My mother died last Wednesday. There, I said it. This post is part remembrance, part obituary and partly a celebration of a life lived with purpose.
Jean Alice Higgins was born after a shotgun wedding in Brooklyn in 1930 as America came to grips with the great depression. She was passed around and raised by various relatives until her mother married another man and was able to support her. Mom rarely spoke of her hardscrabble early life, except to remember running errands for her mother and the occasional treats of penny candy she enjoyed.
Mom graduated from the Brooklyn School of Homemaking in 1948 She was the Valedictorian of her class, although she was never enamored with many of the skills she was taught. She much preferred to read novels as escape from her rough and tumble existence. Her mother's extended family bought a couple of small parcels of land on Long Island and built a cottage where they spent summer vacations in the late 1940's. Jean was a reluctant participant in these jaunts to the country, much preferring the hurly burly of city life. She got a job at Macy's and spent summer weekends in Manorville.
Mom picked beans at a local farm during her vacation and a chance meeting with one of Emil Monzeglio's sons, a Cornel graduate named Robert changed the trajectory of her life forever. She married him in 1950 and remained tethered to Manorville til the end of her life.
Her early life on my father's chicken farm resembled a dark version of "The Egg and I", a light hearted book chronicling a woman's life on a dilapidated farm. A poor business plan and a generally depressed farm economy led to the farm's failure by the early 1960's and the growing family which by this time included three sons and a daughter wound up in a new home on land provided by my grandfather on his farm.
Mom helped harvest various crops on the farm, especially strawberries for the farmstand established by my uncle. She worked at the vegetable stand during the summer along with her mother. The clientele included many Italian immigrant women who wanted to negotiate prices with these two Irish women. Hilarity ensued! My father parlayed his college degree into a teaching job at the local elementary school and we settled into a middle class lifestyle for a few years.
Jean's life was upended when a long illness resulted in my father's death in 1972. She had already started working as a clerk at a local sand and gravel company in the late 60's. Again, she didn't talk about it very much, but she put up with the indignities heaped on women in the workforce at that time. She had to fend off unwanted advances from men on the job at the very least. Casual comments of a sexual nature were not uncommon at the time.
Fortunately, Jean was able to get a civil service job with the county as a clerk-typist. It was a job with good benefits that enabled her to keep the family going forward as her husband's illness spiraled downward. Working full time and caring for her children consumed the next phase of her life. It is fairly common now for women to work full time and raise children, but in that faraway time, the mark of middle class success was a stay at home mom who presided over a spotless house and 3 or more well scrubbed children. So, in a way, Jean was a proto-feminist. However, she longed for the cultural ideal of a man providing for the family.
Having seen her children into adulthood, Jean continued to work as a senior clerk-typist until her retirement. She married again to Rhinehart Christoffersen, but the union ended in bitterness and recrimination. I think by this time, she had moved beyond the desire for a dominant male in her life and she was unwilling to submit to one at this stage. After moving in and out of a couple of apartments, she settled in a retirement community in of all places, Manorville.
She threw herself into the life of her community, participating in the various celebrations throughout the year. She also traveled with friends to Alaska and Ireland as well as trips with children and grandchildren. Jean never lost her nostalgia for Brooklyn and was happy when one of the grands and his spouse actually moved into the borough.
Health issues made the last decade and a half a challenge. A minor stroke 11 years ago left her with physical and cognitive impairments. However, she soldiered on and made the best of what was an increasingly bad situation. In quiet conversations with her children over the last several years she professed herself ready to move on to the next plane of existence. Although raised Catholic, she always expressed a healthy skepticism of church dogma. Also, being Irish, I don't think she expected the church approved afterlife to be that welcoming.
The guiding star of her life was family. Having been raised as unloved baggage by her own mother, she was determined to show what love she had to her own children. It was hit and miss, but looking back, she got it right far more often than wrong. Jean is survived by her 4 children and their spouses, 13 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren. She loved us dearly from this old guy to Cameron Vocaturo who has yet to see his first birthday and everyone between us.
Jean Alice Higgins-Monzeglio- Christoffersen was not perfect, but she lived every day of her life with conviction. Those who knew her will love and remember her for as long as we draw breath. Rest in Peace, Mom.
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