In Memorium

My mother passed quietly in her sleep last night at the age of 91

Last night, we lost my mother, Barbara “Betty” Maria Ehrmann Russell Wood.

Betty was born in the Bavarian town of Ebrach in 1932 and spent her childhood in a country at war. While my Mom rarely talked about World War II, when she did, she described it through the eyes of a child.

She told me about the American pilot who was shot down and taken to the police station in Ebrach. Having never seen an American before, Betty and her siblings went to the station hoping to catch sight of him. And there he was, sitting outside smoking a cigarette with a couple of policemen. When Mom told me that story, she still expressed the childlike wonder she felt at seeing an American in real life.

My Mom met my father, Jim Russell, in 1956 when he was stationed with the US Army in Germany. When they decided to get married, Jim had to get written permission from his father before the Army would allow him to wed since he was under 21. I still have the notarized letter my grandfather sent to the Army. It is among the documents included in my father’s discharge papers.

Betty and Jim were married on January 8, 1957, and spent their honeymoon in Austria.

When they returned to the States later that year, Mom started working at Learbury Clothes in Syracuse, sewing sleeves onto dress shirts while Jim worked for the highway department.

After my brother was born in 1961, Jim and Betty purchased a plot of land from my grandfather and built a house which was finished by the time I came along in 1963. It is where we grew up and where my Mom lived until just a few months ago.

Less than four months after I was born, Jim died suddenly from a brain aneurysm at the age of 27.

Alone in a new country with two young children, Mom started selling Amway products and doing other odd jobs to make ends meet.

But since delivering Amway required a car, Betty had to learn to drive. So she prevailed on her sister-in-law, my Aunt Joy, to teach her.

As I was writing this, Joy, who now lives in Las Vegas, returned my earlier phone call, and mentioned teaching Mom to drive.

“I thought she was going to kill me,” Joy told me laughing.

The garage door on our house carried the scars of those driving lessons for years until it got replaced.

In April 1967, Betty married her second husband, Everett. We rented out the house and moved to Oklahoma for three years while Ev attended Oklahoma University in Norman. My most vivid memories of my Mom during the three years we were in OK are of her baking bread, making our Halloween costumes on her Singer, and wearing a bikini while sunbathing behind our apartment building.

In 1977, Mom and Ev decided to become foster parents. Our first foster kid, a 6-week-old baby girl, arrived in July 1977.

For more than 30 years, Betty and Ev took in foster children, usually infants and toddlers. Many of those children, including our first, have remained in contact with them all these years later.

About six or seven years ago, Betty began struggling with short-term memory problems. And more recently, her kidneys began to fail. But despite her frailties, Mom continued puttering in her many flower gardens, often scooting around on her ass to pull the weeds.

But earlier this year, Betty was hospitalized after a bout with COVID in January left her frail and underweight. Her kidneys were already failing her and she needed too much care to return home when she was discharged. So when she was well enough to leave the hospital, Mom was transferred to a nursing home where she remained until she passed last night.

But Mom’s journey on this earth isn’t quite over yet. She will now be heading to Upstate University Hospital since she decided a few years ago to donate her body to the medical school.

Twenty years ago I asked my Mom to read a draft of my first novel, “Sliding Home Feet First.” When she finished, Mom sat at the table weeping, which came as a surprise.

When I asked why she was crying, Mom said the book was so beautifully written and she had no idea where I learned to write like that. Then she laughed and added, “You didn’t get that from me.”

But I did.

I’ve gotten everything from my Mom. My stubbornness, my strength, my sense of humor – everything I am I owe to Mom.

She instilled in my brother and me a strong sense of right and wrong, unwavering honesty, and faith in God.

And as I talked and laughed with my Aunt Joy this morning, I was reminded of just how many lives Betty has touched over the years.

Betty will be missed, not just by her family, but by her spiritual family at the church she has attended for more than 60 years, the foster kids she raised, and pretty much everybody else who ever met her.

She may have shared my loathing of chit-chat, but wherever Betty went, she left an impression on the people who met her.

In a word, my Mom is beloved.

I am grieving today. We all are. It doesn’t matter that we knew Mom’s time here was coming to an end. Knowing that doesn’t stop us from feeling the loss.

At the same time, my grief is tinged with the joy of knowing that my Mom, my beautiful, witty, stubborn Mom is at peace in the loving hands of our Lord — her memories restored and her body whole.

As always, Mom, I love you. It has been the greatest gift and privilege to be your daughter.

I’ll see you again soon in Heaven.