She was born Lydia Aponte on December 6, 1920 in Caguas, a beautiful city located in the Central Mountain Range of Puerto Rico. Rare in that time, her mother, Marta, was a pharmacist and her father, Rafael, was the town’s postmaster. Though her family was not wealthy, they lived comfortably in a home her father built just a few blocks from the town square. She was the youngest of four children, having two sisters and a brother. Life was idyllic in her early years. Her school was located at one end of the city square and she would walk every day to and from school stopping by the various shops that ringed park-like town center on her way to her mother’s pharmacy. Years later in reminiscing, she would refer to herself as the “little Caguas princess.”
In keeping with her culture, from her earliest moments as a child she was steeped in her Catholic faith. In fact she attended school and played with Carlos Manuel Rodríguez Santiago, the first Puerto Rican and the first Caribbean-born layperson and the first layperson in the history of the United States to be beatified as a Saint by the Catholic Church. For all of her life that deep and abiding faith would serve as her bedrock especially in coping with the unforeseen darkness that would assault the serenity of her life over the ensuing years.
When she reached her teens, she experienced her first real encounter with tragedy. Her older sister, Carmen, who was then married and had an infant son, suffered at the hands of an abusive husband. Her situation became so unbearable that eventually Carmen left her husband and moved back into the protection of her family home. One day her enraged husband broke into the home armed with a pistol. Marta was home at the time and tried in vain to protect her daughter, enveloping Carmen in her arms. Undeterred, Carmen’s husband shot them both. Mother Marta survived. Carmen did not. Then several weeks later fearing revenge or vendetta, her uncle was gunned down by one of the family members of Carmen’s killer.
In the late 1930’s she attended Chestnut Hill, a prestigious Catholic women’s college in Philadelphia where she earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry in early 1942 just after the outbreak of World War II. The logistics of war forced her to skip her actual graduation ceremony to ensure that she would be able to return home to Puerto Rico, where she got a position with the Unites States War Department, applying her degree studies by working in chemical censorship.
By chance, she agreed to accompany her best friend on a blind date and met a soldier who would become her future husband. In 1943, for love she forsook her birthplace, her culture and her family to marry Odon Lessley Bacque’ and moved to Lafayette, Louisiana. Over the next eight years she would bear four sons. The last one was me; born in 1951. In 1954 her third child, Jean Louis was diagnosed with one of the most virulent strains of Leukemia. Within a few months he passed away.
Even her deep faith could not assuage her loss. She entered a dark and lonely place where there was no comfort or solace. She abandoned everything, her faith, her friends, her children. My earliest thoughts as a three year old child is of dancing on our kitchen counter trying to stop the tears that my mother couldn’t. Even I failed.
She abandoned God, but He did not abandon her. Neither did her friends and family. Slowly, the darkness receded and the ensuing years passed as if designed around the typical photo album. My brothers and myself grew up, went to college, married, and had our children. Mom was always somewhere in that album of our lives, encouraging, caring, guiding, teaching, loving and praying for us. She prayed a lot.
She taught chemistry lab at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. She was active in the community. She travelled and she loved her children and grandchildren.
On October 27, 2007, after a brief battle with cancer she died, but death has no power over a mother’s love.
Two years ago, her grandson and my son was 29 years old. He had just the year before fathered our first grandchild. He was having urological medical issues that ultimately led him to seek advice from my father-in-law, a retired physician. Surmising that his problem was caused by an infection, he prescribed a week long medication regimen. When that didn’t eliminate the symptoms, my son ultimately consulted one of my brothers who is a urologist. For the next week my son went through a battery of tests, all of which revealed nothing. Finally, my brother scheduled the last procedure which, because it is invasive and uncomfortable, he had delayed until now. But the night before his appointment his symptoms vanished.
When my son visited my brother’s office the next day, he informed him that the problem was no longer present. A cursory examination verified that he was free of any symptoms. Following prescribed diagnostic protocol, the initial assumption that his problem was caused by an infection and that the prescribed medication had cleared it up seemed to have been verified. As my brother later recalled, “I was relieved because now I wouldn’t have to scope him.” Then suddenly he heard a voice within his brain saying, “No, go ahead. Scope him.” At this point he wasn’t sure who or what was the origin of the directive, but he had an overwhelming compulsion to comply.
He proceeded to scope the prostate gland but found nothing. Again, medical protocol dictated that this was the limit of where he needed to go diagnostically. As he prepared to end the exam, he heard the voice again, “No! No! The bladder, go into the bladder. Look there!” Although medically unjustified, he once again felt a great need to comply. He did and discovered there a cancerous tumor.
Several days later my brother successfully removed the tumor and for two years my son has been cancer-free. When I tried to thank him for saving my son, he admonished me not to thank him and firmly said, “It was Mom who spoke to me! She found the tumor.”
Mom would not allow any semblance of the pain or angst that she bore in her life to be visited on her son and so she reached across the veil of heaven to that little boy dancing on the kitchen countertop and smilingly assured me that she would always be there to watch over me.
“All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.” – Abraham Lincoln
Have an AWE-full Mother’s Day Weekend!
William J. “Bill” Bacque