I have never thought it was fair when I was asked who my heroes were and it was followed with the caveat that I could not say it was my parents.  How fair is that?  It’s like asking who the best 49ers quarterbacks of all-time are and adding that you can’t say Joe Montana or Steve Young. 

Of course my parents are my heroes, they always have been.  Growing up, they were my cheerleaders, my guidance, my strength, my moral compass, my everything. 

My mother strove to provide for my family the stable upbringing she was unable to have, herself.  While I have but one sister, Paula, and one brother, Scott, born of my parents, my mother had numerous other children and grandchildren.  My sister’s husband, Mark.  My fiancée, Stephanie.  My niece’s recently married husband, Nick.  My nephew’s fiancée, Tarla.  Alongside my niece Stacy, nephew Mark, and grand-niece Leah, we are all the children and grand-children of my parents.  Heaven help anyone who said otherwise.  While my mother was known for her gentile and kind heart, she was also one fiercely-protective “mama-bear” whose “cubs” you did not want to mess with.

Yet, my mother had a much different childhood, herself.  Born in the midst of the Great Depression, my mother was the youngest of two born to parents George and Julia, in  Detroit, Michigan.  The world welcomed baby Catherine Ann on Thursday, September 29, 1934.  Her brother, also named George, was 11 years her senior.  They were not particularly close, but only because of the significant age difference.  I never met her brother, though she said he liked sports like I do.  As a young girl, she went with her brother and father to see the Detroit Tigers play at the newly built Tiger Stadium, and saw the then new, original 6 NHL team, Detroit Red Wings play at the legendary Olympia Stadium.  Those are experiences that many hockey or baseball fans would envy. However, to a young Kathy, those trips simply meant she would be having some cracker jacks or peanuts.  The “game”?  BOR-ING!

My mom lost her own mother at the tender age of 7.  She said she was in school, and heard an ambulance scream past.  She got a horrible feeling in her gut, which was confirmed when she got home and found out that the ambulance was for her mother, who later passed away in the hospital.  Ironically, my mother passed less than a week after the 70th anniversary of her own mother’s passing on October 8.  Unfortunately, tragedy was nothing new to my mom’s maternal family.  Her mother, my maternal grandmother, barely knew her own parents.  My mom’s maternal grandmother, Catherine, died when Julia was just 5.  Julia lost her father, Stanislaus, to pneumonia less than a year later.

My mom’s father, whom she was extremely close to, remarried a couple of years later.  His new wife, Bernadine, had also recently lost her spouse.  She brought 4 young step-brothers into the equation.  It was Bernie who changed the spelling of my mom’s name to Kathyrn Anne.  Soon after the couple married, a half-sister was born.  Kitty, as her father called her, was no longer the “baby” in the family.  As her brother, George, headed off to World War II, she was now the one of the older children.  She told me about how poor her family was.  When the school year started, her parents were only able to afford one new outfit, meaning she would be wearing the same clothes and the same shoes, every day.  She said that she always had to come up with creative ways to make the outfit look different.  I would imagine that creativity helped her with her quilting, later in life

My mother was charged with helping to raising her siblings, despite being around the same age, which made it difficult for them to also think of her as a sister.  While there was no animosity between them, as adults, this dynamic also meant that they were not particularly close.  That’s an interesting thought, given how very tight-knit my family is, now.  It was a childhood full of responsibility and obligation, leaving very little time for her to simply be a child on her own.  As such, it was very important to her that she provided her children with the stable, nurturing, warm and loving environment that she didn’t have in her own life, without the full benefit of having the ability to learn those traits from her own mother.   

Around this time, the family had boarded the Union Pacific “City of Portland” and relocated to Oregon.  It was there, in elementary school, that she first met a young man by the name of Ronald Hensley.  They were in a class together, though not in the same grade.  Ron became friends with one of Kathy’s step-brothers, Roy, though he really knew all of the brothers.  It was around this time that she began to really establish a close relationship with God.   She became active in the church along with her best friend Janis.  She participated in the choir and helped organize mother-daughter events.   She also told me about how travelling preachers, like Billy Graham, inspired her.  She found comfort there.

