My mom has been really sick lately; it doesn't look good. (Late February 2014).
It didn't look too good in November of 2012 when she was diagnosed with advanced tumors throughout her body, apparently connected to the liver. But there was an eventual chemotherapy plan that would be followed throughout a lot of 2013, and despite the bad side effects that she suffered from the installments every three weeks, it seemed like that some of that treatment would have a chance of making her recover. And she took it in good spirits, and for my mom that is commendable because over the years she has had some pretty severe bouts of depression--- but the last year plus, even in physically painful circumstances, she has been in pretty good spirits with the harsh and uncomfortable effects of the chemical treatments. When we spoke or visited, her body was being pummeled but her attitude was sweet.
Right now, Wednesday, things look pretty negative. She is 73. She would be 74 if she were to last until July. We shall see. I want to write things today, because I have time to do so and I will explain more...
She has had a lot of time to think about this sickness and a lot of time to share with us since that diagnosis at the end of 2012.
One thing that I have shared multiple times with others that makes me smile and perhaps breaks a little ice or provides perspective about my mom, is that years ago she had a dream that she takes seriously, like a revelation, where she was told by a heavenly messenger that she would live to be 85. Born in 1940, that would be the year 2025. We are a few years short of that goal. 2025 seems far enough away...
2025 would be all right (I say now) because my own kids would be adults or close to it, and they would have the chance to know my mother as such. We shall see.
Otherwise, like many grandchildren, they may have to go by pictures, videos, stories and other hand-me-downs to know who their grandma, the one we call Grandma Bear, was and is.
And let me remind us all, that even though people go away in death, they are always still around in one form or another.
Hence this blog post: Memories of Mom.
Here I am, almost halfway through my 43rd year, and I try to reflect on all the memories I have of my mother. The highlights, maybe a few low lights, the good, the bad. The goodness, overall.
She raised my two sisters and I, and for a period of 4 years worked with about 11 foster children. She has done a lot of other nurturing as well, but maybe that will be explained by others in their own way. Like the beloved Vitou in Cambodia. They were going to see him in December of 2012 when they had to cancel the trip because of the new found tumors. Cambodia has an extra mother in my mom. I think she will not be forgotten there.
Goodness, overall.
And it has been good.
I want to write down a few memories while she is still living, because in life too often we forget things before they are recorded. Maybe I or someone can get this read to her in the next days or weeks. Maybe she will read this in 2025. We don't know.
But I wish to record a few things, perhaps jogging my own memory of things that have been. My memories and recollections of things meaningful or memorable to me, her Number One Son.
I was her only boy, out of the three she gave birth to. Through re-marriage, she has a step-son that she cares for, but I might call that relationship more like a nephew/aunt (step-mom). In Cambodia, perhaps that is where she has another boy, who is now a man, who will fondly recollect Ruth Carpenter. I have not met him but I know that she and my step-father Terry love him like a son, and he deserves that. Maybe she will not be able to go to Cambodia (in this life) and see him again. We shall see.
Ruth Muriel Carpenter was born in Hanover, Massachusetts, the last of 5 children in a humble family during the depression. Her parents were by no means people of money in a time when economics was tough. My grandma, Nellie, was 44 when my mother was born. My mom was the baby, the youngest. Grandma Nellie died when I was young, and I knew her, but not too well. But she lived to age 84. Which is a much better age than most.
I wish more people would live into their 80s and 90s. My grandma Nellie lived closer to my mom's siblings in Massachusetts, and my cousins, my mom's nephews and nieces, knew her better there. I lived 1,000 miles away and we did visit, and I did know her. Just not too well. She and my grandpa visited us in Indiana that I remember, too. I did not get to know my grandmother as well as my mom would have liked me to. But everything in its time, I suppose.
My mom became a nurse, joined the Peace Corps, married my dad in Sierra Leone, West Africa, returned to the United States in 1966, moved to Indiana and had us three children. They became members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and this institution became an extended part of our family.
By the time I was 14 my parents were divorced and my mother re-married when I was 16.
My mom wrote me all 104 weeks of my two year LDS mission, from 1989 to 1991, before there was email. Real paper letters. Sometimes the letters were delayed or bunched together, but they got to me. And my mom experienced her second serious bout with depression during that time, too.
She sent a nice package with an apple pie to my first missionary area, in Chile, South America, that did not catch up to me until I was in my second area, and the pie had turned greenish. But the thought counted. And the Snickers bars included definitely found their mark.
Thanks mom.
My mom took me to see my favorite baseball player in 1985, the first time for me to see him in person. I had been following him religiously from 1981 (age 10), and I had meticulously taken notes of his stats and games. She drove me to St. Louis, Missouri, a 5 hour drive; we stayed in a hotel overnight and caught the game, a very memorable game for me, which helped me continue in my fandom of that player for many years to come, until his retirement in 2002 (age 31).
