Our

Story

by

Lawrence Abby Gauthier

ace reporter

The Westphalia Periodic News

My mother passed away last week, last Thursday evening just as the earth’s dark shadow was eclipsing a brilliant full moon. Culley Jane and I were watching the celestial event from the backyard of our home in Colorado when the call came.

Mom was 96 years old.

My brothers and sister still live way up north in Michigan’s “Upper Peninsula” where we all grew up. They were with her the day of the eclipse. My dad was, too. They’d been married for 79 years. They’d been high school sweethearts and got married after dad got back home after the war.

We were the Gauthier family on West “D” Street in Iron Mountain. In the beginning, in the 50s, father worked in a factory and mother was always home. Later on, as I was heading out into the world, dad used his GI Bill benefits to start taking college classes and eventually became the town’s 3^rd grade teacher. Mom took night classes and became a VA nurse, one year winning the prestigious “Nurse of the Year” award at the Iron Mountain VA hospital.

It’s a 1,200-mile drive from Colorado to northern Michigan. The last time I saw mom was earlier this summer. I sat with her on the couch at the assisted living facility apartment where she and dad have lived for the past three years. For brief moments, she recognized me. I’m 78, the oldest. She reached out to touch me. “It’s really you,” she said, like she knew I was ok. Then she sighed and closed her eyes. As long as she knows that everybody is ok, then she’s ok. It’s just the way she was.

Of her four children, I was always the one who was taking off. She would cry and make me promise to call and to write letters and to let me know that I could always come back home. Dad might piss and moan about some of the decisions I made in my life — like quitting a job with a future to hitchhike around the country like a Depression-era hobo — but as long as I was ok, mom was ok and didn’t have to worry.

Much of the next day following the eclipse I was on the phone with my sister, who’s in charge of handling the “arrangements.” Dad told her he wants all four of us kids to be with him at the services, which would take place in two weeks.

I waited for a couple days before I called him. He was having lots of visitors and I wanted to wait for things to calm down first. He had new hearing aids from the VA. When he answered the phone he could hear me good.

“You’ll be here for the services, right?” he said.

I told him I planned to drive up there early, at least a week before the services, so we’d have plenty of time to bull shit about stuff, maybe take a ride up to the old hunting camp. Culley Jane and the others could fly in later.

He asked me if I was still driving my old Subaru. “It’s twelve hundred miles,” he said. “Two-lane roads getting across Wisconsin. I’d hate to see you break down at a time like this. I want all four of you kids here for the services.”

I told him we had a new Toyota pick-up with under 20,000 miles on it. No problem.

Then I asked him: “How are you doin’?”

He took a moment to think about it, then said: “Ok, I guess, all things considered. How ‘bout you?”

“I’m ok,” I said.