Remembering mom 12/16/1950- 07/07/2007

This is the text from the eulogy that I wrote to remember my mom... Feel free to make any comments you like as long as they are appropriate:

I would like to take a moment today to honor my mother, Janet Baldwin. She was a grandma, a friend, and an amazing mom to both my brother and me. Of all the things my mom instilled within me throughout the years, the most significant to me was my mom’s unwavering dedication and commitment to Matt and me. She was faced with many difficult challenges in her life, yet she worked two and sometimes three or more jobs to make sure that my brother and I had everything that we needed and a whole lot of the things that we wanted as well.

Throughout all of the musical and athletic adventures that I engaged in throughout high school and college, mom drove endless miles to every concert, game, and event that she could possibly make it to, albeit often times just a little bit late. She not only carted me everywhere under the sun, but she also provided taxi services for my friends a great deal of the time as well. In her patented 69 Chevy Nova that could be seen from far away, she drove my friends and me everywhere. The most memorable times for me included the times that we would stop for “gas” which was my code word for I’m a teenager and therefore starving so she would stop and get a selection of snacks for my friends’ and my ravenous teenage appetites. Even more memorable were the times in the middle of winter that she drove my friends and I home. My mom would always wear a big thick parka like the Eskimos with the fur around the hood and everything. That should have been enough, but she faithfully made sure that no one would ever be too cold and kept the heat pouring out of the vents of that Nova without any consideration for my friends that would begin shedding their clothing piece by piece. Impervious to the volcanic heat within the vehicle in her Eskimo parka, she would drop my friends off one by one. And at each stop they would collect their pile of clothing now with nothing left on other than a pair of shorts and make a mad dash into their homes through the sub-zero temperatures of the NY winter.

It is no secret that Mom ran late a good deal of the time. Most of the time it wasn’t that big of a deal, however I can clearly remember my wedding day when it was time for the ceremony to begin, mom wasn’t there. So we waited a few moments and she still wasn’t there. So the music played, and played and played some more, until an hour later after many uncomfortable looks and bits of restlessness within the seats of the church, and many tears from my longsuffering bride to be, mom arrived and lit the candle with my mother-in-law to start the ceremony. I am not sure that most people realized what the hold up was, but everyone of my friends assured me that it was the longest wedding they had been to, EVER.

Mom had incredible patience. She worked countless hours helping my brother with his homework. Sometimes when he wanted it, and other times when he didn’t. I can remember being filled with rage the way that he would talk to her when he was in elementary school, when she was just trying to help, and when I would try to intervene, she would calmly assure me that everything was just fine, and it always was. Mom tolerated the regular squabbling that siblings always endure and never seemed to complain that much about it ever.

Mom worked at Sampo as long as I can remember. I don’t know how many split rings she assembled over the years, but it is way more than I care to know. I remember one Christmas when she brought a whole bunch of swivels home, I tried to help her for a little bit. She finished a hundred in the time that it took me to do ten, and I remember thinking of the amazing patience that it must have required to do that day after day. My mom’s warm smile greeted people at Hotel Moore in their dining room for well over twenty years. As the legend is told, Rob asked her one fateful year long ago to help out for a couple of weeks for bullheads. She has worked nearly every Friday since then till just a few months ago. That is just another small example of her dedication and commitment to hard work and being a friend.

Mom loved her children and grandchildren faithfully. She always enjoyed Christmas and some of my fondest memories include decorating the Christmas tree with her throughout the years. She loved angels and always made sure that we put them at the very top of the tree. She always wanted a daughter of her own and always treated my wife Joy like that. I can remember the delight my mom had shopping for clothes for her, caring for Joy in the way that a mom does for her daughter. She loved babies and always adored my sons Aaron and Peter every time she got to see them. She dutifully spoiled them as every grandparent does. My son Aaron, who just turned 9 yesterday, wrote a small tribute to her that I would like to share at this time:

My grandma was very nice to me. She always had fun with me, and I always had fun with her. I believe that even though I didn't get to be with her a lot of the time, I still love her and I really wish she hadn't died. It is a hard time for me right now. Even though it may be hard, I know that she will still be in my memories. Of all I can remember we had really good times together. She always gave me lots of presents for Christmas and my birthday. I thought that was special. She let me watch Nickelodeon and fed me macaroni and cheese and root beer for breakfast. She drove me to the fair and I fell asleep on the way. When I woke up, I didn’t know where we were. She surprised me with the Boonville Fair! She let me ride the rides I wanted at the fair. I remember not too long ago, when she was well, she always had a smile on her face, and had good things in store. I love my grandma so much. -Aaron


As you can all see my mom lived a life that I hope that all of you will remember fondly and smile on with joy as we remember her today. I thank you, Mom, for always encouraging me in every thing that I did and showing me that anything was possible that I put my mind to. The success I have experienced and the person that I am today would not have been possible without your unfailing love, compassion and encouragement that you gave each day of your life. I thank each of you for joining me in honoring her memory today.

