For my Mother, Love Ricky

Earlier this week, as we were making plans for my Mothers final journey here on earth, the topic of eulogies came up between my sister and me. She asked me if I would like to share some of my recollections of Mom, after the funeral mass. Being the oldest child in our household, even though I was scared to death to take on such an assignment, I could not see how I could say no. So now I found myself tasked with the job of deciding what to say about my mother.

For the next couple of days I heard and read a lot of great things being said about Mom. Everyone seemed to remember her as warm, loving, funny, and full of life. They all said she was a really terrific person with whom they shared many memorable moments. It really was a joy to hear everyone talk about my Mom. It was a particular joy to hear everyone say how much my Mom’s life touched their own.

So here I am, the night before the funeral, with a laptop perched on a rickety hotel room chair, trying to digest all that has been said about Mom. I thought I could take all these little tidbits, weave them together with my own recollections and turn them into an interesting story that would honor the memory of my mother. However, I found this a most difficult job.

I just do not seem to remember her that way. To me my Mom was a bear. When I was growing up, and even after I was grown, she was all business. She knew what she wanted, she knew what needed to be done. And for the most part, even though she was all alone with very little resources, she got the job done.

Now I am not saying she was not warm, loving, funny, and full of life, because in truth she was. What I am trying to say is when I remember my Mother I remember a women who was deeply in love with my father. I remember a women who while still in her early twenties, with three small children, had the man she adored yanked from her life. I remember a women who even though it took a little while to get back on track, worked hard to picked up the pieces. She then would go on to do the best she could to make a good life for these children who she love with all her heart. This was no small feat, so if she did not have time to always show us funny and full of life, I think we understood it was because she was just too busy keeping a roof over our heads, food on the table and making sure we had the best quality of life she could provide. She was not perfect and she did have her faults, but ultimately everything she did was out of love for ALL her children.

And if you take the time to think about you have to admit she did a darn good job. Along with happy childhood memories we all received a good education and a strong Catholic faith. If you take a look at my brothers and sisters you will most likely admit they have all gone on to become loving, successful and admirable people. This was not an accident, it is came about because my mother understood what she had to do to lay the foundation upon which their lives were to grow.


Maybe before I close I could share a couple of wonderful and possibly life changing memories I hold of my Mom. The first of which happened when I could not have been more than seven or eight years of age. My brother and I were taken to the hospital to have our tonsils removed. In those days you checked into the hospital the night before with the operation. After we were all bedded down with promises of lots of ice cream the next day, the nurses came into the room and told my mom she would have to leave. My brother and I both panicked. The nurse said parents were not allowed to spend the night with their children, that was the nurses job. I am not really exactly sure how it happen, but I do know my mom made it perfectly clear, if she left, so did we. Well needless to say, we stayed until our operation the next day, and so did Mom. With this obviously brave expression of a mothers love, an otherwise traumatic event was turned into a fond memory.

One last memory I have of an expression of my mothers love was to come much later in my life. It was to happen after I met the women who was to become my wife and the mother of my children.

When my wife and I first decided to marry it seemed as if the whole world was against us. My wife’s family would rather have had me shot them let us marry. I was also pretty sure when I told mom we planned to marry she was going to be against us too. Never the less, I went to her and said I was in love and I wanted to get married. I told my future in laws were going to try and do what ever they could to stop the wedding, and I did not know what to do. My mom hesitated about thirty seconds, and with the understanding and compassion that only a mother can muster, the next words out of her mouth were, “I don’t know what your going to do, but I am going to get Debbie and start planning a wedding.”

On that day I learned that not only did my mom love me, but she also was willing and capable of allowing her love to grow and encompass the person whom I had chosen to love as well.

So to wrap this up everyone is right, Mom was warm, loving, funny, and full of life, but she was also hard working, brave, compassionate, understanding and full of love.

Photo Slide Show of Anita

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From Bruce Brown (nephew)

My Aunt Anita was always a very special person.

I was really sad when I learned she had passed away. I remember a time when I was about eight years old she took me to the store with her and bought me the book Tom Sawyer. She was trying to encourage me to read. It worked because it was such a good book I read it right away.

I am living in Florida now and about a year ago my fiance and I took a trip just so I could see the Mississippi river. After reading the book i always wanted to see it.

Another time she bought me and her daughter Mindie each a whale tooth. I loved it. So did my grandparents (Luis and Anne) because they said to put it on their window sill on the 'porch' and let them keep it for me.

It rested there for years. After my grandfather died I looked for it on the porch and it was no longer there. I still have the memory of Aunt Anita giving it to me. Even though I haven't been able to see her for several years I miss her.

She was one of a kind.

