Old Memory

 

We lost mom this past week.  Betty Lou Fox Laughlin died 11-April-2016 at the age of 82, after a long struggle with Alzheimer's.  For many of you, I may never have mentioned her in conversation, it was just too difficult to do so.

 

I wrote the post below back in 2013, a time when she was more aware than she had been in the last couple of years.  It's a terrible, terrible thing to lose one's memories, to be unable to recall the names even of close family members.  On the other hand, it also removed the memory of her greatest loss and sorrow, the passing of my sister, Karen, in 1983.  A sword with two edges.  I know it was very difficult for my boys, knowing that she could no longer remember them.  But we must take some solace in knowing that the dying of those other, much more difficult memories, brought her well deserved peace.

 

Y'all take care,

  -  Mark

 

Old Memory

 

My mother is almost 80 years old now.  In Assisted Living, her memory is fading.  But certain things, old memories, still make her smile.  In her condition, it’s the recent memories that go first.  Over time, she seems to recall less and less, with the oldest memories accessible longer.

She and her friend, Nancy, grew up in a small (tiny) West Texas town, Breckenridge.  It started as a farming community in the 1870’s and rose to a population of around 3,000.  For a brief time in the early 1920’s, it was a bustling Oil Field Boom Town, the kind you see in movies with wooden derricks everywhere, tents, make-shift saloons, and a population of over 30,000 !  But that had all calmed down before mom was born, and the population hasn’t been more than around 5,000 since.

Since its West Texas, lots of folks had horses, including mom and Nancy.  From the time they were in Middle School, they would take off riding all over town, out into the country, and just about wherever they pleased, so long as they were home before dark.  You would never let young girls do that today, but that was a long time ago, and since it was a small town, there were people they knew just about anywhere they went, so they just rode and rode.

As their horses walked along, of course the girls talked, they joked and made up stories.  One story especially sticks with them, the one in which they were actually a pair of notorious Russian Spies, named Olga and Volga.  Nancy wrote to me not long after mom had moved into Assisted Living, checking up on her.  When I mentioned the letter to mom, she laughed, and her voice took on a comical Russian accent, talking the way Olga and Volga did as they rode.

Later, Nancy called me, again to see how mom was doing.  I stopped her, abruptly, and asked “Can I ask you…which one were you ?  Olga or Volga ?”  A few seconds of silence followed as her mind raced back 60+ years, searching for that reference.  Then she let out a laugh and said, “well, now that I think about it, I’m not really sure which one I was !”  I later asked mom, and she didn’t exactly remember either, but it really didn’t seem to matter.  They both smile and laugh as they recall those days.

Nowadays, when Nancy e-mails me to check up on mom, she signs her e-mail “- Volga.”

-          Mark (son of “Olga”) (I think)

 

 Betty Lou Fox (Laughlin)

Holding the white Breckenridge flag, on the right. (c. 1948)

 15-October-1933  --  11-April-2016