We’re All Right, Mom

Her name was Gloria Mary Monica Smith Rigney, and she died thirty years ago today. She grew up in small towns all across Wisconsin; spent probably the two happiest years of her life in Washington, D.C., near the end of World War II (the era in which this photo was taken); and ended up in South Dakota because that’s where her parents had moved. She loved to read everything from classic novels to trashy confessional magazines. She loved her mom and her four kids more than she ever loved her husband, who turned out to be an alcoholic and went on to suffer from late onset paranoid schizophrenia.

It was seldom an easy life; she battled with depression and physical health issues. But she did the best she could, and I hope people will say the same of me after I’m gone.

The anniversary has me thinking about a lot of things:

• My brother and one of my sisters have now lived longer without a mom than with one, and my other sister will reach that mark by the end of the year.
• On May 6 of this year, I will have lived longer than Mom did.
• In the 10, 967 days since she died:
  • Dad, from whom she’d divorced, has died.
  • I’ve lived almost too many places to count, and I like to think she’d be thrilled the majority of them have been lived with one of my sisters just outside DC in Arlington. I divorced a guy whom she really liked but never cared for her, and eventually got back together with God. I write books I’m not sure she’d like, but she’d be too nice to tell me that.
  • My siblings all have relocated as well–we were living within ten miles of each other in the Chicago area when she died–and while we’ve had some rough patches, our relationships with each other are in good places now and I don’t think that will ever change. They’ve all loved and been loved, traveled, and generally enjoyed life in the intervening thirty years. One has a set of twenty-one-year-old twins, and it saddens me at times they never knew Mom.

Here’s to you, Gloria Mary Monica Smith Rigney. Just wanted to let you know the once-upon-a-time kids are all right–and we miss you.