Bruce Brown
April 22, 2008

From Tony Granados (Uncle)

I don’t know if I had sent this photo to either of you but assuming that I had not, here it is.

It is a shot of Anita and me in about 1930. Obviously, it was a special occasion because I didn’t usually wear a white suit, special occasion or not.

It also means that my mother was still alive or I wouldn’t look so well groomed, socks, tie, combed hair and all. Check the family website to see how I looked a year after my Mother’s death.

Mothers sure make a difference.

My guess is that this special occasion was either Juan’s or Beano’s First Holy Communion Day. If that is lace that I see on the left side of the photograph, then it was Beano’s First Communion Day.

This photo was taken at Uncle Luis’ home on Riverdale Road when Uncle Luis lived as a neighbor of Tom and Rose Kane.

I hope this photo adds, in a small way, to your Remembrance Book.

Love,
Uncle Tony
April 19, 2008

From Robin Flanary (niece)

Here is a story I would like to share about Aunt Anita.

She came to visit one day when I was about 8 years old. I had gone in to take a shower. Everyone was sitting in the living room chatting and catching up on things. I returned to the room, my hair dripping wet and full of soap. I asked if I could finish rinsing my hair in the kitchen sink because the shower was all out of hot water.

Aunt Anita laughed so hard she nearly fell off the couch. I didn't get it. I had no idea how the hot water system worked at that age. So, laughing a little myself because she had that 'cackle' kind of laugh, I asked her what was funny about that.

She replied "I can't believe you'd say something so STUPID." She laughed for a while about it and I guess it was pretty silly.

What I remember most was how much fun it was when she would come to visit. She was always in a happy mood and there were a lot of laughs.

I also remember being very young and wondering if she was ever gonna get any taller. It never happened.

Lots of love,
Robin

Robin Flanary
April 19, 2008

From Mary Baldwin (cousin)

Memories of times with Anita

Anita and I were close as cousins and best friends could be during our childhood. Although Sonny was more my age, he was a boy and that made a difference.

Momma and Daddy went frequently to the Waters house, and to Abuelo’s house where they lived during those years. Visiting relatives did not cost anything during the depression so our parents went back and forth frequently for social relaxation.

We played games (do you remember Jacks?) and cards (Rummy and Fish.) Hide and seek, oh anything that we felt like, when we were told,“GO OUTSIDE AND PLAY!!”

In the 1930’s, Outside was a safe place where you can have lots of good times, talk little girl talk, walk the neighborhood, and generally stay busy until the next meal or time to go home. When I visited her at Abuelo’s, Anita and I would do her chores which were to make the beds and dump Abuelo’s chamber pot! Our Grandfather would not use the inside bathroom during the night like the rest of the family.

On the other hand, Abuelo made us happy with his Calentito’s, fried dough laid out on brown paper to absorb the oil, which we ate dipped in powdered sugar. We went to the same school, had the same problems growing up as all the other girls in school. Anita had a more friends than I, because she was pretty, not as shy and withdrawn as I.

Always cheerful, always looking at the world with a sarcastic and humorous eye, she had different reactions than I to our world. Our family moved to the next town and we were sent to different high schools. Then we grew into our teens, friends changed and we didn’t see a lot of each other any more.

Anita was at one time in our teen years, afflicted with a mysterious sickness that Momma wouldn’t discuss, she was just Gone. and when she came back she wasn’t so easy to be open with. I guess I was just too timid.

Much, much later I found out that she had been sent away to have a baby, her first child. Decades later he found his biological mother and was reunited with his full siblings. At that time, it was simply not talked about because the family would be disgraced if it were known.

The world has so changed!! We grew apart, although she and I shared a bond of early friendship. Anita married Preston, had her children and they moved to Greenbelt. I lived in Riverdale with Tim and my children, each family struggling to make ends meet. Then the world caved in for Anita with the sudden accidental death of her husband in a fire. She was in shock for weeks and could not talk. It was horrible!!

Uncle Louie took a strong part in the lives of the Garrison children, Mindy came to her, and her life went on as a single mom until many years later she met another man whom she married. Our worlds did not interlock after that. I will always remember her as a happy child and teen.

Mary Baldwin
April 18, 2008

From Anita Stevens (niece)

The inside cover of my baby book reads "To Anita Maria at her Christening 3/17/63 From Anita I."

As a child, I loved opening the book and seeing Aunt Anita's handwriting, feeling special that I had been named after her. I have that same feeling today, 45 years later.

In addition to the baby book, Aunt Anita gave me a dress set and a pair of shoes when I was born. When I was in elementary school, she gave me a smock to wear when I painted in art class. I loved the smock and can still picture it today.

