Who was ellensmothermary?

My mother was born during a terrible snow storm on a windy day on March 15, 1923. She often told me that her mother said that she came into this world "with a roar" and that she would, no doubt, leave it in the same way.

She was one of three children born to a seamstress named Ella and a coalminer named Jerry. Mom was the middle child and as a result, she often felt as though she was the "black sheep in the family."

I can still remember her telling me how her father locked her in a room one time as punishment and that when she tried to feel her way out of the darkness, all that she could feel were dead chickens hanging over her head. My grandfather had locked this terrified child in a dark, dank barn full of dead chickens.

My mother always had a zest for life and loved to have fun. She would rather have gone dancing than to have gone to school.

Her "dream" had been to become a "surgical nurse" and she had been accepted into a branch of the armed forces to do just that. However, her mother stopped that from becoming a reality because women were "supposed" to get married and not have careers. I believe that mom never got over her terrible disappointment.

Mom quit school two credits short of graduating from high school and soon thereafter, married my father, who had recently been discharged from the Army.

Jalo Albert Korpi was one of many sons from a poor farming family who originally came from Finland. His father died at a young age, and father was forced to quit school in the sixth grade in order to help with the farm.

Mom and father were as different as night and day. Mom was very talkative and fun loving and father was shy and rather quiet. However, those roles would change drastically as the years went by.

They moved to Detroit in 1946 from Michigan's U.P. because father could not find work up north. For six years they were a devoted couple that seemed to be on an endless honeymoon. They came to believe that they would never have children, so when mom suddenly became pregnant with me, she was elated!! However, she had no idea just how much her world was about to change....

She was in labor for three long days and nights. The doctor asked my father which one of us he wanted them to save--his wife or his daughter. Before he was forced to make a decision, I came into the world. From that moment on, mom and I became bonded together for life.

I was a terribly sickly child and my mother chose to devote her entire life to me. Her marriage suffered greatly because of this. My father no longer received all of her attention. Instead, I became her reason for living and her obsession. From early on I can never seem to remember there ever being a time when it was not just the two of us.

My father was emotionally abusive towards me and as the years went by he became the same way towards my mother. I longed to be "daddy's girl" but that was never to become a reality. Instead, my father made me feel like nothing. He tried his best to destroy my spirit because he was so jealous.

Mom could not have any more children and my father did not get the son he had always dreamed about. I truly believe that every time he looked at me he despised me..

My mother became my WORLD..my EVERYTHING...my mother, my father, my sister, my brother, my best friend...and she remained all of those until the day she died.

My father grew even more jealous as the bond grew between us. As the years went by, mom and I became more dependent upon one another as well as more devoted to each other.

Once my dad was forced to retire due to work-related injuries he became even more of an emotional bully. Because he was miserable, he expected that my mother should be miserable as well.
I still cannot believe that she let this bully stop her from seeing her friends...she let this bully turn a vibrant woman into a recluse'...I never forgave him for that.

Father died suddenly of heart failure about twelve years ago. Within two years, mom would be diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

Her love of live and her will to live helped her survive the cancer. Both of us thought that we had survived the worst thing that could ever happen to us. Neither of us could ever have imagined just what would lie ahead.....

One morning at about three am in 2001, mom burst into my bedroom and suddenly woke me up. She asked me, "How do I get back into my bed?" "Ellen, please help me!" "Can you come downstairs and show me how?"

Life for both of us would never be the same again...