Rita Cecelia Illes was seven years old in 1929, and the ensuing Great Depression shaped her life, as did her marvelous Atkinson family. She grew up during the horrible 1930’s, matured and got married during the tough years of WWII, and gave birth to me in 1947.
She was, and always will be, my Mom.
When, later in time, I asked her about living through the Depression, she would simply answer “Well, we just did what we had to do”.
Little Emmy-Lou and Rita (age 7)
Is this a biography, an epitaph, an obituary? I don’t know, and the descriptor is not important — it’s simply about her, and her life and times.
EARLY TIMES
Mom worked through the Depression, and through the war years, in what would be her life-long, typically stoic fashion. Her family was growing up along with her, and although they remained close, they of course made their own lives, marrying (and some divorcing too) along the way. Mom met Paul Illes during the war, and they got married in late 1945.
I was born in 1947, and I hardly knew my father, for he was not often at home. Mom thought it was best for kids to have a father, and she tried for several years to “make it work”, but not successfully at all.
Rita, age 19 (1941)
Mom’s childhood years were, sadly, good training for what was ahead. My father abandoned us for the second time (permanently) when I was only five years old, and Mom found herself with two kids to raise on her own. If you think being a single mother is tough these days, just imagine how it was in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Yet, with only a high-school education, Mom knuckled down and, characteristically, did what had to be done.
Despite living on a low-income shoestring budget, Mom had to put us in private school, so that we would have day-care until she got out of work. Then, of course, she’d pick us up, take us home, do dinner and all the other household chores, etc. etc. You know, that single-mother stuff. Endless. Her only complaint ever, was the amount of nagging needed to get us to do our chores — the perennial gripe of all parents since the dawn of time.
On weekends, we would almost always go to an evening drive-in movie. For a few bucks, we’d get a newsreel, three or four cartoons, and two full-length feature movies. It was one of the dearest experiences of my childhood, and to this day, I find something deeply special about watching motion pictures. Mom, of course, after a long week of working and taking care of the little ones, would often drift off to sleep. No matter — we’d wake her up for the good parts, no problem.
During the summers, Mom’s family was wonderfully generous and gracious, and would take us two brat kids for weeks or months, just to give Mom a break. (Actually, I was really the bratty one; Susan was a cupcake compared to me. But even with my obnoxiousness, my aunts and uncles still took us in — even cheerfully at times.)
Throughout my entire childhood, Mom was, to put it simply, just THERE, doing what she had to do. I had never any doubt in my mind, at any moment of my life, that my Mom was standing by for me, whatever I needed and whenever I needed it. I never, ever doubted her. She had become that rare person that provides the deep, loving care of a mother, along with the strong, safe protection of a father. A tall order, but she did it, in spades.
In 1957, my sister Susan was seven years old, and was diagnosed with type-1 diabetes. Fortunately, insulin was available in that era, and Mom and Susan embarked on a life-long saga of managing the disease. Susan had what was known as “brittle” diabetes, with wild blood-sugar swings, and she would easily slip into diabetic coma or insulin shock, requiring instant response from my Mom. Again, through it all, Mom was THERE, never shirking or wailing or bemoaning her plight.
MIDDLE YEARS
Mom was a fantastic worker, diligent and detailed and responsible. Her employers loved her work ethic, and her compensation gradually improved above the near-poverty level that we grew up with.
Rita, age 41 (1963)
Combined with her natural frugality and her rising income, Mom was able to buy a house, and even help me with the costs of college. With my father never contributing a dime, this was truly an accomplishment. (Although she never bad-mouthed him, my father took little interest in either Susan or me, and he was barely 1% of our lives, if that.)
Susan and I both left home at the tender ages of 17, to go our separate ways. We were never very close, and we lived far apart both physically and emotionally. But Mom felt a strong responsibility toward Susan, especially as Susan became increasingly irresponsible with her disease.
