Erika

by Lee Gomer

Her name was Erika (pronounced Eh-ree’-ka), my mother. It seems to be the “thing” for young people to be ashamed of, or to ridicule, their parents. It was not that way for me. I had no dad to grow up with; he died shortly before my ninth birthday. But I was proud of, and took pride in, my mother. I was never ashamed of her – that is one of the things that I don’t have to look back on with shame, as some adults surely must.

She was an almost unschooled (three grades) Swedish immigrant, who spoke in broken English, when she wasn’t speaking Swedish. She wiped a tear from her eye when her beloved John died, not openly crying though her heart was so broken that she never considered another man, though she was a very hale and hearty middle-age. And she lived for more than thirty years after his death. To her, there was no man who lived, nor had there ever been any man, the equal of John! But somehow she couldn’t cry. Why so many mid-westerners were that way I’ll never understand. Remember Mrs. Joad in “The Grapes of Wrath?” Standing before her son who had just returned from seven years in prison, and hesitantly shaking his hand. You could see her whole being straining to hug him. That was how my mother was – how my whole family was.

My pride in her increased, later, when the facts about Ruby’s death came to light. Ruby was a sister born six years before me. At six months of age, she had come down with diphtheria. Dr. Blake attended her. He was new in town, just beginning his practice. She died of the diphtheria.

Many years later, Mother talked about the day with me. She said she could never forget the other children coming home from school that day, singing “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.” And she had to tell them Ruby died.

She said that Dr. Blake had admitted that he must have given Ruby too strong a treatment. He was so sorry.

Dr. Blake was new in Marquette, just beginning to get established, and the only doctor in town. Can you imagine what this probably unnecessary death could mean in a little town of 800 if it were made public knowledge? Mother never revealed it to the town! She seemed reluctant to tell me. How she could keep it to herself, I’ll never understand. But she did. She was a loving mother (she rocked me, that last of her eight children, till my feet almost dragged on the floor); so how she must have suffered in silence losing Ruby. A religious woman, she must have many times asked her God: “Why?”

Dr. Blake was the doctor who delivered Orville, two years after Ruby, and he delivered me. He served our family, and the whole town of Marquette, as its only doctor, until his death many years later. And he served very well.