My Ma

   What can I man say at a time like this in regards to responding to the news received after a gig Friday night that my Mother Lucile Faye Kruse Rieman had passed at the age of ninety years. I guess about sixty hours have gone since she went to a new place, and I can't talk to her from here.
   I had the great fortune of sharing a few words with Ma on Thurs over the phone which I will forever cherish, had a few other short occasions of the same in the last few weeks since my return from a seven day visit with her way out in Oregon where she had resided these last years. Close by my organic farming sister Patti she was. A very comforting factor for me after she had been  living miles from  either of us three offspring for many years. She had settled into her new surroundings of the Riverview Terrace Retirement Apartments. I had two previous occasions to visit her there in the previous three years, and it is a very nice place where she made friends easily, eventually engaging in weekly bridge games, and plenty of opportunity to read her books. Possibly her favorite pastime.
   She had a presence about her and seemed revered by her fellow Riverviewites with whom she fell in with. There would always be a table of them with her in the dining room, and I am sure very lively discussions would often ensue. These folks of the pre WWII era, the depression era, the beneficiaries of a long life afforded them, each with tales of the seven, eight, nine, indeed ten decades of living through all that life had in store for them. I met many folks there on my visits, and on my recent seven days with Lu received many comments from residents and staff about how they felt about her. It rekindled the knowledge I always had of what a special type person my mother was,
   Even since my earliest memories she stood out in my mind as a constant and confident part of my life, to my extreme good fortune. Me and my siblings were also fortunate enough to have a Father around and she and Bud made a good team raising us through the fifties and into the sixties. His daily endeavors  commuting downtown and frequent trips vying the wares he represented from a large Chicago clothing company allowed her the freedom of being a fulltime mom, a job she couldn't have done any better as I look back on it all.
   Children don't arrive with a set of instructions, but being the product of modest rural midwestern roots, she seemed to have had an inate sense of what she needed to do. And do it she did with all the energy and instinctive meaures that seemed to emanate from her so naturally.
  With benefit of confidence and good health nurtured in us by loving parents me and my two sisters made our separate ways in the directions of our choosing. We each ended up for no particular reason about as far as u could get from Chicagoland and still be in the western hemisphere. Shelley in Boston, Patti in Oregon and me down here in Honduras. But she always seemed to find a way to give us her blessings and a strong word of advice.
  During the ensuing years life had much in store for all of us, the proverbial ups and downs all mankind experiences. But I know I have been bolstered in such a big way knowing she was always a part of my life, always interested in what my life was about, not hesitating to give her opinion, her instinctive take.
  With due respect to my Father who nonstop busted his backside for us when we were children, he was gone alot and Ma was always that constant. Through it all she played a major part in creating that beacon with which I was able to direct my life. Having grown and blessed children of my own now, she provided the template on how rearing them took place.

   I can't thank you enough from the bottom of my heart my dear Ma. I will miss you forever, until we meet again. love,  your son Robert