Rita Mary Agnes
O’Donnell Fries
March 25, 1917 -
November 19, 1998
It is amazing how fast time passes. Can it really be 20 years since my mother’s
spirit left her body? I know for certain
that she left because I was lying in bed next to her at that very moment when
she was no longer in the physical structure that had held her since March 25th
1917.
Believe me dead is dead.
Her body was vacant, empty; there was no question about it, she was not
there anymore. When the hospice nurse
asked me to check for her pulse, I said “no”.
I knew without any doubt she was dead and more importantly I refused to
feel my dearly beloved Mother without a heartbeat. Since I was close beside her, I actually saw
her take her very last breath. I imagine
if this could be viewed without any emotion, it could be an interesting
phenomenon. People breathe in and breathe out so many
times over their lifetimes that we hardly notice this small physical activity. All
of a sudden after slowing down and coming in spurts, there is a moment when a
specific simple breath is the very last one.
My parents had shared
a bed together since October 19, 1940 and on this particular day, my Dad stood
at the foot of their bed anxiously willing his wife to continue breathing. When he saw that she exhaled and did not
inhale again, he basically screamed at me to shake her. He had been stimulating her breaths like
this for the last day or so and he felt if I shook her really hard, I could
keep her alive. I remember saying,
“Daddy, I can’t do that.” The cyanosis
had already worked itself half way up her body and it seemed cruel to insist
she keep breathing now.
So my mother died.
But honestly it is not her death, but her life that I want to remember
today.
I want people to know who Rita Mary Agnes (Agnes was the
name she chose for her Confirmation although I am not sure why – I think she
told me but I no longer remember) O’Donnell Fries was.
I especially want her
great-grandchildren to know a little bit about their Great- Grandmother since
this type of thing was always very important to my Mother.
So here are some
things that I remember and want to share about my Mom:
- she smiled a lot
- she cried a bit too.
- she made the best apple pie I ever ate.
- she had a crush on Johnny Ryan and took him to her High School Prom where she met her husband, my father, Charles A. Fries. (Charlie escorted his sister, Rosemary Fries, to the Prom and Rosemary was my Mom’s good friend so they sat together at the same table).
- my mother always let her kids build forts and other interesting things under the dining room table and in other places throughout the house. There would be sheets and blankets and pillows and upside down chairs all over the place. It would make a mess but our imaginations could run wild.
- she also allowed us to paint the windows with snow scenes at Christmas time. Was that white shoe polish we used?
- my mother didn’t care for housework, but she enjoyed cooking and entertaining.
- she always had room for one more at her table- always!
- she researched family history better than anyone else I ever knew.
- after High School my mother went to work at the Mohegan Company but once her firstborn son was born in 1943, she became a full time Stay-at -Home Mom.
- my Mother’s lost her fifth-born child, Joseph O’Donnell Fries, several hours after he was born ( December 11, 1956 ). She carried her baby for a full nine months and was never given the chance to see her son which only added to her horrendous heartbreak.
- she took some college courses later in life and I was amazed how brilliant she was when I read her research paper on Peyote.
- the parish priest once told us that my mother was more Catholic than the Pope. She held an office with the Christian Mother’s Association.
- luckily, my mother sang the praises of conjugal love. Otherwise, after the negative perceptions of sexuality absorbed during my years in Catholic School, I might never have gotten married. Thanks Mom for explaining things in a positive light.
- my Mother loved books and started a library at St. Michael the Archangel Church on Jerome Street in Brooklyn, NY.
- she loved the fact that her husband had a college education and worked in the Physics Department at Queens College and that they were exposed to highly educated, stimulating people.
- my mother wanted to go to Ireland but sadly, never got there.
- she wanted to drive but never took lessons.
- she loved being an O’Donnell and was disappointed that she had to give up her maiden name when she got married.
- She would get mad at my father but told me on several occasions that she looked at other women's husbands and quickly decided she liked the one she had the best. She said she wouldn’t trade her husband for any of the others.
- my mother loved children.
- she loved to sleep
- she loved ice cream and it was the last thing she ate before she died.
- she took art classes in her later years and wasn’t a bad artist.
- she has wrote realms of journals and copybooks filled with her thoughts and feelings and what she ate for dinner. I can’t throw them out.
- she was always planning outings and activities rather than planning for her death.
- she left this earth 20 years ago but somehow she isn’t really gone.
- when I am out shopping and I hear a woman say, “Mom”, I get jealous. I have the urge to go over to the younger woman and tell her how lucky she is, but I restrain myself.
