A Dish, A Towel and A Legacy of Love

Here mom, the young boy passed the dish and the towel to her. He had been playing outside and heard her calling for him. Tommy, Tommy please get me a dish and a towel...


I was that young boy of ten years of age. I remember standing in the doorway looking at her, having taken the few steps from where I had just left her side and was about to leave the room; what I saw was mom sitting there just staring into space and wiping that dish over and over and over. She did not speak, she was most certainly in another place, or at least she wanted to be...

You see on that particular day, mom was sitting up in the hospital bed they had brought in for her some years earlier. This was to make her more comfortable in-between trips to the Mayo clinic for more experimental treatments, or in-between another periodic emergency trip to the local hospital when things got bad enough. I remember it being warm outside, so this would have been the last Minnesota summer mom would be with us (she must have known the time was close). I don't remember how long I stood there watching her, but the memory of her repeated wiping of that dish, and the distant look in her eyes is etched into my mind in vivid fashion. Being the youngest of five, my siblings could help me fill in some of the blanks, but to the best of my memory, she became ill with her rare liver disease (Primary Billeriosis (spelling probably incorrect)) two years before I was born and was given something like 5 yrs to live. If this is accurate she blew the odds away! Today, she could have been put on a transplant list.

Hildegard was one 14 children who were first generation American and grew up in a poor immigrant family. If my details are correct, my grandpa and grandma had not met, until they arrived to their sponsored destination of Richardton, N.D., having just come from Ellis Island. Like so many others, they came to America during turbulent times in European history; originally from the Russian Ukraine, they had had migrated to Germany and then to the U.S. Our lineage shows that one of our relatives was a co-founder of the Ukrainian village of Sulz. The report states "The Sulz community was dissolved on Mar 15, 1944 and the almost 2000 inhabitants were resettled to the Warthegau, Poland (Warta District), by the German armed forces. In May of 1955 most of these people were then banished to Siberia by Russian authorities."Just as our ancestors were displaced from their homeland, mom was being displaced from the life she wanted to live!


Dear Mom,


The symbolism of you sitting there wiping that dish is a legacy of love that we will never forget! In my selfishness, I'd go back to that day and just sit by you and be with you, to hug you, to hold your hand or go get another dish and wipe it with you, but that was your moment of silence, your space... you wanted me to be outside having fun, this was your way...


This is my last memory of you mom, and I now enjoy rethinking the moment by not only giving you the dish and the towel, but doing so with a kiss and by hugging you, and telling you how much I love you. In my thoughts I say as I am looking into your eyes: "I’m going to go back out and play now mom, Ok? And if you need anything else, I will be right outside where I can hear you; and in a little while I'll come back in and check on you, and we can talk. I love you mom..." You'd want it that way...


Forever in our hearts,
Love, your tommy

Picture of my Mom w/ my sister sharon. This picture was taken several years before she got sick