Hard to explain why we love the things we do. But my mom recognized it.
Thanks mom.
I returned to Indiana in 1997 after living in Utah for five years. I was looking for a suitable mate, and things had not turned out with a few prospects while living and dating in Utah, and things actually became worse while in my home state when it came to serious dating. But I could count on hanging out with my mom. I was 27, 28 years old, and my mom still nurtured me as an adult, at a time when many that age would be raising their own children.
I was able to spend many quality hours with my mom in my late 20s, and I was blessed for it.
Weekly dinners, shows together, a head massage or foot rub. After years of being away, I was with my mom again. For my twenty seventh birthday she paid for a full body massage. Not bad for being a single celibate dude, like I was. She was always very physically and emotionally tender with me. I did miss out a little bit of her when divorce separated our family when I was still in middle school, but I got it all back in those years. Maybe marrying later and in California was really meant to be. I know I am grateful for that time with her now.
The night I met my future wife in January of 2000, my mom and I spoke that Sunday evening. I think we would talk on the phone about every two weeks. She asked, "Have you met anyone?" (I was well past 29 years old). I was back in California after my Indiana visit from the Christmas break. I responded, "I think I have." And I recall strongly feeling a warm, good feeling that it was right. This new person that my mom had just asked about.
She had tried matching me up with a few girls in Indiana from 1997 to 1999, but those were not meant to be. Nah, there was a time and a plan. My mom has faith like that; I do, too. We, she and I, believe in things that are real that are unseen. Faith is real. Love is real. God is real. His plans are real.
Thanks for that faith, mom.
Later I was accepted to UCLA (happily married and with child), and I frequented the LDS Institute across the street from the building where my parents met before going their respective ways to Africa in the 1960s. I thought about my young parents swimming in the pool, taking training courses, (my mom took French), at that serene part of Westwood, Los Angeles. And my mom was then 2000-2002 in Cambodia, serving the needy again.
Thanks mom.
I have other memories, some funny, some sad, maybe some kooky or insignificant.
But mostly, they are all warm and fond and real and lasting. 2014 or 2025, my mom will always be there for me. She will always be remembered, living or beyond the veil.
She is my mom forever. And I will see her again.
Thanks for the letters, mom. Thanks for the memories. Thanks for being who you have been.
See you soon.
#1 Son
EMC (Eddie)
It didn't look too good in November of 2012 when she was diagnosed with advanced tumors throughout her body, apparently connected to the liver. But there was an eventual chemotherapy plan that would be followed throughout a lot of 2013, and despite the bad side effects that she suffered from the installments every three weeks, it seemed like that some of that treatment would have a chance of making her recover. And she took it in good spirits, and for my mom that is commendable because over the years she has had some pretty severe bouts of depression--- but the last year plus, even in physically painful circumstances, she has been in pretty good spirits with the harsh and uncomfortable effects of the chemical treatments. When we spoke or visited, her body was being pummeled but her attitude was sweet.
Right now, Wednesday, things look pretty negative. She is 73. She would be 74 if she were to last until July. We shall see. I want to write things today, because I have time to do so and I will explain more...
She has had a lot of time to think about this sickness and a lot of time to share with us since that diagnosis at the end of 2012.
One thing that I have shared multiple times with others that makes me smile and perhaps breaks a little ice or provides perspective about my mom, is that years ago she had a dream that she takes seriously, like a revelation, where she was told by a heavenly messenger that she would live to be 85. Born in 1940, that would be the year 2025. We are a few years short of that goal. 2025 seems far enough away...
2025 would be all right (I say now) because my own kids would be adults or close to it, and they would have the chance to know my mother as such. We shall see.
Otherwise, like many grandchildren, they may have to go by pictures, videos, stories and other hand-me-downs to know who their grandma, the one we call Grandma Bear, was and is.
And let me remind us all, that even though people go away in death, they are always still around in one form or another.
Hence this blog post: Memories of Mom.
Here I am, almost halfway through my 43rd year, and I try to reflect on all the memories I have of my mother. The highlights, maybe a few low lights, the good, the bad. The goodness, overall.
She raised my two sisters and I, and for a period of 4 years worked with about 11 foster children. She has done a lot of other nurturing as well, but maybe that will be explained by others in their own way. Like the beloved Vitou in Cambodia. They were going to see him in December of 2012 when they had to cancel the trip because of the new found tumors. Cambodia has an extra mother in my mom. I think she will not be forgotten there.
Goodness, overall.
And it has been good.
I want to write down a few memories while she is still living, because in life too often we forget things before they are recorded. Maybe I or someone can get this read to her in the next days or weeks. Maybe she will read this in 2025. We don't know.
