Caroline Catherine Imboden

What lessons can I, Caroline Imboden’s son, extract from her now concluded life? What truths did she exemplify, and how shall her survivors remember her? What teachings did life offer her that she would have desired to communicate to us?
Caroline Catherine Imboden entered this world on February 27, 1935, born to parents Catherine and Joe Burke, new immigrants living in a Polish-American ghetto in Linden, New Jersey. Catherine had an unshakable (some of crueler judgement might say naïve) faith in her new country, the Catholic religion, and the value of honest work. Joe was a ne’er-do-well, best defined by his drinking and lying. A first rate alcoholic and a third rate con artist, he provides far better literary grist than my grandmother.
Grandpa Joe’s life taught mom that, in the eyes of many of us, truth is a flexible thing. Grandmother Catherine taught mom steadfastness of belief, despite the occasional oppositional incident (a clergyman gone wayward, for instance, or . . . .)
Or discovering that grandfather Joe, being unenamored of matrimony, had paid a friend to masquerade as a priest and “marry” him to Catherine. He announced this in court when Catherine finally grew tired of his profligate ways and sued for divorce. Having never been married, he maintained, exempted him from divorce and the legal obligations it imposed. The judge-a male version of Judge Judy, I take it-promptly responded “I rule from the bench that you were married, and now you are divorced.”
Thereafter Catherine and mom, and mom’s older sister Josephine and older brother Eugene (all now passed away as well) continued living together with a sizeable family of rats in a house across the street from a tavern. Sometimes confused bar patrons-too drunk to either find their way home or return to the drinking establishment-stumbled in the front door and were promptly ushered back out by a no-nonsense Catherine. In this environment mom began applying her earliest life lessons to her personal continuum. She learned to question authority and began valuing books for the independent thoughts they offered. She left the Catholic religion over a Catholic banned book (she disagreed with a priest about the proper penance for having read it). She attended Linden High School and became an officer in the Future Homemakers Club before earning her diploma and becoming a city librarian.
That’s when she who would become my mother met he who would become my father. An introduction by relatives brought Caroline and Joseph, (yes, another Joe), together. They talked. He asked her to a dance. She accepted. At the dance, she discovered a marvelous new drink laced with brandy. The dance hall being warm and the dances being strenuous, and she having witnessed the dangers of too much beer but not of brandy, resulted in her consummation of several of these marvelous concoctions. Soon she found herself giggling uncontrollably and announcing to Joe, “I can’t feel my face.” Horrified, dad took mom to an all night diner where they drank coffee and talked until he could safely return her home without facing Catherine’s wrath.
Afterward, both parties felt certain the other would never go out with them again, but Man being a social animal, they did, and, with time, there came a marriage and me. After me came no one, for mom and dad quickly realized that one colicky, vomity, poopy mess of a little human being was quite enough to keep them busy and worried to death (and the greatest thing was, they loved me despite all my nonsense).
A few years after my birth, my parents and I and Catherine moved to Florida. It was an immense leap of faith on their part-they had seen Florida only on a vacation- but they had friends here, which made the decision easier. Mom was always grateful to and for her many friends. She once attempted to write her own obituary to simplify things for her survivors, but gave up after quickly filling an entire page with the names of people that she wanted recognized and thanked from the first two decades of her life. I suspect a complete list would have proven little short of endless. Suffice it to say mom well understood John Donne’s meaning when he wrote his statement, “No man is an island.” She loved you all.
I will always remember my parents as they were in the 1960’s, the years immediately following the move: young, strong, seemingly capable of any attainment. So, too, will I always fondly remember the Florida they adopted. Boynton Beach had less than ten thousand residents, Congress Avenue was a two lane road wending between cow pastures, and Woolbright Road (then S.W. 15th Avenue) was paved for exactly three blocks west of Seacrest Boulevard. Beyond that a dirt road-connected to nothing-ran up a small hill to the few residences there. A boy could spend a summer afternoon rolling a tire down that dirt track, ever hopeful that this time it would wobble all the way to the pavement despite having failed on every previous attempt. 1960’s Florida was a good place to grow up, and my parents worked hard to maintain that positiveness in our home, despite the disruptions caused by my single child angst, school attendance angst, teenage angst, young adult angst, and any other angst a person might care to mention. In truth, I don’t know how they put up with me.
Our home was an oft-visited place, thanks largely to my Mother’s talents as hostess and domestic chef. On Saturdays, we arose early and hurried to accomplish those mandatory housekeeping chores because mom’s cooking tended to attract drop-in lunchtime guests. Following a lesson passed down from her mother, mom always made meals large enough to set out an extra plate. “When someone comes to your home, give them food,” Catherine had said. “It will make them happy.” Unsurprisingly, both my grandmother and my mother enjoyed Cab Calloway’s song, “Everybody eats when they come to my house.”
My friends, too, were welcome at the little family abode. Mom laughed with us, learned with us, sometimes challenged us, but did not chide us. She easily forgave our youthful indiscretions and gloried in our energy and accomplishments. Her attitude promoted so much socialness and joy in our open home that, many years later, after dad died and mom decided to sell the old place, when I looked back into the house one last time before closing and locking the door, I could have sworn the rooms rang with the many voices raised there in past laughter and merriment.
Joy . . . joy and the hope that springs from it were the lessons my mother most frequently extracted from and returned to the world. She was the child admonished for singing at the table, the young woman whose hope for a better life in Florida overcame her fear of leaving her family support up north, the young mother who juggled work and family seemingly without self-indulgent regrets, the supportive parent and wife, and the woman of generous spirit who recognized she must release her child from her tender grasp so that he, too, might pursue life on his own terms. She became the grandmother who purchased stuffed animals and toys because she liked them, then gave them away to the children of friends and relatives that fate delivered into her life. She was our family’s stalwart maintainer of the Christmas holiday because-well-decorations and presents and perogie parties were just so much fun.
And there was one other special lesson she offered me-my earliest summertime memory-mom taking me to a duck pond (it appeared a huge lake from my tiny human viewing angle), pointing to the sun-glistening water, and saying, “Remember this.” That winter, after the pond froze and ice skaters circled its hardened surface, she took me there again and asked “Do you remember the pond in the summer? Do you see how different it is now?”
Thus did I begin comprehending the seasons, the patterns of nature, and the creeping progression of time, against which we struggle and to which we must surrender . . . as have the souls who taught my parents their life lessons, and now, as have my parents, Joseph and Caroline, who taught me mine. By these lessons may they all be well remembered.