That concludes what I read on that day. I hope that you are able to see the profound impact that she had on my life. Her memory lives on and I am thankful for her tireless effort, determination, and friendship that I have enjoyed for so many years.

New Beginnings

It has been dreadfully long since my last post... I did not intend for it to be that way, however. I took off on the race that began with Joy departing in February. But perhaps like the runner that embarks on a marathon without sufficient training, I ventured out on this journey ill prepared for the mountains that I would face along the way. I will fast forward and issue the Reader's Digest version of the last couple of months events.

Picking up with my last post, my grandma passed away in early March. She was very much a second mother to me. She was always the one that took care of my brother and I while my mom worked so hard taking care of us all so that we could get by. My grandma instilled some of my early desires to work hard, and my love for history, current events, political and social issues came from her many stories about the Depression, World War II and whatever happened to be on the news while we were eating meals together. I have early memories when I was 3 or 4 years old of my grandma telling me stories in the evening, which always kept alive my boyish excitement in magical things, like what it would be like to fly, or the mystery of Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. My grandma was a special woman and though her mental state deteriorated over the last several years, she always greeted me with a warm smile and a hug that never let me forget the huge investment that she poured into me over the years and the special place that always had in her life. My family didn't have a funeral for her, the plan was to have a memorial in the spring and plant a tree in her remembrance. That is what we did for my grandfather about 9 years ago and my grandma wanted the same thing.

However, the events that would follow over the course of the next several weeks and months, would prove to be an even bigger uphill battle than I could have ever anticipated. My mom had been feeling sick since August of 2006. She went to many doctor's appointments, but there was nothing medically that ever came to light. She began to lose weight and energy and found herself able to eat less and less. She was tested for digestive disorders, bacterial and fungal infections, heavy metal toxicity and carbon monoxide exposure. The list could go on and on, but she was eventually diagnosed with idiopathic gastroparesis. For those other than the few doctor friends I have, basically her digestive system stopped working for unknown reasons. I am certain that it was no coincidence that her health made a turn for the worse after my grandma passed away. It was apparent that depression had set in, and that just made all of her physical symptoms worse. I convinced my mom that staying in NY wasn't good for her anymore and suggested that she should come and live with me. We made plans that at the end of the school year in May that she would come move in with the boys and me.

Unfortunately that plan was never realized. Toward the end of April, my mom had to stop working; she no longer had the energy to make it through an 8 hour workday. She still went to the doctor regularly, but no new information was realized. I went to NY during Easter to visit and help my brother go through all of the things that my grandma had hoarded and cluttered the house with. There was enough garbage to fill two 40 yard roll away dumpsters. It was difficult and painful to see my mom as sick as she was and continuing to get only worse. We talked about how she only had less than two months until she could enjoy the change of scenery, warmer weather, and the company of myself and her grandsons. That seemed to help a lot. I was going through a lot of other changes during this time as well. I had made up my mind that I was going to leave Louisiana at the end of the school year and move back to El Paso for the duration of time that Joy was in Iraq. Louisiana was very isolated and most of my closer friends that could help me with the boys had already moved away before Joy was deployed. So I was working on packing up my house, in the midst of teaching 7-9th grade English every day.

As the end of the school year closed in, my mom's condition grew worse. About the middle of May, my mom was hospitalized for malnutrition. She could no longer eat enough at any one time to get the nutrients she needed. If she ate more than a bite or two she threw it back up again. In fact, once she started intravenous nutrition she would still throw up even though nothing was passing through her stomach. School ended, but there was no way that my mom could travel in her weakened state. Her doctor was trying to come up with a long term plan to get her well, but in the interim she had to rely on the hospital to maintain a very substandard status quo. As I was traveling from Louisiana to El Paso, with most of my belongings, my two children and my dog, my aunt called and told me that my mom might not make it. She had a high fever and had contracted MRSA, which is a dangerous, drug resistant bacteria. I couldn't stop moving midstream, so I finished my drive to El Paso, unloaded my belongings , and I was on a plane to Virginia to drop of my sons at my in-laws, and was immediately on my way to NY after that.

Things were a little more hopeful for a while. I got to spend a precious 8 or 9 days with my mom in the hospital. The infection went away, although she still was being plagued by some less serious ones, which held up some procedures that were going to try to get to the bottom of what was wrong with her. But she was identified as a candidate for a new procedure to help her digestion. She was going to be considered for a "gastric pacemaker," a newly approved device that helped about 80% of people that had gone through the clinical trials. My mom lit up every time I came in the room, and we had many great conversations about all kinds of things. She told me stories about my dad's side of the family and we reminisced about many good times in the past and talked about great things that we could do in the future.

