One Response to “Buy Ultracet Without Prescription”

1. George Spink Says:
   January 31st, 2009 at 1:10 pm

   MY FAVORITE JANE

   My mother, Helen Miller Spink, would have liked your web site, but she died in 1986, when she was 70. She will always be my favorite Jane. She will always be in my heart.

   My mother came from an Irish-German Catholic family of two boys and five girls. She was the third oldest. Her father was born in Dublin, her mother in Stuttgart. Her parents emigrated to the United States around 1900.

   In 1922, her parents bought an old, two-story frame house in Berwyn, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. Their last child, Robert, was born in 1926. He is the only one still alive; he turned 82 on December 5th. Uncle Bob is the only one of his siblings who never smoked.

   During the Great Depression, Grandpa Miller never missed a day of work. With seven kids, he couldn’t afford not to work. He had to change jobs several times, and he even took one in Indianapolis for awhile, commuting back to Chicago for the weekends. He was a self-taught accountant.

   My parents met in the early 1930′s and married in 1935. I came along in 1940. In 1944, my parents purchased the home from my mother’s parents, with the agreement that her two sisters and brother who still lived there could stay as long as they liked. At the time, Uncle Bob was actually serving on the U.S.S. Bennington in the Pacific. After the war, he returned home for awhile but moved to Santa Barbara in 1948, where his oldest sister and her family moved in 1932. During the 1950′s, my mother’s other brother and sisters also moved to Santa Barbara. My parents and I remained in Berwyn.

   In January 1957, my father died from Hodgkin’s Disease from which he suffered for three years. He was only one month shy of his 47th birthday. My mother was 41 and I was 16.

   My mother learned how sick he was when he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Disease. In those days, Hodgkin’s Disease was fatal, a death sentence. My father had been a star quarterback in high school, played semi-pro football for seven years until they married in 1935, and was a good friend of George Halas, owner of the Chicago Bears. He fought Hodgkin’s Disease as best he could. His death devastated my mother and me.

   When she learned how sick he was, my mother took a job working in the Hotpoint factory in neighboring Cicero. The work was hard, the pay was decent. In those days, women were not paid as well as men. That’s a fact, Jack. That’s a fact, Jane. But it has never been fair. It has never been right.

   Working as hard as she did allowed us to keep our old home in Berwyn, which my dad had remodeled and renovated on weekends and in the evening from the late 1940′s until he died. I worked part-time jobs from the time I was 12 years old, through my last years of grammar school, throughout high school, and throughout college.

   In 1962, however, my mother and I decided to sell our house. I was away at college and my mother lived there all alone. She decided it would be more economical if she lived in an apartment. Both of us always regretted selling the old house; both of us always missed all of the good times we had there.

   One of the earliest memories I have are the summer days during the war when my mother took me to a nearby park to teach me how to swim in the children’s pool. I have loved swimming ever since.

   Over the years, my mother lived with her sister, Ruth, and her husband in Santa Barbara for awhile. She worked in a local bakery. In the late 1970′s, she stayed with me at my apartment in Hyde Park for part of the year and in Santa Barbara the rest of the year.

   In 1980, I moved back to the Old Town neighborhood where I had lived from 1964 until 1976 when I moved to Hyde Park. My mother found her own apartment a mile south of me on LaSalle and Oak Streets in a brand new building designed for seniors. Her only income was her social security check. Her building was Section 8 housing, which meant that given her income, she did not have to pay the normal rental of $550 per month but only $55 per month. She put her name on the waiting list while construction was being completed and was one of the first to move in when it opened in 1981.

   We made a game out of furnishing her new home. Everything we bought had to be on sale, and we had to pay cash for everything. She found a beautiful bedroom set at Stevens Bedding in the Loop. A bed, a dresser and mirror, a chest, end tables, and a mattress and spring cost about $350. Moreover, Stevens delivered it the next day and assembled the bed and the dresser and mirror. Her bedroom looked terrific!

   We furnished her living room and dining area by shopping for bargains here and there. My cousin’s husband worked for Zenith. He arranged for her to buy a 21-inch color TV from Polk Brothers, a large Chicago appliance store, with his own employee discount! Within a month, her apartment looked fantastic!

   She made friends very quickly. Before long, she organized a Monday night bingo game in the meeting room on the first floor. There were two pool tables in a separate room. My mother took pool lessons (she had never played before) and soon played pool every day for a couple of hours. She made many new friends, mostly white, some black. She loved living in that building.

