December 25, 2023, marks 40 years since my mom passed away. Forty years is 14,600 days, and there hasn’t been one that I haven’t missed her. She was the sun, and I was lucky to orbit around her. I adored and loved her and still do. She taught my siblings and me that faith, family and friends will help you through the toughest moments in life. She was my first and best teacher of hope. But unfortunately, I was a bad student, so it has taken me these 40 years, and it will probably take some more, to understand all that she was trying to teach me.

Whole Life Ahead of Her

Mary Margarite Roche (Peggy) was born on August 4, 1930. She was the youngest of five girls. Like so many, her family was affected by the stock market crash. But I recall her saying that they always had a roof over their heads, food on the table and clothes on their backs. Her parents instilled in her a strong sense of faith that brought her comfort and strength throughout her life. She graduated college with a degree in nursing, one of the few professional fields open to women in the early 1950s, and she put that degree to good use helping and caring for many. One of my favorite pictures is of her wearing her nurse's cap with a smile on her face and her whole life ahead of her. 

My dad wanted to set her up with one of his friends, but he didn’t feel like he could do that without taking her out himself. He was somewhat appalled when he called to ask her out, and she was still in bed at 11 AM on a Saturday morning. He offered to call back, but her mom insisted on waking her up. After that first date, there would be no setting her up with his friend. They were two imperfect people who were perfect for each other. They got married on September 3, 1955.

According to my dad, my mom cried when they got back from their honeymoon, and she wasn’t pregnant. Those tears didn’t last long, though. My oldest sister, Mary Pat, was born July 2, 1956. Seven more kids followed in 13 years. I am the youngest. Sometimes I think she would have been better off if she’d had fewer kids. But she loved us and wouldn’t have had it any other way. My parents instilled in us a deep sense of faith and that Lee kids stick together. Both have served us well over these many years.

Made It Look Effortless

My parents lived their faith by caring for others. In addition to raising us, they cared for their aging parents, including moving my maternal grandmother into our house to provide hospice care for her. They volunteered at our schools and church, were always willing to help family, friends and strangers who needed it and navigated life’s ups and downs together. Our house was chaotic with a lot of kids and dogs (we had four at one time), but my parents made it look effortless, though I know it wasn’t.

My mom was diagnosed with cancer in the fall of 1975. She had colon cancer, but they caught it early and believed surgery would take care of it. I was six years old and not old enough to visit her room according to hospital rules, so I had to wait in the lobby for her to come down. On one occasion, my brother Jack, who was all for breaking the rules when he thought it was called for, snuck me and my brother, Tom, who is two years older, up to her room to see her. I remember sitting on her bed cuddling with her when a nurse walked in. I was terrified. The nurse checked a few things, smiled and left.

Once she got home, life went back to normal. We were all in school, so she went back to work, which I did not care for one bit. I told her as much on one occasion explaining that I wanted her to be home when I got home from school and be available to chaperone field trips. After hearing me out, she explained that her job helped pay our bills, which I could understand, because we always had all that we needed and much of what we wanted. But what she said next blew my mind - she really liked her job. She was a very good nurse and had found a job that allowed her to put her talents to use. It was the beginning of me understanding that her life didn’t entirely revolve around me and my siblings.

Hope For the Soul

She was cancer free for a few years. There were holidays, birthdays, graduations and a memorable 25th wedding anniversary with dinner at Jax Cafe and my older siblings giving my parents a trip to London and Paris. But in the summer of 1981, her cancer returned. We didn’t know it, but it was the beginning of the end. She had another surgery to remove it. But by the next summer, the cancer had spread to her liver, and I began to realize that it could actually kill her.

In 1983, I graduated 8th grade. I have a picture from it of me and my mom. It is the last picture of just the two of us. It sits on my dresser, and I look at it every day. I brought it to the hospital when each of our three kids was born and when we delivered a late miscarriage. That picture both comforts me and takes my breath away.  In it she looks so healthy and yet in six months she would be gone.

The doctors recommended she get a pump implanted that would give her low doses of chemotherapy to help slow the spread of the cancer. It was a pretty new thing, and it would add years to her life. We were all excited and hopeful. But my dad called the morning of her surgery. It was July, so I wasn’t in school. He broke the news that the surgery hadn’t gone the way we hoped it would. She was full of cancer. The pump would do no good. We would focus on keeping her comfortable for the time she had left. It was the most heartbroken I ever heard him.

She came home from the hospital and a hospital bed was set up in my parents’ bedroom. A new kind of chaos took over our house. There was an outpouring of kindness and care for her and our family. A steady stream of extended family and friends came to visit and care for her. She’d done so much for so many, they wanted to give back. But I hated it. I would come home from school and there were people in our house who, in my opinion, didn’t belong there. I wanted things to go back to the way they were. But those people gave her comfort and helped her see the good she had done in her life. 

In his book, The Anatomy of Hope, Dr. Jerome Groopman writes that when his terminal patients no longer had hope for their bodies, they had hope for their souls. That is what my mom had. She never asked why her or became angry. Her faith gave her the strength to go through the physical and emotional pain that the cancer caused. It gave her the strength to say goodbye to the people she loved most. It brought her comfort knowing that in death, she would be born into eternal life. She took her last breath and started her spiritual journey early in the morning on Christmas Day surrounded by all of us.

Just In A Different Way

In a conversation I had with her before she passed, I told her I couldn’t live without her. She responded by saying that my dad, sisters and brothers would take good care of me, which they have and still do and that she would continue to take care of me, just in a different way. After her passing, life went on, but it wasn’t easy. I was heartbroken, insecure and anxious, but I was lucky to be surrounded by my family who kept me from doing irreparable harm to myself by caring for and loving me and modeling that the best way to honor her was to keep living. There were more holidays, birthdays and graduations but also weddings and 17 grandchildren.  When my dad and brother Jack passed away, she was there to greet them.

She has cared for me by putting people in my life to help me on my journey. There are more than I can write about here, but they include my friend Molly. We’ve been friends since kindergarten. She has stuck by me through a lot, and I hope she always will.  Also, John Archabal was the best boss I will ever have, a mentor and a dear friend. In the 15 years we worked together, he saw me through many personal and professional ups and downs. He believed in me, nurtured my belief in myself and inspired me to be a better person.

The most important person she guided me to is Joe. In marrying him, I also won the mother-in-law lottery and Andy, Sam and Ellie got an awesome grandmother. My mom once told me that the best decision she ever made was to marry my dad. Not long before Joe and I got married, my dad told me the best decision he ever made was to marry her. I laughed as I told him she had said the same thing about him. His blue eyes lit up and a smile spread across his face as he said, “Of course she did!” He then put his hand over mine and said, “I hope you can say the same about Joe one day.” Almost 20 years in, and I can say without a doubt that marrying him was my best decision.

It is amazing to me that it has been 40 years since she began her spiritual journey. Some days it feels like she passed away only yesterday and other days it feels like it’s been 400 years. Time has taught me that she deserves my laughter as much as my tears. She is the reason I have Nat King Cole, The Mills Brothers, Barry Manilo and Eddy Arnold in my playlist. Her life and death have shaped who I am, and I have now outlived her. My hope is to use the years she never got to continue to care for others and try to do as much good in the world as I can, just like she did.

Note To Readers

Annual check ups, mammograms and colonoscopies are not fun, but they save lives. If you are overdue, please make an appointment.

Thank You

A big thank you to my sister-in-law, Julie. A few years back she took on the Herculean task of organizing and digitizing our family photos, which were in multiple boxes and albums.  I was able to include many of the pictures in this post as a result of her hard work.