When my parents were in high school, they got to know each other better, though they went to different high schools.  My mom also knew many of the girls my father had dated.  She told me a story one time about how she was on the bus with some of her girlfriends, and one of them was talking about my Dad and wasn’t sure if he would be asking her to a dance.  She said that she simply grinned to herself, because she knew that he wouldn’t be—because my dad had already asked her and she was going to be going with him.  It’s said that sometimes you just know when you’ve found the right person.  It only took my parents a few months to come to that conclusion, and they were married on Lincoln’s Birthday in 1954.  I love looking at their wedding picture.  My mom looks so beautiful and beaming, though you can kind of sense in the innocence of their youthful eyes that they were, perhaps, wondering what they were getting into.  However, I really love the smile on my grandfather’s face.  He was beaming.  His baby girl was marrying someone he enthusiastically approved of.  He was one proud papa, and had every reason to be.

My mom worked at a law firm every day after high school got out, taking the bus from northern to downtown Portland.  The firm handled a lot of divorce cases, so there was a little trepidation on her part about entering into marriage, herself.  After my parents married, my dad shipped off to the Korean war and my mom moved-in with Janis.  They remained friends, in sporadic contact, for the rest of her life. 

Silicon Valley did not exist at that point, and technology jobs were few and far-between in Portland.  So, my parents relocated to Sacramento, California and went to work for Aerojet General, together.  In 1962, they welcomed their first child, Paula.  A family tradition was also born, at the same time, as the first “4 generations picture” was taken with Paula and the paternal side of the family.  The mid-60s brought another move, to West San Jose, where they remained.  Scott was born in 1967, in the then-new Good Samaritan Hospital and I came along in 1969.  My parents had only planned on two, but God decided otherwise. 

I am an amalgamation of my parents.  My mom would be the first person to tell you that my sense of humor is all my father’s “fault”.  However, she would also talk about the incredible sense of humor her father had, and his gift for writing.  Among my features, I have my mother’s eyes and hair.  My mom found beauty in symmetry, as evidenced by the meticulousness of her quilts.  I, too, find beauty in symmetry.  (However, God showed us beauty and sweetness in asymmetry when were adopted by Kate, a calico cat)  One does not have to research into my family too far to tell that the technology gene definitely comes from my dad’s side of the family.  However, when I was going to college, I found that one particular class in business school was particularly easy.  In fact, it was probably the easiest “A” I ever got.  It was “Material Resource Planning”.  When I told my mom about it and how easy it was to me, her response was that “oh, MRP, that’s pretty much exactly what I do”.  The principles of the class came almost naturally to me, as apparently they came to her.

Soon after I was born, my family joined the Saratoga Federated Church family and, in 1974, moved into the current house.   My mom’s father passed away in February of 1976.  While I don’t remember much from that period of my life, I remember that day pretty well.  I didn’t understand what was going on, but I could tell things were not right.  My mom never really could tell me bad news, though.  I don’t know, I think it’s just a way parents can be sometimes with the youngest child.  We are always their “babies”.

Paula was married in 1981.  There are some really funny and touching stories from around the time period that Paula and Mark were dating and got married, but Paula and Mark are the ones that should be passing those on. 

Her first grandchild, Mark, was born in 1985.  Again, the family tradition “4 generations” picture was taken, but again, it was on my father’s side that we had the 4 generations.  She was ever the proud and doting grandmother.  It was about this time that she took up quilting.  She had tried macramé and crocheting, prior.  One of the afghans she made, during that time period, still adorns the family room, some 30+ years after it was made.  I was the lucky recipient of quilt #1.  I slept with it on my bed until it was literally falling apart and she made me replace it with a new one.  I didn’t want to, but she didn’t give me a choice.  Worn-out clothes and other washables had a way of disappearing when she wanted them to.

