Born and raised in Jerseyville, Illinois, a small town within shouting distance of St. Louis...two sisters and one older brother... working class Irish Catholics one generation from the Old Sod...She was third in line and that was part of the tragedy that molded her...older sister died when just a teenager of a "wasting disease"...the two girls, my mother and her older sister Mildred, were less then a year apart with Mary being an "unwelcome surprise"... they were close- "more like twins then simply sisters."...after the death of her sister, mom talked bitterly about the change in Grandma's attitude...Mary realized her birth was resented. Grandma Beulla made it clear that fate had been cruel...the wrong one had survived...mom absorbed the guilt for her sister's death...Grandma put a hole in her heart...the rest of her life did nothing to close that wound...she died at 62 of raging overian cancer that appeared, ravaged and killed her in six awful months.

Married twice...first time was to my father; a drunken, wife beating, child abusing, teutonic fascist I still can't think of without grinding my teeth...not for what he did to me but for the years of pain he put my mother through...second marriage is more of a clue to her then anything else 'cause she married another alcoholic who told her on their wedding night she could forget sex because they were married and "had no more need of that stuff"...rumor had it he'd been sexually abused by a priest who he worshiped. Ah, religion!

She was a wonderful woman..saved me by being my friend...she loved to read, played the piano, danced and was beautiful even after death...rich, as only those who have suffered privately can be, with compassion...forgave me all my stupidities and failures and never let me know she really thought my efforts at being an artist doomed me to bumdom...not quite true...she did clue me in as to my place in the world.

I came back to St. Louis to see her and to nurse my father who was supposedly dying...I'd been living in Japan teaching English for three years...In St. Louis, I began teaching photography at several of the universities in town... When she heard that I was offered my first full-time job, she began to cry..."why the tears?"..."I thought you'd be a bum your whole life"... this after some major shows, grants...awards...publishing. Until I got a steady paycheck I was still a "bum."

This picture was one she had gone to a studio to have done to send to my father who was on a ship in the South Pacific for WWII. Legend has it that I am responsible for the ever so slight tummy bulge.

I still find myself wanting to talk to her, to show her my work, to have her spend some time with my kids. She would have been a monster grandma.