Mom

Elsie Elaine Hoey, 1930 - 1981: This photo was taken shortly before Mom passed away. She is holding my oldest child, Nicolas, on her lap while Nanny is holding Casey. Casey was born in May of 1980 and Mom passed away in July of 1981. I just realized that my memories of her are starting to get pretty thin. Mom had contracted ALS or Lou Gherig's Disease which progressively took away the use of her muscles until in July of 1981 she had to be hospitalized because her diaphragm was weakened to the point where she couldn't breath. Mom did not want to live on a respirator.

I am going to try and remember all that I can of her, for the next little while, and tell them. I have quite a few photographs of her from when she was very young up to when she passed away. Hopefully they will jog my memory.

Mom really loved her grandchildren. When she passed away, she had three of them. John's daughter, Tiffany, was the other. At the time of her passing, I was living in Utah. Several times, Mom and Dad made the trip up there to see us and I suspect that it was mainly because Mom wanted to see the grandchildren. Of course, this was no easy task for her because of her disease. She once showed up with this humongous stuffed animal for Nicolas. That is probably one of my regrets that we were living so far away at the time that she didn't get to see the kids that often before she left. Before she died, Dad was good enough to fly me down to Los Angeles to see her while she was in the hospital. I got to visit with her for about a half hour. She was heavily sedated so it was kind of a lucid visit. You could tell that on one hand she was ready to leave behind the troubles that the disease had given her but on the other hand she wasn't ready to leave children and grandchildren behind. I returned home after the visit and then we received a phone call a short while later that she had passed away.