MaryAnne
Ruth Beck Piekarski
December
13, 1932 – April 20, 2007
Last
year my sister asked why I haven't written about our Mom. I guess
there's a few reasons. The two main ones are: Which picture do I
use for her and the second she's my Mom, where do you start talking
about her?
I
guess I'll address the picture reason first. I really couldn't
decide on just one picture so – that's the reason for the slide
show, I think they tell her story better then I can. These are just
a few photographs of her, I hope everyone enjoys them. It was hard to
pick even these few; which ones to use which ones to leave out. I
picked these because, I think that these photographs really show
what she was like. She was out going and very popular, the
friends in the slide show were people she talked about often. One of
them – Nina, the y were life long friends.
This
is the second part. What do you say about your Mom? I mean
everybody's mom is special to them, but what makes them stand out?
Even though I didn't tell her enough, she was the most influential
person in my life. She “kissed my boo-boos”, she yelled at me
when I needed it, she was my friend, my Mom. Here's her story. Mom
was born during the great depression. Her dad always worked and they
had a home, but things were tight. She attended Messmer High School
in Milwaukee, where she was extremely popular and met her future
husband. When Mom and Dad first married Dad was a salesman, a lot of
his salary was commissions, so things were either very very good or
just OK. As a family we never went without anything we needed, but
Mom had a hard time keeping to a set budget. Early in their marriage
Dad had a job opportunity and moved his young family to Ohio, that's
the farthest
Mom had ever been from her family. One of my brothers was born
there. Things weren't what they thought they would be, so the family
moved back to Milwaukee. My sister and I were born in Milwaukee and
were the final additions to the family. Finally Dad got tired of
the selling game and wanted to do his dream job – being a
motel/resort owner in northern Wisconsin. So we packed up as a
family and move “up north”. The resort business didn't work out
for my parents and they ended up in the hotel management business for
awhile moved around Wisconsin and Minnesota a few times. The last
jobs they had before retirement was managing apartments. It was at
their last apartment complex, that Mom discovered she was ill. The
illness was pulmonary
hypertension
(abnormally high blood pressure in the arteries of the lungs. It
makes the right side of the heart need to work harder than normal.
Symptoms include shortness of breath or light-headedness during
activity). During the time Mom was sick, she never complained to us
kids or let on just how bad this illness made her feel. Like the
pictures I chose, she was always smiling.
