Lucy Leisz Westfall

PHOTO: MAY 1973 BABY SHOWER FOR PATRICIA LEISZ SEARS, DAUGHTER OF JACK LEISZ. HIS SISTERS ANN LEISZ LINDEN (CENTER) AND LUCY LEISZ WESTFALL (RIGHT), JOINED BY THEIR NIECE CATHIE WATERS. THIS PHOTO WAS TAKEN 6 MONTHS BEFORE LUCY PASSED AWAY.

"About three weeks before Thanksgiving (1973), after running across the street with my father to beat the on-coming traffic in front of church, my mother fainted, gasping for air. She was in the car sitting next to my father when she fell over onto his lap."

My father was only minutes away from the hospital and he drove there as fast as he could. When they got my mother into the hospital, she revived but they insisted that she stay for a series of tests. 

My mother's testing proved negative and so the hospital wanted to send her to another hospital for one more test to see if there was a blockage in the valves to the heart. It was one week away from Thanksgiving and mother wanted to go home for the holiday. "I'll have the test after Thanksgiving," she promised. But she died before that could happen.

The night before she died, my mother had a card party at her house. She baked her famous nut kuchen, had her hair done and enjoyed her family and friends that evening. 

My Aunt Ann, who was my mother's sister and a widow, stayed overnight at my mother's, and shared her last hours on this earth with her.

As usual, my mother went to early Sunday morning mass with my father. Later that morning, she and my Aunt Ann took my sister (Carol) and her little boy Michael and daughter Julie to the noon mass. My mother went to mass every day but on Sundays she would go twice: once with my father, and once with my sister.

She was finding it difficult that day climbing the stairs of the church and complained to my aunt of not feeling well. When she got into the church, she held onto the back of the last pew, and slowly, like a leaf, fell to the ground. 

My mother died in church.

I often go to this special spot in that church and attend mass. This spot where my mother died is like a little shrine to me, the place where she met God on her way to heaven.

There are no big things that my mother did in her lifetime, just a lot of good little things. Always putting God in her life, my father was next, and then came all the rest of us, wanting some attention from her. And she gave enough of herself to go around. No one could ever feel that my mother did not care about them. She cared about everyone from family to neighbors to strangers. She was a giving woman.

She is remembered as always singing and whistling while she was busy doing. She sang the whole way into heaven. We can take a lot of courage from her life because God does not as big things of most of us, only little daily attitudes.

Mother Theresa of Calcutta is quoted as saying, 'We will not be asked by God ' what have you done,' but rather, 'what have you done with love?' My mother loved a lot.

FROM MARILYN J. AERNI'S BOOK,GOD'S SENSUOUS WOMAN (2014)