Please don't send those sad, sappy notes to me about "my loss" or prayers. You can read those when her obituary is posted at the Marshfield (Wisconsin) News-Herald website soon.

My mother was conservative and religious but she didn't wear it on her sleeve like so many do. She had an adventurous spirit that I inherited and was the family communicator with beautiful handwriting  and an urge to travel, visit and keep in touch with friends and relatives.  She had a Facebook page under Nina Hull.  She wrote well a brief story about her childhood but asked that I not post it on the Internet. 

Mom was salutatorian of her small class of 11 or 12, while the valedictorian went on to be a captain of industry, she married right out of high school, had twins (Roger and I) and never got a chance for college.

To help to support our family, Mom worked as a cleaning lady, factory worker at a shoe factory, a waitress and, eventually, helping out in the local school lunch cafeteria. She retired at 57 with my father, a truck driver, at 62 and they had a long period of retirement on a small lake property in northern Wisconsin during the summer and a trailer park Winter Texan lifestyle in South Texas in the winter. 

As she aged, Mom eventually acquired many of the ailments that come with age, but kept up a lively Internet correspondence, first abandoning the old Royal typewriter she picked up for us in high school, and going to the computer and the Internet with some trepidation. She had to give up that correspondence gradually after 2011 with three mini strokes.  She had to give up driving and her small apartment that she had shared with Dad before he died of a superbug after having successful heart valve surgery in 2005.

In assisted living these last few years, Mom read heavily and watched golf and the Packers on television. She read everything my sister could bring to her from the library and all of my books before they were readily available right after publishing.  My best fan.

I went to see her when I attended my 50th high school reunion in 2011, right after I retired. As I went to leave, she hugged me and began to cry, saying, "I'll never see you again!" That turned out to be true. Although I tried in the last few years to organize another two caregiver car drive the 1200 miles to see her and other relatives and friends that are now gone, I was unable to get someone to go with me even with paying them handsomely. We kept in touch by her TTY phone right up until about a year ago when they changed her phone and she could no longer use it.

Recently, she has been suffering greatly and my sister had her start hospice about a month ago. I am not at all saddened by her death. I am happy that she is free from the pain she has been suffering, the loss of her independence, and the difficulty she had communicating after becoming deaf and with aphasia garbling her speech and writing when she tried to communicate to others.

A loving son,

Ron