In the early 1980's, I experienced a very emotional time in my life and Aunt Anita suggested I come visit her for a few days at her home in Riverdale. I accepted her invitation and I'm so glad I did. She took me out to dinner and said things to make me feel better. My mother, Chi Chi, (Aunt Anita's sister) also has a gift of comforting others and her children have depended on her guidance and counseling all of their lives.

I always enjoyed sitting near Aunt Anita when she came to visit our family. I considered her a "cool" person and liked listening to what she had to say. She and my mother traveled together during the 90's and had great fun together.I have fond memories of visiting Aunt Anita and my cousins in the "pink" house in Riverdale. When I think of her now, I see her pretty smile.

Anita Stevens
04/18/08

From Franny (brother)

I remember when Anita came to live with us after Preston was killed. I was working for a sheet metal company. Each day Anita would fix my lunch. The sandwiches were always very big with extra fixings as only she could make and included a dessert of some kind. She would put them in my metal lunch pail with a drink in the thermos.

At the time, I was working in the shop alone fabricating duct work and fittings for the next day’s jobs. About 10 o’clock I would start thinking about what she had made me, thus many times I couldn’t wait until 12 and would dig into my lunch much earlier.

Franny.
April 18, 2008

Anita

Anita

I’m blessed to have known Granny throughout my lifetime. I’ll always remember her in the context of our huge Granados family. I remember seeing her at every Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving, and family reunion of my childhood. She was there when I received my childhood sacraments in the Church. She remembered every birthday with a card, usually including a silly joke.

She loved to learn. I remember how she won every game of Trivial Pursuit she played at family gatherings. I remember my other grandmother calling her every Sunday to get the answers to the crossword puzzle in the Saturday Post. Granny always knew the answers.

I remember her love of music. Her passion for music was obvious on entering her home. Who else would keep a piano in her living room, piles of sheet music on her shelves, fiddles on the walls, and an organ in her basement? As a teenager, I learned to play the piano in part to honor our family tradition of female musicians.

Granny seemed to know so much about our country. She told me about her travels to all 50 states. She brought things back from her trips. I remember she had a pair of earrings that were made of tiny tubes filled with layers of colored sand from the Painted Dessert. How amazing it was to think of her driving around Riverdale with part of a national treasure hanging from her earlobes! Once, she told me there were no trees in Texas. Even though I knew that was her idea of a joke, I was determined to prove her wrong. I remember driving all the way through Texas after graduating from college, just so I could call Granny to tell her I found more than one tree there. She just laughed. I’ve only been to 33 states now, but someday I hope to catch up to her.

I remember her loud laugh and her sense of humor. Granny knew how to make me laugh even when the situation was serious. Her sense of humor remained strong even during the last six years of her life. I remember visiting her at Holy Cross. She had the best room in the place as she was surrounded by walls covered with framed photographs of her children, grandchildren, and great grand children. Her regular Nursing Aids knew her well and called her ‘Anita’. Some of them were originally from Africa, and Granny loved to hear stories about their homeland. One of her favorite aids, Malik, jokingly told her he was an African Prince. She thought that was hilarious and often referred to him as ‘the Prince’ in her sarcastic voice. Throughout her life, she used humor to connect with people, to entertain, and to deal with life’s hardships.

In her own way, Granny helped make me the person I am today. She taught me to love to learn. She taught me to love music. She taught me about the beauty of this country. And she taught me the value of laughter.

Meghan Buckley Kostkowski

I was over 50 when I met my mother for the first time. She was was sick then and hard to get to know.

I wish we had met when she was young and vibant, because that's how her friends and relatives are remembering her.

It would have been nice if she had chosen to tell me about my father.

Rest in peace Anita.

John

Remembering Anita

I have sixty eight years worth of memories of my sister Anita. I can't remember a time she wasn't there for me. We had very long phone conversations mostly about something I needed advice on. She wasn't one to suggest what I should do, she would just flat out say "Do it this way". For the past several years I haven't been able to have those conversations and really miss talking with her. After my husband died in 1989 Anita and I would go to Ocean City frequently since two of her children lived close by. We always stayed in the best hotels and would have a lot of fun together. We didn't care if it was summer or winter we went whenever we wanted to. We spent a lot of time laughing.
Soon after I was married Anita asked my husband Buzz and I to come and stay at her house to care for her children while she went on a trip. That sounded great to us since at that time we were living with my parents (Luis and Anne). One of the nights Buzz and I invited another couple over to play cards. During the evening one of them put a cigarette burn on a very nice cobblers bench she had. We panicked. Not wanting her to find out, we took it and had it refinished. It was back to being perfect to the tune of forty dollars. That was a lot of money to us in 1959. The day she came back her and I were sitting at her dining table and she accidently burned it with her cigarette. I said "Oh no! Look at your pretty table!" She said "That's not a problem, I can just rub it lightly with steel wool and it will look fine" She got the steel wool and fixed it in about thirty seconds. I had to come clean about her cobblers bench. Of course she laughed and laughed and then she laughed some more. I miss my sister, the best friend I've ever had. But I have years of memories to comfort me.
Chichi

I sent this to ChiChi for her memory book but I thought I'd share it with the rest of the family as well.

