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JoAnn Catherine Arosemena Rodewald |
Today is the Friday of Mother’s Day weekend.
42 years ago, this same Friday, was May 10th
1974.
504 months have marshaled through calendar pages since that
Friday in May. 15,204 sunrises and sunsets have signaled the start and stop of
all those days.
The marker, the scar, the void, it all began for her that
Friday morning. She heard the words spoken softly at the breakfast table. It
was long and rectangular, with rounded corners, the table she sat for most of her meals
since they’d moved to that home in the summer of 1972.
The home of her family, the kitchen table at
108 College Court.
That Friday morning before school, her Dad cautioned over
breakfast cereal, “Today could be the day”.
Nothing else had to be spoken. No questions were asked, no comments were made. The realization of the simple words flooded the entire kitchen.
The next few swallows were hard, the cereal almost choking
the dry gulps of truth. The realization
of this unbearable thought could not be digested by her young adolescent life.
How could this be? How could today be the day, it’s Mother’s
Day weekend?
Who was the cosmic joker masterminding the timing of this frightening
possibility? And yet the day continued, the hours of this particular
Friday surreal.
Was the routine of
getting to school, opening her metal locker and going to class, an attempt to
hold onto normalcy? Mr. Hurdon’s World
Geography at Kennedy High School, a safe harbor that morning. He was a cool teacher, easy going, his
classes were interesting, he always gave his students time to think, to consider,
his learning style cool and collaborative.
He was young, hip, from the Bay Area.
His first name was Floyd.
The phone rang in the brightly lit hallway just outside the
classroom door. A few minutes later, Mr.
Hurndon called her name, “Miss Elena.”
He often used Mr. and Miss to address his
students, especially when he wanted to make an important point or when discussing serious topics about the world.
She stepped out into the hallway and reached for the green
slip he was holding, his arm outstretched.
The small, army green paper slip documenting the time, her full name and
the reason for the hallway pass. That’s
what they were called, the hallway pass.
Kennedy High School had big bunker cement buildings all connected by
open breeze hallways.
Mr. Brown had called for Elena. He was her guidance
counselor. She immediately knew, no
words were spoken between her and her teacher.
Elena knew.
It took less than 5 minutes for her to walk to the school
office and make her way to Mr. Brown’s area. It was just before 10am that
Friday. Mr. Brown was a guidance
counselor and the varsity football coach. He was well liked, he was tall and
handsome, a bit older than most of the teachers.
When she walked in, Roger, her older brother was already sitting
in the office. Mr. Brown and Roger, sitting stiff, frozen in the worn office furniture, they’d already spoken. He was a senior at JFK, her older
brother; it made sense he should know first.
Elena sat down.
Mr.
Brown’s chair was on wheels; he shifted a bit and turned towards both siblings.
He hesitated, “The hospital called.”
As the sound of his words traveled across the tiny space,
Elena folded the green hallway pass, in half and then in half again, and then
in half until the paper was so small and bulky, there was no more give.
The
words heard in her mind, a loud industrial deliberate echo, each consonant
and vowel individually piercing every bit of her body, mind and beating heart. A few
formalities were discussed about being excused from school and going home.
The reality of those few minutes forever changed her
life.
Those moments in Mr. Brown's office signaled the marker, the end of one road, one life. When Elena woke that morning, that 10th
of May in 1974, her Mother, the Mother of Ana, Roger, Elena, Carlos and Tobias
was alive. Alive and fighting for her life, fighting stage 4 ovarian cancer,
fighting the metastasis of the deviant delinquent cells that invaded her body.
JoAnn Catherine Arosemena Rodewald, 45, was alive, breathing,
her heart beating; beeps registering proof that she was alive in her hospital room.
Leaving Mr. Brown’s office that morning, her life would
never be the same. Even though Elena knew
that her MOM was very sick, that the diagnosis was terminal, the reality of
death was never considered until the simple words were spoken.
“The hospital
called.”
Elena walked back to Mr. Hurndon’s class, she made her way
back to the same brightly lit hallway
where she’d been a few minutes before.
He was still sitting there, perhaps waiting for her return. She’d already been at her desk, gathered her
books and bag, the green hallway pass now in her jeans back pocket.
Elena shared with Mr. Herndon, “My Mother died, I have to go home.”
And so began that Friday morning, the rest of
her life, forever different, her Mother gone. The current, the maternal Iowa wattage shared between Mother and
child, that day fundamentally and forever shifted.
The source of life given and shared between
Mother and child, now different, the physical light, love, touch, forever held
in the heart of her children’s memories and love.