Susan and Greg, late ’60’s
By 1980 or so, Susan had gone through some drastic life experiences and was having more and more trouble with her diabetes. At that point, Mom was living in southern California, and Susan was up in Washington state. Finally, Mom decided to rip up stakes and move nearer to Susan so that she could keep a closer watch on her daughter.
Thus began almost 30 years of seven-day-a-week care-taking. Susan’s bohemian life-style was not the best for her disease, but it was far better than where her life had been before. Mom’s distance, and focus on Susan, left a bit of a gap between Mom and me. There were months or even years sometimes between when we’d see each other.
Mom and Susan were tightly bonded, both by circumstance and character. They would spend hours and hours ‘financially planning’ their days together — what time did the day-old bread store open? When did the dented-can store get new shipments? Where was that gas station with the rock-bottom pricing, and what stores were nearby? OK, let’s go through the paper and clip coupons before we go shopping. Susan was living on $400 a month; Mom was living, and saving money, on $1200. In 2006, not in 1940. Mom was the most frugal person I think I’ve ever known, but she was also classy, and never looked shabby or worn. Sure, she’d buy clothes at the thrift store, but they were always clean and pressed.
Susan’s life-style plagued Mom. Sometimes, Susan’s ratty old trailer, squirreled away in the woods on an Indian reservation, would literally bring Mom to tears — but it’s what Susan wanted, and again, Mom was THERE for her. I remember, whenever I visited, Mom setting her alarm to wake up at 1:00AM. Every day of her life, she’d call Susan to check her blood-sugar and take some food or insulin, as needed.
LATER YEARS
Besides caring for Susan, Mom found other things to fill her life. She retired in 1990 (age 68), and began her “second career” of volunteer work, which gave her immense satisfaction for the rest of her life.
She found a cute little “cottage” near the San Juan islands, and fell in love with the rich green-ness of Washington’s coastal climate. The cloudy overcast weather never bothered her in the slightest. Whenever I’d go up there to see her, she’d constantly point out the various plants and flowers, telling me every single name for scores of familiar specimens (all of which I promptly forgot).
In the late 1990’s, my flying activity (and fluency) allowed me to fly my own plane up to Washington for more frequent visits, and Mom and I “got to know each other” again. They were some really good years.
Mom and me, Camano Island airport (2001)
Mom had a close call in the late 1990’s. After 50 years of smoking, although not contracting cancer or some other dreadful malady, she had developed COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder). During one dreadful summer, her pleural cavity started filling with fluid (pleural effusion), and she had to undergo a pleurodesis to stop the problem. It was nip-and-tuck for a couple of weeks, but she pulled out of it and went back to her normal life. Tough as nails, always.
Mom was always a stickler for precision and accuracy. Her handwriting was impeccable, and her work on documentation and other tasks was exacting. So much so, in fact, that she sometimes got on the nerves of people who were, shall we say, given to greater laxity. One time in Washington, it really got out of hand. Mom was telling the gal in charge exactly how things should be done, and that gal was pushing back, and Mom was pushing back harder. Finally, the gal gave Mom notice — she actually fired the most diligent, hard-working volunteer on her staff. Mom was surprised, astounded, and not a little hurt. But she still found plenty to do, and plenty of other people to appreciate her.
By the early 2000’s, despite Mom’s best efforts, Susan’s health steadily worsened. The type-1 diabetes is very hard on the body, and in that era, type-1 diabetics rarely lived much into their sixties.
After a long, miserable decline, with loss of eyesight, kidneys, all fingers and thumbs and a few toes, Susan’s body finally gave up completely in 2008 (age 58). Mom was, understandably, devastated. Losing her daughter was the only thing that Mom ever lamented out loud.
But finally, Mom could consider leaving Washington. Although she loved the place, her house, and the luxuriant green surroundings, she sorely missed her family, most of which was still living the San Francisco Bay area.
Mom tried to sell her home, but you can imagine the trouble she had with that in the wake of the 2008 melt-down. There were simply no takers at any price. Finally, in 2011, she managed to rent out her house, and we moved her down to a nice little one-bedroom apartment in Santa Clara.
