My Mother Died Today

I sadly report that my mother, Violet Marshall Funston, age 95, passed away this morning in Northfield, Minnesota. If you have read my March 9 post, you know that she was a remarkable woman for her time and place, and seeing her suffering in her later years has been painful for everyone who knew her--and she had a lot of friends.

I regret that Mother and I were not especially close. I fulfilled one of her dreams by having a long, successful teaching career and achieving financial independence, but I did not live up to her ideal of the perfect housekeeper and cook, wife, mother, and grandmother. I think that rather late in life, she learned to accept me as I am. She did not retain her reading ability long enough to read my book, or probably to recognize that it existed, but I think she would have been proud.

Our relationship was problematic, as mother-daughter relationships often are, but we loved each other. She awakened my imagination, believed in college education for her children even when she had to take a job to finance it, and borrowed money to make my first European trip happen. Ever the self-sacrificing mother, she traveled abroad only once, much later, when she went to England with me. We both enjoyed the trip very much.

I will remember my mother not as the very ill nursing home patient she eventually became, but as the smart, attractive, enthusiastic, friendly person she once was. Goodbye, Mother.

(Note: I shall be driving to Minnesota for a few days, so there will be no new posts here for a while. I'll be back.)

Copyright 2007 by Marlys Marshall Styne
Photo: Mother on her 94th birthday, with my brother John and me