By SJ Otto
My mother, Joan
Otto, died in December of 2012. I usually write obituaries on friends and family
members when they die. Maybe I forgot or I just can’t find it. But I’ve decided
to write about her now.
I was always
very close to my mother. There are few people I was closer to than her. Before
she died I had a hard time imagining a world without her. But people get old and
parents die. A year before she died, she deteriorated, both physically and
mentally. When she finally died, I could hardly recognize her. She died of old
age, pure and simple.
I had a lot in
common with my mom. She was somewhat liberal. Not so much about free sexuality
or using drugs, but she was against prejudism and racism. She taught me and my brothers to
treat black folks with respect and equality. She was against any kind of intolerance or
racism. In later years my mom said “I may have over done it with teaching you tolerance.”
That is because I occasionally made friends with some hard core street people
or lumpen proletariats. One thing I learned from my mom was that standing up
for what a person believes is right is a real important personal value.
My mom was a
life long Democrat. She was a left of center liberal. She was not as far to the
left as I was. While she believed in equality for all people, she did not share
my beliefs on sex. She said that my dad and she were virgins when they got
married. I had no reason to doubt that. She and my dad never smoked marijuana,
as I used to years ago. My mom often
listened to the latest rock music, at least some of it. She wasn’t close
minded. She didn’t like the Beatles at first. But over time she changed here
mind and like some of their music. She was like that with a lot of new music
and musicians.
She was also a
devout Catholic. She told me she regretted that none of her sons followed in
their parents footsteps when it came to religion. I could understand how she
felt, but we all had to decide what we believed in and for most of us, it just
wasn’t the Catholic religion. My dad died a few years ago and now Catholicism
has simply died out in our family. Some of us chose no religion, others found
different religions. One branch of our family is Baptist. They are definitely Christians
and not Catholic. I consider myself an Epicurean. I got tired of telling people
I was an agnostic or atheist. People kept saying “so you don’t believe in
ANYTHING.” I believe in a lot of things. God and the afterlife just aren’t
among those things.
My mom tried
her hand at several types of artistic pass times. She spent a year as a writer,
about a year as a painter (she painted a portrait of my dad and a painting of
all of us when we went fishing one year.) She spent a year as an actor. She
worked for several years as a sales lady at Sears. If there is one thing she
was really good at it was being a mom. She raised six boys and did a great job
at it. When her and my dad got married, that was a time in the 1950s when a
wife was expected to stay home and keep the house clean and raise the kids. She
was a bit neurotic
over her house-work. People did not understand how serious she was over her
house-work. But my dad and us kids had to live with that.
But my mom was a person I often came to when I had a problem or needed
advice. She always seemed to have an insight into things. She was a very
spiritual person and I often enjoyed discussing things with her.
I miss my mom.
Every person’s parents are different. Some guys are more close to their dads or
their moms. I was very close to my mom and I miss her a lot. But life moves on,
parents die and the rest of us live on until it is our turn to die. I have a
son and I hope I can be as much of an inspiration to him as my mother was to
me.
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