Mother

What a strange few weeks it's been. When i returned from fabulous Italy. My Mom was failing and RI was in disaster mode so I returned to Maine instead of trying to get to Warwick with I95 closed. Planning my visit last Saturday when my brother Steve called to say she had passed away quietly and peacefully in the nursing home. So we had her funeral last Tuesday and buried her with my dad at Conn. Veteran's cemetery.

It was a lovely spring day instead of the absolute frigid arctic day when I was last there in Jan. 2000.Drove back last Wednesday when is was 91 degrees in RI and a brief walk on Narragansett Beach was a pure delight.So my trip is to Italy is forever connected to my Mom. We had lived in Naples in 1954 and I have memories of pine nuts and spaghetti suppers and going to the market to get bread. Now I have more gastronomic visions from Italy intertwined with thoughts of Sunday dinners with mashed potatoes and gravy at home.

Flo Osborne and Margaret McIntee in Boston. My Mom was living the single life, working as an X-Ray technician.

and

Karen, Mom and Steve in Naples, Italy on the balcony of our apartment. My dad was stationed there in 1954.

Mom and I at  my cousin Jeanine's wedding (1977) in Waterloo, Iowa where my mother was born and grew up.