But, I need to stop here and talk about the quilts.  To me, they are her lasting legacy.  There’s a joke around the family that she was constantly trying to feed us and heat us.  Or, to her grandchildren, she was always trying to stuff them and cook them.  It’s a mother thing, I guess.  She always ran cold.  She was an “idle hands” type of person and quilting was a way to channel that energy.  She made countless quilts over the course of the next 20 years or so.  Each one was unique, each one was hand-sewn.  She meticulously cut each fabric swatch, sometimes multiple times, until it was cut perfectly.  If you were the recipient of one of her quilts, count yourself as lucky.  She viewed each one of them almost as if they were one of her children.  If she could have interviewed each recipient to ensure that the quilt would be going to a good home and would be well cared-for, she probably would have.  Yet, for many years, she would also donate some baby quilts to the handcrafter’s Christmas bazaar at the Church of the Ascension in Saratoga.  When she first moved to the area, she joined the bridge group at that church, as a social outlet, and remained active in the group right up until this spring.  Between me and Stephanie, I think we have 6 or so quilts in our house.  We sleep with some of them every night, and it is of great comfort to me to know that my mom will, in essence, be wrapping herself around us and keeping us warm and safe for many years to come.  Needless to say, our cats are also great fans of her quilting work.  They know quality when they find it.

Moving on, her second grandchild, Stacy, came along in 1988.  Stacy was born in the very wee hours of the morning at Los Gatos Community.  I remember it like it was yesterday.  Again, she became the doting and proud grandmother.  She loved babysitting both Mark and Stacy, and they were always good at helping her do things like determine things she wanted to buy for them.  She loved every minute of it.

Over this period, she was not only a very busy mother and grandmother, she was also in the midst of a professional career.  She worked at BTI, an early pioneer in computer timesharing.  After leaving there, she worked for companies such as 3DO, Apple, and of course, she worked at Saratoga Federated, where since 2002 she has been one of the main voices you would hear if you called.  If I close my eyes, I can still hear “Saratoga Federated, this is Kathy” in my head, like I’m hearing it, live.

Growing up, while we did occasionally take trips elsewhere, most of our family trips…and they were always family trips, were to either Disneyland or up to Portland.  In 2000, the family trip, for a change, was to Walt Disney World.  Little did we know how much my mom’s life would change when we got back.  After a simple, routine checkup, the doctor called her back in to discuss the results of her blood test.  I came home and saw notes scribbled on a piece of paper that said “chronic lymphocytic leukemia”.  None of us had ever heard of it, and the note was there so I could research it.  I didn’t realize that there even were different types of leukemia.  However, the doctor told her that it nothing to be overly concerned about, and that something else was far more likely to get to her than that particular type of leukemia was.  For the first few years, you would never know she had it.  In fact, she didn’t want you to know she had it.  She did not want people feeling sorry for her, because she felt that there were people who had to deal with far worse illnesses, with far worse treatments.  To know my mom is to know that is exactly how she is…don’t make a fuss over her.  Whenever she would call, she would always be concerned that she was interrupting something.  When she was going out to dinner, she would tell us how everyone was always invited, but that it was ok if we had other plans, and she never wanted anyone to feel left out.   It was very important to her that we always felt welcome.  She was the protective mother hen, always looking to protect her chicks, but cognizant that the we weren’t always going to be in the nest. 

