I was born on April 9, 1944. My mother, Sally Gallagher Tyrrell, died on April 14, 1944. We co-existed for just 5 days. My parents were married in 1937, so my father shared a life for at least 7 years with my mother. My sister was born in 1939, so she lived for 5 years with my mother. You might think that I felt cheated, but the truth be known, as a child and adolescent I did not feel any relevance of my mother’s death to me. I never had any reason to focus on it, not then, nor even years later as I pursued my education, career, marriage, parenthood, and generally got on with living my own life. Now that I am in the sunset of my years and am too often alone in my thoughts, I wonder so many things about Sally, and everyone else in my family who knew her now being gone, there’s no one to enlighten me about her and her life. If he were still here, I would inquire of the following from my Dad:

When and how did you meet her?
Did you date frequently before your marriage?
What was her job at the Scranton Dry Goods department store?
Did she have a job when you moved to Allentown?
Was she pretty? Everyone said so and the photographs I’ve seen vindicate that.
Was she smart? She must have been to marry you.
Was she a good cook? Did she have any special recipes?
Was she religious? Was she churchgoing?
What were her interests, her activities, her hobbies, if any?
Did you ever get a chance to travel with her, other than to Scranton?
Did you and her often go out to eat and did she enjoy that?
Did she have a sense of humor?
Did she have fears?
The last 4 years of her life was during WW II. Was she frightened by that?
You never once told me that she would be proud of me? Do you think she would be?

I would like to know the answers to those questions as they would provide insight to me on Dad’s life with Sally before the occurrence of her passing. I hope it was a happy life they shared. I have no reason to think otherwise. Still, the way it ended was so tragic. If Dad were here, I would also ask him if her abscess developed suddenly, and whether she knew the risk of childbirth while having a bacterial infection during wartime when penicillin and other antibiotics were not readily available. I would ask Dad if my Mom got to embrace me or kiss me or even see me. Did she only have a chance to say hello and goodbye to me, and did he hold her hand as she breathed her last, as I did with my wife 70 years later?

The great sorrows of my life have been the passing of my wife, my father, and my sister, all of whom I loved so much. I expect my mother’s death would be included in that grouping if I had the chance to know and love her and have the blessing of life with her. The closest I could possibly come to that experience would have been to know more about her, and I failed to do that. It is the biggest regret of my life, and I feel guilty as sin about it.