Lucia Mae Barrett passed away on October 4, 2010 — on her own terms, in her own bed, surrounded by the love of her family. She passed quickly and peacefully to that giant coffee shop in the sky.
I never met a person who didn’t love Lucia.
So long, Mom. See you on the other side.
Just when you think it can’t get worse, along comes an irresistible knight in the shining armor of a brand new 1925 Chrysler. It would be almost 10 more years before this particular knight would even meet Lucia, but when he did, he surely planned to save his little damsel in distress.
Bruce W. Barrett — his brothers used to call him B-Dub — had big plans and dreams of becoming an architect, which fizzled out when he refused to not smoke on the job, as was required by the one firm in Oklahoma City that considered hiring him on as an apprentice.
“To hell with that!” was his motto.
So instead of designing homes and remodeling projects for an architectural firm, he went to work as a carpenter. And he was good. Very good. He quickly rose to foreman and eventually worked on a number of huge projects that would become historically significant. During the Great Depression, he was a foreman for the building of Boulder Dam (renamed Hoover Dam by the Republican Hoover Administration) . During World War II — he was too old to enlist at the time — he was again a foreman on the construction of the Al-Can Highway that connects Alaska to the contiguous United States via Canada. He worked on those mighty projects, but was unable to be there for the christening of either one. He got drunk and told his boss where to go on the Boulder Dam job, and he got pneumonia on the Alaska job.
When he came home from the Boulder Dam job, he worked on local construction projects in West Texas and hired Lucia’s grandpa and brother Joe to work on one of them. That’s how he met Lucia. She once told me that Bruce never brought Grandpa’s pay to the house without also bringing something for the rest of the family — including once an entire bag of oranges, considered a delicacy worth their weight in gold during those terrible Depression years. When Christmas of 1933 rolled around, Lucia recalled, her family had no money for gifts or decorations of any kind. Bruce came over with Christmas stockings stuffed with nuts, fruit, and hard candies. Lucia was 19 — and crazy about that knight in shining armor. He didn’t have much, but what he did have he splurged and shared.
Not long afterward, he came by and took Lucia with him. It was 1934. She was 20. He was 30. The Dust Bowl blew out and they came to California as migrant farm laborers. They moved back and forth from Texas to California in search of work until mid 1950, when they finally came to the San Francisco Bay Area to stay for good.
Against all odds and despite decades of hardship and alcoholic battles, Bruce and Lucia stayed together until the day he died — with 17 years of continuous sobriety — in 1980. They had been together for 46 years.
After Daddy died, when the next Mother’s Day rolled around, I remember telling Lucia how grateful I was that she had endured all of those difficulties and heartaches of life with an alcoholic. I told her I didn’t know how the other kids felt, but it meant a lot to me that my mother was still married to my father when his life ended. I asked her:
“Did you really love him?”
She squirmed a little in her seat. She never did like any mushy talk. Then she looked down at her newspaper, picked up her coffee cup and said in an offhand voice:
“I must have.”
That beautiful young woman on the West Texas version of a beach is Lucia as a teenager.
Where her family lived was a lifetime away from a real beach but, like so many Dust Bowl towns, it had a sand problem. When you’re as poor as her family was, you learn to make the best of every situation — and no one was more resourceful than Lucia. She and her sisters would find a nice sandy patch where there weren’t many rocks sticking up and pretend they were bathing beauties like the pin-up girls in the magazine ads.
They didn’t have bathing suits, but Lucia found a way around that, too. For years she had sewn hand-made slips from muslin flour sacks. All she had to do was shorten them a bit and they turned into tunic-style “bathing suits,” even if there wasn’t a a swimmable body of water for miles.
One day a cousin who had somehow gotten hold of a box camera took pictures of the girls as they pretended to be modeling for a magazine or a postcard. The result was this priceless photo of an unspoiled beauty who had no idea how pretty she was.
It had been more than two weeks since I had seen Mom when I visited her today. (I had bronchitis and didn’t dare bring the germs to her.) So when I walked into her home today, she skipped the formality of saying hello and went straight to, “I love you so much!”
How could you have anything other than a fantastic visit when it starts like that?
I had brought her a gift of an artisan-made coffee mug, so naturally we had to go test it out at Starbucks. Lucia was in top form—positive attitude, high-level mentation, happy, calm and just enjoying life.
