Roots: In memory of my mom, Rita Carrier (1919-2010)

My mother at my wedding (1986)

I won't be posting anything else here for the next few days because of a death in my family. My 91-year-old mother, Rita Carrier, passed away this morning. 

My mom, née Rita Loretta Archambeault, was born in Connecticut in 1919, but raised in Massachusetts. She grew up in a bilingual household where everyone spoke French and English, and she remained fluent in both languages all of her life. She entered Notre Dame High School in Southbridge, Mass., when it was brand new, but many of her classmates dropped out along the way, to go to work. By the time the school graduated its first class in 1938, mom was one of only three students - all girls - to receive diplomas.

Mom never had a chance to go to college, which she lamented from time to time. But she accepted with characteristic good cheer the hand she had been dealt, even though that hand included two bouts of cancer, both of which she survived.

A whiz with numbers, mom worked in various banks, off and on, from the late 1930s until she retired at 84 in 2003, seven years after she and my late father celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. She spent more than 50 years at one bank alone.

When I was in high school, I got a job at Sof’s Spa, a small restaurant on Central Street in Southbridge. I was quite proud of myself because I had managed to land work on my own, which made me feel all grown up. My mother, though, was fit to be tied. She didn’t disapprove of the job. She disapproved of the fact that I got it without consulting her first.

If our family was a ship, my mother was the captain and my father, my younger brother David and I all knew it. She didn’t raise her voice very often when David and I were kids, or bark orders at us. She didn’t have to. We all understood that mom ran the show in her quiet, efficient, determined way. And we all knew, instinctively, if we had said or done something that displeased her.

Now our little ship has no one at the helm. I’m sure we’ll sail along as best we can, but it will be hard to chart a course without our guiding light.

I just hope that, if the powers that be are planning any major changes in heaven in the near future, they consult mom beforehand, just to avoid any trouble down the road.