To Grandmother’s House We Go!
Sarah Garrison

As far back as I can remember, I can remember Granny. And much like the Grannies in the fairy tails she read to me as a child, the beginning of each of our stories usually starts with a long trip to her house. No, these trips did not begin on foot and wind over the river and through the woods. They were instead marked by long journeys, crammed in the back seat of my parents old Subaru Station Wagon with my brother and sister, watching the endless white dotted line of the highway roll by at sixty miles per hour. These trips were eternal as a child. They were hot, and terrible, and usually interspersed with attempts by my siblings to squish me between their two bodies so hard, my eyes would bulge out of my head. Somehow though, I always looked forward to these trips, and that was because I knew a visit to Granny’s house was at the end.

Granny’s was a magical place. All of the best toys were kept there—stacks of them on the bookshelves in her living room—the kind of toys my parents didn’t buy me because they knew I’d either break them or use them to clobber my sister. My favorite was the Jacob’s Ladder. It was simple really, a few wooden blocks woven together so when you turned one the rest went toppling over each other. For those of you lucky enough to have visited a Mexican toy shop, you’ll know what I’m talking about. For the others, chalk it up to the mystique of Granny.

She had other wonderful curiosities too—marionettes in top hats and bow ties that danced around like magicians when you pulled their strings, heavy antique cast iron piggy banks that did something marvelous and mechanical when you fed them a dime, Chinese Ben Wa balls that sounded like fairies when you rolled them in your hands, and an assortment of many other astonishing things I was usually distracted from by one of Granny’s delicious diabetic vanilla wafers. She kept these in a jar on the table in her eat-in kitchen, and at six I had no idea there was really no sugar in them. But they tasted like sugar and that was all that was important.

Once the grown-ups had started talking, I could always retreat to the basement. Today, I would probably find it excruciatingly dark and creepy, but in a child’s eyes it was fantastic. It had a great smell. Only Granny’s basement smelled like that. It was a smell like the inside of an antique shop or a guest room no one ever goes into. And it was full of toys! Looking back on it, this was probably a collection of old playthings accumulated over generations, but all I knew was this was stuff I didn’t have at home.

Aside from the giant organ which could be banged upon to my heart’s content (because it was never plugged in and consequently made no noise), there was a great heaping black leather trunk at the foot of the stairs. This, was always the best hiding spot because it was always completely empty, except for one small gold charm in the shape of a rotary telephone. In the corner of the basement was a giant foot-ball shaped toy chest, chalked full of all of the best novelties you would never buy your child today. There were real wooden Likin-Logs, and doll babies with one eye, solid metal Tonka trucks—the kind you could throw at your siblings if you really wanted it to hurt, and undoubtedly there would always be some toy I had forgotten to bring home on my last visit.

This is the kind of thing you could depend on Granny for. She was the keeper of toys. Toys of all people—children and grandchildren alike—and when you had gotten your fill there’d be a diabetic wafer waiting for you in the kitchen. Ah, to go back to those days—the days of cookie-breath and grass-stains and playing in Granny’s basement. All I can hope for now, is that one day I’ll too have a jar full of sugar-free cookies and cellar full of toys. Maybe I’ll even go out and buy a black leather trunk, just incase my grandchildren want to jump in.

My Mother - "Anita"

It is sad when any mother dies - sad for the loss of her presence, the loss of that special love only a mother gives, and for the loss of connection to her generation and extended family.

I am sad that I will never be able to ask my mother any more questions... questions that would link me and my children to her past. I now become the "last link" for my children to their legacy. Whatever she gave me, will have to be enough now.

The best memories I have of my mother are all linked to music and the songs she would sing - The Three Little Kittens, Lord Randall, Little Miss Muffet and many Stephen Foster songs. As a child she read to me from the children's collections of Eugene Fields and Robert Louis Stevenson, challenging me to memorize My Shadow and Little Boy Blue.

I learned from my mother to see the other dimension in music and literature that is not visible to the five senses... particularly the ephemeral, magical moments we experience hearing music, poetry, and good stories.

This is a worthy gift to impart to a child, for it creates a unique, shared bond between child and teacher - a bond that thrives long after the teacher departs, and offers a means of comfort when the ache of the teacher's absence tugs at us.

I hope my mother will be remembered for the things she could see beyond the visible world, and that those things are real and alive to her now.

Mindie Burgoyne
4-21-08