Sanddigger
New member
I'm lucky.
My entire family is lucky.
In the grief we feel today, through our tears, we need to count one very special blessing.
We had her for many, many years ... almost a century.
I'm 54 years old. My siblings are 78 & 75 respectively. We had our mother that long. Mom out-lived two husbands, six brothers and sisters and one of her children. We're all a bit stunned because I suppose we had come to believe she was indestructible, and she nearly was.
Mary Lipsky died early Thursday morning at the age of 96 in Washington, Pa. My mother was among the first generation of her family born in the U.S., the daughter of Ani and Steve Mesar, Croatian immigrants who were among the great wave of Europeans who came expecting a better life in America.
Just because it was better didn't mean it was easy. After her birth in 1913, there were two World Wars, a depression, several other wars of a less global nature, floods, blizzards, coal mining accidents and the usual happenstance of family: deaths, divorces, separations, estrangements and disease.
She was a coal miner's wife -- twice. She had four children, 13 grandchildren, dozens of great-grandchildren and Evan James Gamble, who came into the world one week short of his Great-Great Grandmother's 96th birthday.
Mom was old-school. There wasn't a dish she couldn't concoct (her stuffed cabbage is legendary in Western Pennsylvania) or an article of clothing she couldn't make or stitch. There's a statue of an 1840s-circa "Pioneer Woman" on U.S. 40 in Richeyville, Pa., near where the house in which she was born that pays homage to the loving, yet tough women of that era.
I always pictured my Mom
My entire family is lucky.
In the grief we feel today, through our tears, we need to count one very special blessing.
We had her for many, many years ... almost a century.
I'm 54 years old. My siblings are 78 & 75 respectively. We had our mother that long. Mom out-lived two husbands, six brothers and sisters and one of her children. We're all a bit stunned because I suppose we had come to believe she was indestructible, and she nearly was.
Mary Lipsky died early Thursday morning at the age of 96 in Washington, Pa. My mother was among the first generation of her family born in the U.S., the daughter of Ani and Steve Mesar, Croatian immigrants who were among the great wave of Europeans who came expecting a better life in America.
Just because it was better didn't mean it was easy. After her birth in 1913, there were two World Wars, a depression, several other wars of a less global nature, floods, blizzards, coal mining accidents and the usual happenstance of family: deaths, divorces, separations, estrangements and disease.
She was a coal miner's wife -- twice. She had four children, 13 grandchildren, dozens of great-grandchildren and Evan James Gamble, who came into the world one week short of his Great-Great Grandmother's 96th birthday.
Mom was old-school. There wasn't a dish she couldn't concoct (her stuffed cabbage is legendary in Western Pennsylvania) or an article of clothing she couldn't make or stitch. There's a statue of an 1840s-circa "Pioneer Woman" on U.S. 40 in Richeyville, Pa., near where the house in which she was born that pays homage to the loving, yet tough women of that era.
I always pictured my Mom