We ordered our coffees and some lemon pound cake, then sat down at a sunny table. Lucia took a sip of coffee and then looked up at me and said:
We got it made!
As she continued to enjoy her cake and coffee, we chatted about my new job and the beautiful weather, but her mind was focused on the moment. She loves Starbucks. She said:
People just don’t know how fortunate they are to have a wonderful place like this to come and enjoy a good cup of coffee whenever they want to.
She’s right you know. It feels great to remember how lucky we are. To have my mother still alive at 95, to have time to spend with her, to have a job that allows me to set my own schedule, to have enough money to pay for the coffee, to have a reliable car with gas in the tank, to live where the weather is great . . . oh yeah, we’ve definitely got it made.
Lucia had a rough morning today, but once she got up and about, she was in good form. Jayme is flying in from New York tonight and Lucia really, really wants to see her. Here’s what she had to say about it:
I’d just have to hug her and turn her around and around and kiss her.
A mullet and a shag. God help us.
Sometimes you just have to forgive yourself for bad hair choices. In my defense, I must say that it was the Eighties and mullets were practically mandatory in my circle of local rock legends. I also was responsible for Lucia’s shag.
Mea culpa.
The difference is, I paid big bucks for my haircut (sheared by the lead singer of my favorite band) and Lucia’s was free. Yes, I admit it. I gave her the haircut. And the perm.
Mea maxima culpa.
But forget the haircuts for a moment. Isn’t this a totally sweet mother-daughter photo? Lucia and I have been resting our heads on each other’s shoulders and smiling as big as the sky for as long as I can remember. We’ve had our share of nasty spats, but we’ve always been each other’s security blanket, through good haircuts and bad.
Whenever I see Lucia, I always tell her how much I love her — and she generally says something like, “I love you more” or “I love you too; you’ll never know how much.” Yesterday she added a new twist that was so sweet it made me smile all day.
I gave her a manicure, trimmed her nails and painted them the same light-pink color as mine. She kept saying how much she loved it and how she bet her Mama never got such a nice manicure.
I told her it was really fun doing it for her because I love her so much. She turned to give me a smooch and said, “I love you too, so much.” Then she paused for a moment and told me:
“I love to hear you say that.”
Sometimes life is really, really good.
Lucia hasn’t been feeling up to snuff lately, but today she was delighted to get in the car, ride over to Starbuck’s, and sit outside in the sun with a cheese Danish and a good cup of coffee.
It was a lazy, mellow afternoon. Just the kind you want in the middle of summer.
Yesterday I brought Lucia over to my little Victorian flat in Alameda and made some of her favorites for her early Mother’s Day lunch: Fettucine Alfredo (or as she calls it, spaghetti with cheese sauce) and fresh-baked blackberry cobbler with ice cream.
She was in heaven.
After she ate, I brought my laptop over to the dining table and showed her this blog. She absolutely loved it, not because it was about her, but because she was amazed by the technology. She asked me how much the computer cost and said it was totally worth it:
“That’s a very handy little piece of furniture.”
Happy Mother’s day, Mom. I love you to pieces. 🙂
Lucia was in top form today when we went to Denny’s. She read a tagline on the placemat and felt it was profoundly true, if not written specifically for her. She read it out loud to me as though she were reading the Bible:
The world looks better through a great cup of coffee.
Then she shared one of her favorite things in life:
The best thing in life is, when you’re hungry, right when they first bring your food and set it on the table, because you know you’re going to get to eat it.
We all know how much Lucia loves to eat. It’s one of the most sensual, delightful things about spending time with her. Today she expounded:
When you eat a grilled cheese sandwich and French fries, it tells a story all over your body.
I asked the logical question: What does it say? She told me:
It says, ‘Don’t be bitchin’. That was a good sandwich.’
She was full of good ones today. At one point she got a faraway look in her eye, just for a moment, then she snapped back and said:
Sometimes my mind runs away from me, but I grabbed a hold of it.
She explained that she didn’t know where she was for a moment, then she looked out the window and saw all the cars in the parking lot and she remembered we were at Denny’s. I love it when her metacognitive awareness is at a high level like that and she is able to tell me how her mind is working. I can’t imagine what dementia feels like from her side of the fence, but occasionally she is able to give me a peek. When she does, I am in awe of her courage and grace.
I Love Lucia 
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