Good-bye Mom

As my plane taxied toward takeoff in Denver last Sunday, I stared out the window through silent tears at the gleaming mountains my mother loved. I was returning home after her funeral. I recalled the many times I sat on that tarmac eager to get home, but grateful for the time I had spent with her and knowing I would be back soon.

Joanna Altenkamp Kush was the last of our family pioneers who came to America from Germany and founded dozens of families now prospering from shore to shore. She landed at Ellis Island on Aug. 1, 1926, barely 3 years old. A photograph of the Altenkamps some 77 Christmases ago hangs on my door. Joanna is a little girl with a new doll, snuggled against her proud father, a blacksmith enjoying the leisure of Christmas Day. The family is gathered around the tree, under which is a photograph of Joanna’s grandparents in Germany. I imagine my grandmother placing the picture there and decorating it with evergreen boughs. Leaving them behind was the greatest pain of her life, and she must have felt the loss deeply at Christmas.

My mother loved Christmas and created magic each year with a big, beautiful tree dwarfed by heaps of presents for nine children. One year, it nearly didn’t happen. She waited until the last moment, probably until payday, to order toys and clothes from the Sears catalog. They promised delivery by Christmas Eve, but as the day grew late and she placed desperate calls to Sears, she faced a nightmare of no Santa Claus. Hours after the children left cookies for Santa and went to bed, the truck finally arrived. I heard the commotion downstairs, my parents laughing and the driver booming “ho, ho, ho” as he hauled endless packages into the house.

Most of Joanna’s many hard times did not have such happy endings, but she remained optimistic. Struggling through a marriage with too little money and too much drinking, she took comfort in family celebrations, summer evenings, murder mysteries and watching her children craft fulfilling lives.

She crafted one of her own after she was widowed at 56 and we children were grown. She became international customer service representative for a computer company in Omaha and received her bachelor’s degree from Bellevue College at age 59. Soon thereafter, she moved back to Chicago to care for her declining mother and her housebound brother. But characteristically, she made the most of an emotionally and physically draining situation. She renewed a warm friendship with her Aunt Bridget, who was losing her memory but not her high spirits and taste for fun. And she forged a tight family circle with her daughter Judy, son-in-law and three of her 25 grandchildren.

Bridget and Judy’s family accompanied her to the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone National Park and Alaska. She returned to her birthplace in Germany with daughters Gerry and Jackie. But she went alone on her dream road trip when well into her 70s, driving 10,000 miles to visit all her children scattered from Washington to Massachusetts.

When Judy’s family moved to Colorado, Joanna joined them and renewed her childhood love for tap dancing. Her life was a whirl of family outings, dancing, and aerobics, but she relished quiet mornings and evenings with crossword puzzles, coffee, and books.

Those tranquil pursuits shaped her final two years, and she faced advancing cancer calmly and bravely. She died at home on December 18, 2007, with three of her children at her side. She was 84.

At her funeral, we placed her tap shoes on a brocade-covered pedestal beside a photo quilt Judy made for her 80th birthday. A recording of the Vienna Boys Choir singing her beloved “Stille Nacht” played softly.

Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh, Mom. Sleep in heavenly peace.

Read more about Joanna's passing on my niece Missy Keenan's blog, http://huggingthemidline.typepad.com/my_weblog/