Leah Marie

Fifty five years ago, today, I gave birth to our first daughter.  She was the smallest of the group, 6 pounds, 11 ounces, and 20 inches long.  Blue eyes and a smattering of dark blonde hair - fingers and toes all there (It was always the first thing I checked when I saw them for the first time).  Back in those days, they gave us a drug, and when we woke up, we had stitches and in the morning  - babies seem mostly to be born at night - they brought us on long carts our babies to attempt to nurse for the first time. 
     I was ready to try this most natural way to feed our children but no matter how much we tried, Leah just could not get the idea to nurse.  She could not swallow as well, so the nurses fed her with a rubber dropper.  She lost a lot of weight and after five days I came home and she was transferred to the nursery and they fed her intravenously.  After about another week, we brought her home and fed her with the eye dropper and then Vern bought a soft lambs nipple and we put it on my baby bottle and pushing the nipple against the roof of her mouth and massaging her throat, we taught her to swallow.  We fed her every two hours, she hardly ever cried and if we hadn't been on that two hour schedule she wouldn't have let us know she was hungry.  Dr. Ed Ward, our family doctor, once she was swallowing, suggested we put a little pablum - cereal - in the milk to give her a little more nourishment.  That seemed to help and she began to gain weight but by six months she was drinking from a sippy cup.  She never did take to the bottle much.  She started eating baby food early as well.  During this first six months, she experienced a lot of diarrhea and was often dehydrated.  So on those occasions, her diet would be mashed bananas, rice cereal and room temperature seven-up.
      She was absolutely a beautiful baby.  Curly blonde hair, blue eyes, very tiny, she looked like a little doll.  When we would take her out in her baby carrier, people would comment on her beauty.  She didn't sit up by herself until she was almost seven months.  A week before she was a year old, she welcomed a new baby sister, Lora.  Lora was the best thing that happened to Leah.  Lora was above average in growing, she was a perfect, healthy little girl and Leah followed her lead.  Leah learned to walk by pulling herself up on Lora's walker and hanging on while her little sister pulled her around.  
     Her sisters all surpassed her mentally and physically but she held her own.  At age four we took her to Bradley to work with the wonderful speech therapist, Dr. Mawhinney.  She started to say some words clearer but still had her own way of speaking.  Again, I think she learned best from her younger sisters.
     She repeated Kindergarten, which was hard on her and that meant she and Lora were in the same grade until fifth grade, we finally were able to get her into special ed.  Special Ed classes for the whole city were held at Roosevelt School at that time, and that is where she met her lifelong friend, Melissa.  When we moved to Washington, she continued in special ed through high school.
       When she was thirteen, she was diagnosed with Diabetes.  I learned to give her her shots by practicing sticking the syringe into an orange.  Before long Leah was giving her shots to herself.  
      After High School, she worked at the Tazewell County Recourse Center and then at Hardees and Burger King.  In late 1994, she began having a series of TIAs and strokes and she died on August 9, 1995.
 
      I think for the most part, Leah had a good life.  She was certainly loved by a lot of people.  She had an inordinate amount of patience, especially with little children.  She loved to read  - especially books about animals.  And when it came to puzzles, she would lay out each piece from the box, examine it carefully, lay it on the card table and when all the pieces were in front of her, she would study it for awhile and then in a short time put it together.  That was amazing to me. 
      She loved animals and when she met someone, she might not remember their names but she never forgot the names of their animals.  She loved to fish.  We belonged to Kennel Lake and she and her dad would often go out and fish on a summer evening.  When we would vacation in Wisconsin, she spent a lot of the day out in a boat angling. 
      Leah used her special talents for the Church.  Two boys at St. Patricks were blind and when they made their First Communion, for the preparation time, Leah went up to the class and sat with them, and helped them.  She loved doing that.  And at a time, when a former Pastor wouldn't unlock the right side door to the Church, Leah stood Sunday after Sunday to open the door for a parishoner with Parkinsons so he wouldn't have to walk around to the front entrance.  Small things, but so important to someone else.

     She could be stubborn, but she was mostly loving and particularly kind.
Several months before she died, we were in the car and the radio was playing Freddie Fender's song "Until the Last Teardrop Falls".  She said:  "I think that is a good song to play at a funeral".  And it was played at hers, just before Mass started. 


      The picture above was her one year picture.  The picture on the right is the last picture taken of her in July of 1995.  Our family was truly blessed with this first of our six daughters.  She's been gone for several years now, but she is in our minds - and hearts - -often.