Mother

  I still have many cards and notes and a few letters she wrote me and she always signed them "Mother," though we never called her that, not to any real degree anyway.  We kids called her Mommy when we were little and Ma when we got older.  She didn't seem to mind.
   She was born on March 9, 1905 in the city of Troy, the youngest of 5 children to Mr. and Mrs. Ellen O'Brien Donovan and Martin Donovan.  She had 2 older brothers and 2 older sisters.  The eldest sister, Marguerite, would succumb to the influenza epidemic in 1918; the elder brother died at the age of 18 from a fall from the scaffolding of the Cluett Peabody Building.  Siblings Matthew and Helen would live into their sunset years, but Mary was the only one of the 5 to have children.  Her father died when she was only 9 months old.  She was told that as he lay dying from the tuberculosis that was the scourge of the Irish workers, he would comment on how young she was to be able to make her way  around the rooms by holding on to the furniture. That was her only connection to him.
    Her widowed mother married widower John Hogan, and they had a daughter, Agnes, who was 9 years younger than Mary.  Agnes married Thomas Murray and they had 2 daughters and a son, the eldest daughter still living.
                  Happy Birthday, Ma.  I hope most of your 78 birthdays were happy.  I am approaching that number of birthdays myself, and I know mine were happier when you were still with us.