Back in 1996, my parents discovered cruising.  They celebrated their 50th anniversary by going on a family cruise.  Many couples would want to spend their 50th alone, perhaps doing something romantic.  For my parents, though, the perfect 50th was spending it with the entire family.  That is just the way they are.  When we took a family cruise to the Mediterranean in 2006, though, that we could really see some of what the CLL was doing to her, as her stamina was really being affected.  She could barely make the walk from the Leaning Tower of Pisa back to the bus.  But it was somewhat due to the timing of her treatments, and we had always talked about going back, someday.  In the most recent cruise she went on, in June, the only port she was really able to get off of the ship at was Skagway, her favorite Alaskan city, and only had enough stamina to walk around the first block or so of the town.  We all were hoping her health would turn around, nobody wishing it more than her.  Yet, it wasn’t the leukemia, specifically, that was the problem.  It was, for the most part, in check.  It was ancillary infections that became the problem…that, and a nagging cough that she dealt with for about a year.

Mark’s daughter, Leah, was born in 2007.  Officially, my mom became a “great grandmother”, though it’s my feeling that she was one prior to that point, anyway, in a different respect.  She was very committed to Leah.  It was very important to her that Leah be raised in a very Christian environment.  She wanted to be very involved in raising and caring for Leah.  However, that the same time, her overall health was noticeably deteriorating.  The whole family could see it, but she did not want people worrying about her.  If you had a cold or even just an allergic flare-up, she was more concerned about that then she was with her own health.  Again, I think it’s a mother-thing.  2011 brought about a wedding, that of Stacy to Nick, just about a month before she passed.  Despite having been in the hospital, for a serious blood infection, just a couple of weeks prior, she wanted to be in good health for the wedding.  For the most part she was, and there was finally an opportunity to include her side of the family in a “4 generations” picture, one which I’m sure Leah, Stacy, and Paula will cherish for the rest of their lives.  Who would have guessed, then, that we would be here, now, so soon after?

My family received (what we believe were) several blessings right around the time she passed.  When we were all huddled outside of the ICU, reeling from our loss, someone happened to walk right by.  Seeing us, he asked us if there was anything he could do, and if he could pray with us.  It was the hospital chaplain, just doing his morning rounds.  Soon thereafter, a nursing assistant walked up.  She said that she had just lost her father a month before and wanted to talk with us a bit.  She was very comforting and just happened to be walking by at just the right time.  I also believe that God was very merciful in that he gave me the time to talk to her, hold her hand, kiss her, and tell her goodbye.  We all, thankfully, had the opportunity to tell her goodbye.  However, I would give anything to hear her voice, again, and talk with her.  That is what I miss the most, just sitting in her room or at the kitchen table, and just talking with her.

My mom was a person of very deep faith.  When I asked her, at one point, why she never wore a cross necklace or any religious jewelry, she said that she did not need a piece of jewelry to remind her of who she was.  While she openly said that she knew she was very loved and did not need to be constantly told she was loved, she also wasted no opportunity to remind us of how much she loved us.  She always made sure to give us Valentine’s cards, and take us out on our birthdays, even if the official family celebration was on a weekend before or after the actual date.  She always looked out for other people’s feelings.  She always tried to be supportive of whatever we wanted to do, even if she didn’t necessarily agree with it, although she always made her opinion very clear.  When Leah asked about putting sprinkles on Christmas cookies, she made batches of them so that Leah could decorate, despite promising all of us that she would take it easy and let us do the baking that year.  When she put her mind to doing something, nobody was going to change her mind.  That was my mom until the very end.  Despite having virtually no immune system to fight with, she was stubborn.  In her final hours, she fought all night to combat the infection that was slowly winning the battle.  In reality, I think God was trying to reason with her to come home.  She would not want us to be sad for her.  She would want us to know that she is with God.  Despite how much we wanted to keep her, she is in a better place, reunited with both her humanly father and her spiritual father.  While she didn’t ever really talk much about what she wanted, regarding a memorial, she did say that she just wanted a simple affair, with just some hymns being sung, and not to make a big fuss over her.  I’m sorry, mom.  You’re just going to have to forgive us for making a fuss over you, because you touched so many lives in so many ways.  However, despite dealing with the heartache and tears of your loss, we did our best to sing the hymns you loved so much and hopefully, we made you proud, once more..