it's her fault.
6 Children
14 Grandchildren
13 Great-Grandchildren (at least )


Happy Mother's Day,  Susie Boom- Boom..... I miss you,....SAY A PRAYER FOR ME.

Like I have to ask...................