As the week wore on, things became not quite as good. She still felt terrible and as I was getting ready to leave my mom gave me something that made my heart sink. She gave me a ring that my dad had given her right before I was born. It was made of opals. It was an unusual ring, but she told me that she wanted me to have it now because no one else had seen it before and that if it was read in the will no one would no what she was talking about. When I was getting ready to leave to go back to Texas, my mom looked at me and cried. She held me tight and her body language told me everything she couldn't. She was telling me goodbye. She didn't think she would ever see me again.

Her intuition didn't prove to be far off. She was denied acceptance into the medical program in NYC for the gastric pacemaker because she refused to complete a psychological evaluation. Within two weeks of me returning to Texas, the doctors were finally able to do a couple of procedures including a biopsy of a lymph node near her lungs that had looked bad in an X-ray. The results came back positive for small cell carcinoma. Small cell carcinoma is a particularly nasty cancer, that has a low rate of survival for those people that are healthy to begin with. My mom wasn't healthy though and 10 months after she first felt sick now the doctors had something concrete to work with. But it proved to be too much too late. She started chemotherapy right away and it helped initially. Her digestive system even jumpstarted for a couple of days and she could eat regularly again. But after about a week, she was back on the downhill slope. The doctor noticed some odd things with her eyes and after an evaluation by the neurologist, it was determined that the cancer had spread to her brain.

I received word that my mom's passing was imminent. Leaving at this time was difficult. Aaron's birthday was the 9th of July and I knew that leaving would mean that he wouldn't have either parent there for him on his birthday. I notified the Red Cross and they sent Joy home on emergency leave. We arrived in the evening of the 6th of July. My mom had been told that we were coming and that seemed to be the only thing the she was holding on for. Nothing could have prepared me for the way that my mom looked that evening. Her face was sunken, her speech was nearly unintelligible, and she was hallucinating about being at work and trying to take care of the other people that were in the room. The mom that I remembered was already on her way out, although she did recognize me and gave me a hug and shed some tears for a moment. She was exhausted and in a great deal of pain. She had weighed over 200 pounds for as long as I could remember before she got sick, and now she lay there broken and frail and barely weighed over 100 pounds. That night they gave her morphine which she had resisted until I got there. They told us to expect that she wouldn't wake up again. She was finally comfortable and drifted off to sleep. She stopped breathing early the next morning on July 7th.

July 7th, or 07/07/07, captivated a lot of people's interest because of its inherent implication of good luck. I wasn't sure that I felt very lucky on that day, however in retrospect I do have a bit of a reflection. While countless people rushed to get married on that day, or go to a casino, or do whatever else their hearts directed them to do in the name of "good luck," my mom got released from the burden of this life and the prison that her body had become. In my life I have seen God do amazing healing of people that were in worse shape than my mom. But more often than not, He doesn't. I don't pretend to know why, but I do know that while that my faith pales in comparison with the likes of Job, I still don't blame God in the midst of loss. And even though, I would much rather have my mom here today, I know that her healing came from being able to go to a better place and be with Him.

We had a memorial service for my mom the next week. She had wanted to donate her body to science like both my grandma and grandpa had done, but unfortunately it wasn't possible because she contracted MRSA again before she died. It is highly contagious and dangerous, so the medical center would not take her. She didn't want a big funeral or burial or anything, so she was cremated. My childhood friend Woodly, who recently took over as the pastor of Redeeming Love Fellowship, was gracious and agreed to do his first funeral. I told him that at least if he messed it up, that he wouldn't have to worry about offending the family. It was some much needed comic relief in the midst of everything. The memorial also honored my grandmother, because with my mom's illness we were never able to do anything for her like we had intended. I wrote a eulogy to honor my mom's memory. She was a pillar of strength to me and I believe that the words that I shared did a good job of remembering her. I will share those words with you in my next post to commemorate the wonderful woman that she was. The service was outstanding, and I am thankful to those around me that made it as great a success that a loss could ever be.

I returned to El Paso, and Joy got to spend about a week with the boys before returning to Iraq. Life has gone forward, albeit a little slowly. I hope to be able to continue with updates through this blog. In some ways I regret not being stronger and able to chronicle my thoughts and feelings more regularly throughout this time. I started this blog with the intention of providing hope and insight, along with some much needed humor to others facing difficult trials. Somewhere along the way in the last couple of months I lost my inspiration and vision for that and I wasn't sure that I had much to offer or give. I am not sure if this post will provide any of those things that I set out to do. It will however provide some much needed catharsis and resolution of my own feelings and grief over this period. Thank you to my friends and family that made this difficult time more bearable. Especially the Vidas which have poured their their lives back into us, especially my boys. They have watched them countless times, and gave Aaron the best birthday party a boy could hope for.

So now it is a time of new beginnings. I have started a new chapter that doesn't look like anything that I have ever experienced before. It is like the type of book that you certainly can't discern from its cover, and each page has twists and turns that leave you eager, yet cautious of what lies on each subsequent page. Stay tuned for the story as it unfolds...