As my dad does not have many more days left and my mother has long since passed, I would like to write a little something about them both on this occasion of Mothers Day. In this first picture is my mother and father, more than 20 years before they were to conceive [of] me, at some dinner for their motorcycle club (my dad owned an Indian). Im guessing hes 19 or 20 here and shes 17 or 18. She was born in 1926 in Bosquine, New Hampshire and had four siblings. Two who I never met. Her older sister, April, died of tuberculosis when she was 17 and her brother Ben left New Hampshire when he was relatively young and by the time I was born, had lost contact with the family. Some say my mother was born of an affair but I have no idea to the details of that. I never knew either of her parents. My mother died at the age of 52 in 1978. I was very close to her and took on her qualities much more than my fathers. My dad, Edward Alfred Allard, was born in Concord, New Hampshire in 1924. The Allards came from Quebec and he only spoke French until the age of 5. His father died when he was 2 and his mother remarried a man who had six children. his mother already had six, so it was a double Brady Bunch scenario at his home. The family grew even more as the new couple added five children of their own to the clan. My father spoke often of growing up during the Great Depression and having to stand in line for bread or scraping mold off of it and then eating it. He had dyslexia and not having learned English until after 5, ended up being more or less illiterate for the rest of his life. He did not do well in school and despite that told me he always knew inside that he wasnt no dummy. After my mother died, he had me type up the spelling of 1-100, so he could write out checks from wherever he was from day-to-day. For at least 30 years, he kept it in his wallet. As a child, he acted up -- did many pranks, even on cops -- and went to remand school where he became a logger in the Northern woods and a little later discovered he had skills as a carpenter. He had quit school in the 4th grade but learned some carpentry and electronics in the remand school. He also sang in the glee club where he met Bette Davis (see pic). He has been a rebel in the true sense of the word in all his 90 years and counting on this planet. My father was a very outgoing, loving and gregarious man. He did well in sales, selling Amway and later becoming a television repairman. Going house to house, he met many women that way and gradually wooed my mother during his visits to Bosquine. I never saw him fear anyone in my entire life. My mother, on the other hand, was full of insecurities -- thats likely why she was drawn to him, although she was intellectually his superior. Together, my mom and dad had five children. I was the fourth and the oldest boy. My three sisters, Patty, Linda and Lorna were 19, 17 and 14 when I was born. My brother Kevin was born 15 months after me. When my sisters were little, the family moved to Connecticut, where my brother and I were born and grew up. My dad was a very hard worker and saved a lot of money, especially after being a foreman at a factory bakery for 30 years. My mother also had a good-paying job --inspecting airplane parts for passenger and military jets. They both were very generous when my brother and I grew up and we were given anything we wanted. My father says I was conceived because there was a snowstorm, the electricity was out, there was nothing else to do and the drug stores were all closed. My brother was apparently conceived to keep me company, and that he has for all my life. When I was young my dad smoked and drank regularly, while my mom didnt. It therefore always puzzled him why she was the one who died young and not him. He took her death very hard and although he has remarried, still talks about her with tears in his eyes today, 36 years after her death. When I was 5, I saw a advertisement on TV with John Wayne warning about smoking and lung cancer. Upon hearing this, I got my brother to join me throwing our dads cigarettes into the woods. After we did it for the second or third time, he finally quit. I told my father John Wayne told me to do it and he was touched. It didnt hurt that he loved John Wayne and thought he was a true American hero. My mother called me from the hospital the night before she died. Christmas was coming and she wanted to buy my brother and I a pinball machine. She wept a little and said that she didnt want anything bad to happen to her boys. I said nothing would happen and that we would see her the next day but she died only 12 hours later. Some months earlier, ravaged by cancer, she asked me to never forget her and I dont think a day has gone by in my life that i have. I still remember playing scrabble and rummy with her, watching movies together and all the many vacations we had as a family. Once she said to me, I think you should think about becoming a vegetarian. She used to get Prevention Magazine and read up on all the current medical studies of the day that pointed toward a vegetarian diet as being healthier. It took me until I was 16, but I finally did that also. Like my dad she was also very loving and was the center of our family and extended family. When she was alive, all our cousins and aunts and uncles would come over for the holidays. After she died, our family naturally shrunk. I still love and miss her to this day and sometimes wonder how our lives would have been different had she lived. Of course, we all die when our times come. We just have to learn to appreciate what we have while its still here and appreciate the spirit that is left with us after our loved ones move on in their soul journeys.
Posted on: Mon, 12 May 2014 00:21:50 +0000
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