But I wish to record a few things, perhaps jogging my own memory of things that have been. My memories and recollections of things meaningful or memorable to me, her Number One Son.
I was her only boy, out of the three she gave birth to. Through re-marriage, she has a step-son that she cares for, but I might call that relationship more like a nephew/aunt (step-mom). In Cambodia, perhaps that is where she has another boy, who is now a man, who will fondly recollect Ruth Carpenter. I have not met him but I know that she and my step-father Terry love him like a son, and he deserves that. Maybe she will not be able to go to Cambodia (in this life) and see him again. We shall see.
Ruth Muriel Carpenter was born in Hanover, Massachusetts, the last of 5 children in a humble family during the depression. Her parents were by no means people of money in a time when economics was tough. My grandma, Nellie, was 44 when my mother was born. My mom was the baby, the youngest. Grandma Nellie died when I was young, and I knew her, but not too well. But she lived to age 84. Which is a much better age than most.
I wish more people would live into their 80s and 90s. My grandma Nellie lived closer to my mom's siblings in Massachusetts, and my cousins, my mom's nephews and nieces, knew her better there. I lived 1,000 miles away and we did visit, and I did know her. Just not too well. She and my grandpa visited us in Indiana that I remember, too. I did not get to know my grandmother as well as my mom would have liked me to. But everything in its time, I suppose.
My mom became a nurse, joined the Peace Corps, married my dad in Sierra Leone, West Africa, returned to the United States in 1966, moved to Indiana and had us three children. They became members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and this institution became an extended part of our family.
By the time I was 14 my parents were divorced and my mother re-married when I was 16.
My mom wrote me all 104 weeks of my two year LDS mission, from 1989 to 1991, before there was email. Real paper letters. Sometimes the letters were delayed or bunched together, but they got to me. And my mom experienced her second serious bout with depression during that time, too.
She sent a nice package with an apple pie to my first missionary area, in Chile, South America, that did not catch up to me until I was in my second area, and the pie had turned greenish. But the thought counted. And the Snickers bars included definitely found their mark.
Thanks mom.
My mom took me to see my favorite baseball player in 1985, the first time for me to see him in person. I had been following him religiously from 1981 (age 10), and I had meticulously taken notes of his stats and games. She drove me to St. Louis, Missouri, a 5 hour drive; we stayed in a hotel overnight and caught the game, a very memorable game for me, which helped me continue in my fandom of that player for many years to come, until his retirement in 2002 (age 31).
Hard to explain why we love the things we do. But my mom recognized it.
Thanks mom.
I returned to Indiana in 1997 after living in Utah for five years. I was looking for a suitable mate, and things had not turned out with a few prospects while living and dating in Utah, and things actually became worse while in my home state when it came to serious dating. But I could count on hanging out with my mom. I was 27, 28 years old, and my mom still nurtured me as an adult, at a time when many that age would be raising their own children.
I was able to spend many quality hours with my mom in my late 20s, and I was blessed for it.
Weekly dinners, shows together, a head massage or foot rub. After years of being away, I was with my mom again. For my twenty seventh birthday she paid for a full body massage. Not bad for being a single celibate dude, like I was. She was always very physically and emotionally tender with me. I did miss out a little bit of her when divorce separated our family when I was still in middle school, but I got it all back in those years. Maybe marrying later and in California was really meant to be. I know I am grateful for that time with her now.
The night I met my future wife in January of 2000, my mom and I spoke that Sunday evening. I think we would talk on the phone about every two weeks. She asked, "Have you met anyone?" (I was well past 29 years old). I was back in California after my Indiana visit from the Christmas break. I responded, "I think I have." And I recall strongly feeling a warm, good feeling that it was right. This new person that my mom had just asked about.
She had tried matching me up with a few girls in Indiana from 1997 to 1999, but those were not meant to be. Nah, there was a time and a plan. My mom has faith like that; I do, too. We, she and I, believe in things that are real that are unseen. Faith is real. Love is real. God is real. His plans are real.
Thanks for that faith, mom.
Later I was accepted to UCLA (happily married and with child), and I frequented the LDS Institute across the street from the building where my parents met before going their respective ways to Africa in the 1960s. I thought about my young parents swimming in the pool, taking training courses, (my mom took French), at that serene part of Westwood, Los Angeles. And my mom was then 2000-2002 in Cambodia, serving the needy again.
Thanks mom.
I have other memories, some funny, some sad, maybe some kooky or insignificant.
But mostly, they are all warm and fond and real and lasting. 2014 or 2025, my mom will always be there for me. She will always be remembered, living or beyond the veil.
She is my mom forever. And I will see her again.
Thanks for the letters, mom. Thanks for the memories. Thanks for being who you have been.
See you soon.
#1 Son
EMC (Eddie)
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