RECENT TIMES
Mom’s relocation was just in time to celebrate her 90th birthday at our home with the whole family. It was truly a grand occasion, one which we will all remember fondly. I had at that time a 70-yard-long zipline in our back yard, and Mom was hoisted into the sling by several of us. She swooped down out of the trees with the most blissful expression on her face, at total peace with the world whizzing past her.
Mom, age 90 (2012)
It didn’t take Mom long, after moving into Valley Villages, to ‘make her mark’ again in volunteer work. Within a few months, she was the Secretary of the Resident’s Council (including taking and publishing minutes on her computer), and deeply involved in managing the Library and the Flea Market activities. Of course, since she could drive, she’d always be available to give rides to those not quite so lucky.
In between working at her “jobs”, she’d participate in excursions and other activities, up to and including doing a Caribbean Cruise with Karin and me in 2016. She would drive her little Subaru up into the mountains to visit us, because she very much enjoyed driving, and she deeply loved spending an afternoon looking out over the forest behind our home.
Mom made friends quickly, and everyone who met her always remarked on two characteristics: first, she sure didn’t look 95 years old (more like 70); and second, dang was she feisty, smart and humorous, a real pleasure to be around.
When moving down from Washington, Karin and I had helped her with décor and furniture selection (Hello IKEA!), and of course she kept her apartment neat as a pin. Her place was often used to ‘show’ prospective residents what a single-bedroom unit looked like (something that gave her great pride).
Mom, the Librarian (2016)
LAST DAYS
One evening in July, 2017, just before her 95th birthday, Mom bent over to straighten a small carpet at the foot of her easy chair. She lost her balance and fell forward into the chair. When she tried to stand up, the chair swiveled away from her, and she fell into it a second time.
Typical of Mom, she didn’t mention the incident for a couple of days, and when she told us about it, she said only that it “wasn’t comfortable to take a deep breath”. We told her to go to Kaiser (the hospital) right away, and she reluctantly agreed. A few days later, she was x-rayed and diagnosed with two cracked ribs. The Kaiser doctor instructed her to “breathe deep” now and then, and sent her home.
What nobody knew yet was that she was developing a system-wide infection, including pneumonia and a blood staph infection (bacteremia). Only one day after her doctor’s visit, she became very weak, with very shallow breathing. We took her to the ER, and it turned out to be “just in time”. Her system crashed, with a fever, low BP, and high pulse rate with atrial fibrillation. She nearly passed away that very night.
After that, Mom never even came close to recovering. We had hopes for a little while, remembering the pleurodesis, but the infections had simply ravaged her body. She already had the COPD, and the infections decimated her kidneys and heart valves, leaving her with unrecoverable congestive heart failure (CHF).
She spent over two months in hospital and nursing care, with three teams of doctors doing everything they could think of to try to strike a balance of stability. But in the end, there was just too much damage to fix, and she was released into Assisted Living under Hospice.
Even then, we thought she’d still have some time to enjoy her new surroundings. At Regency Evergreen, it’s a lot like living in a luxury hotel, but with 24/7 medical care. The staff was kind and caring beyond expectations, and they took care of her like Royalty, meeting her every need with zero complaint. We visited her almost every day.
But Mom’s incredible vitality and tenacity were no longer to be found. After only three weeks out of the hospital, she went to bed one evening and, after a long and peaceful night’s sleep, Mom stopped breathing the next morning.
The day before, we had been relaxing out on the patio, enjoying the creek-side foliage and the birds flitting through the trees and bushes. It came time to go, and as I left, I told her “I love you, Mom”. She smiled and replied “I love you too, Son”. They were the last words we spoke to each other.
EPILOG — True to her simple and humble ways, Mom requested that no funeral or special fuss be made. She just wanted a plain cremation, nothing fancy or elaborate. This little article is all that I’m doing, in respect for her wishes. This year, at our family holiday gathering, I’m sure we’ll have some words and tears for her, but most of all some deep gladness for having had her in our lives.
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