   My mother quickly learned her way around the Loop and the Near North Side. She knew the Near North Side bus routes. Water Tower Place was only a few blocks east. We became parishioners at Holy Name Cathedral. She and I and some of her neighbors rode a bus provided by the Chicago Transit Authority to and from Holy Name every Sunday. My mother and I went to Sunday brunch after Mass, often at the Drake Hotel, which surprisingly offered the most affordable brunches along the Gold Coast. Other silver-haired ladies often dined there, too.

   Those were good years for both of us. On Sunday afternoons, my mother and I went back to my apartment. We watched movies, 60 Minutes, and other shows together. On Mondays, she went down to the laundry floor in my building and washed my dirty clothes. I remember how my girlfriend told her that I was perfectly capable of doing my own laundry. But my mother liked doing it for me. My mother stayed overnight on Monday, too, then went home.

   My mother and her brothers and sisters had been Republicans for years; but, beginning in the late 1970′s, I changed her mind. We often discussed politics. I had always voted as a Democrat. Before long, my mother became a Democrat, the only one in her family.

   In early July 1986, I received what I thought would be a tremendous job offer with a PR firm in San Francisco. They wanted me to start on August 1st, and they agreed to move both my mother’s and my belongings to San Francisco. They flew me out one weekend to look for an apartment. I found a large, two-bedroom apartment right across from the ocean on the west — and right across from a Von’s supermarket on the east! Many westbound/eastbound bus routes converged across the street from us. There was even a seniors center about a mile east, across from Golden Gate Park.

   My mother was thrilled that we would be living in San Francisco, so much closer to her brothers and sisters in Santa Barbara. We spent most of July packing our belongings, which were picked up by the movers on July 30th, the day before we flew out.

   As we left my mother’s apartment building, three of her girlfriends posed with her by the entrance to their building. I cherish that photo, which turned out to be the last one I took of her.

   When we arrived in San Francisco, I rented a car. We had a number of suitcases and boxes — and my two cats, still tranquilized but frightened by the ordeal of flying.

   My mother was thrilled by our new apartment! So were the cats! We lived on the second floor. There was a balcony overlooking a courtyard. Across the street was the Pacific Ocean. The waves sounded so relaxing.

   The movers were scheduled to arrive three days later. No problem. I drove to a nearby furniture store to buy two flip-flop chairs while my mother unpacked a few things. Our phone jacks were already connected.

   About 5 o’clock, we drove along Geary Street looking for a Kentucky Fried Chicken. We found one about three miles across town.

   We took it easy that evening, watching a portable 12-inch black-and-white TV I took with us. Everything came on an hour later than it did in Chicago. For instance, we were used to watching the Tonight Show at 10:30 in Chicago, but in San Francisco, it began at 11:30.

   We watched Johnny Carson’s monologue and then turned it off. We slept on the flip-flops in the living room

   My cat, Patches, awoke me the next morning about six o’clock. She was upset about something. My other cat, Cozy Nozy, was over by my mother, snuggling close to her. I walked over. My mother looked pale. I said, “Mother! Mother!” a few times. I couldn’t wake her. I shook her. Then I realized she wasn’t breathing. I called 411. Paramedics arrived within minutes.

   My mother was dead.

   I couldn’t believe it! How could she have died so suddenly! It wasn’t fair! Her doctor in Chicago later told me that she had heart disease. He said that you never knew when you time would be up.

   Not a day has gone by when I haven’t thought about her, about all of the good times we shared, from the time she taught me how to swim in that children’s pool to watching Johnny Carson on her last night.

   I remember how proud she was when I graduated from high school, from Northwestern, and later from the University of Chicago. She was always there for me, always supporting whatever I wanted to do.

   It will be 23 years on August 1st since she died. Only yesterday on my grand calendar. It has been 52 years since my father died on Jan. 26, 1957. Only yesterday….

   Looking back, I am grateful for all of the times I shared with my parents. I wish my father could have stayed around longer. When I visited his grave in Chicago five years ago, it looked so lonely. My mother is buried in Santa Barbara, next to her brother and sisters.

   After my mother died, I felt a great deal of pain, every day, every moment, for the next year or so. I felt so much loss because she was gone. I couldn’t shake it.

   A year later, my cats and I were staying with one of my aunts in Santa Barbara. We left San Francisco a few months earlier. I went to a church service along the beach on Sunday. After it was over, the minister came over to me to introduce himself. We talked for awhile.

   “Where does our soul go when we die?” I asked him.

   He didn’t hesitate to answer: “We are with God at the moment of our death,” he said.

   In the days that followed, I thought about what he said. Soon, the pain that had been with me night and day since my mother died began to disappear. And then it was gone.

   The pain has never returned.

   I miss my mother and my father every day. I often think about all of the great times we shared, forever grateful for our time together.

   Mother, you are always in my heart….

   George Spink
   Los Angeles
   Email: georgespink@gmail.com

Comments