Tiny, but mighty

Her friends called her Dottie… we called her Mom. The inevitable happened last month. Our mom, Dorothy Marie Petri, died at the amazing age of 95, just six weeks shy of her 96th birthday. This strong, little Irish woman, all five feet of her, left my three sisters and me with a wealth of memories. The four of us were honored to share the same middle name as Mom. In addition to our Dad, her beloved Carl, who died in 2013, after 72 years of marriage, she loved her “treasured girls” unconditionally. We always joked that God knew what He was doing by giving Mom girls because she wouldn’t have lived through boys with their boisterousness, creepy crawler pets and lack of bodily function filters.

Mom ran a tight ship! No playing with friends or going to school activities until jobs were done. She had a short fuse and little or no filter, at times. But you always knew where you stood with her, no false fronts there. She could stretch a dollar and made the best mac & cheese you ever tasted!

Mom’s life had its challenges. Her father died during the Great Depression when she was only 15. She and her mother lost the farm and were forced to move from one boarding house to another. At 22 she sent our Dad off to war and was left to raise our oldest sister, just nine months old, on her own for the next 2-1/2 years. At 74 she had open heart surgery when her mitral heart valve was replaced. That was actually good news because we were blessed with 20+ more years with her.

A gifted seamstress, she taught each of us to sew. When we were younger she made a lot of our clothes. I can recall many an Easter Eve that she sewed into the wee hours of the morning so we were decked out in our new dresses for church later that morning. An expert at blending patterns and choosing fabrics, she made cheerleading uniforms, prom dresses and all of our wedding dresses.

Her favorite color was purple. We sent her a bouquet of 80 purple and white carnations for her 80th birthday. She was thrilled, but then told us she and Dad almost had to borrow a friend’s van to get the gigantic arrangement home from the office where she worked.

In addition to her role as a loving wife and mother her career outside the home included various positions in the business world where her secretarial and organizational skills served her employers extremely well. Yes, she was employed into her early 80s!

She was a shopping queen. Many of her prized moments were spent shopping with “her girls.” In 1994 Northwest Airlines was running same-day flight specials to Minneapolis to promote shopping at the fledgling Mall of America. I flew Mom in from Ohio one Saturday— she was giddy with excitement when I met her flight. We spent the day shopping, enjoyed a special lunch and she flew back to Cleveland that evening. Her friends thought she was a real jet setter! And I knew a memory was created that we would both treasure for life.

Mom loved sunny, frigid winter days in Minnesota, maple cream chocolates, playing cards or games, and shoes. Oh how she loved shoes… we even nicknamed her Imelda Marcos.

Her steadfast love for us is the memory I hold closest in my heart. We may have lost the tiny one, but her mighty influence lives on in each of us. Her name was MOM.

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