Patricia A. Pellow, 1943-2022
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Sunday came and went like any other recent weekend for me. Chores done inside the house, yard work done outside the house, a run down to Peru for hose couplers and clamps. I wasn’t in much of a hurry even though I have a backlog of things to do. It comes with the territory when you technically don’t own the house you live in or most of the things on the property under your feet with the pending completion of an estate on your back – never mind the struggle to work for a living and engage in life interests. Sometimes, you can only go through so many motions at once, and all I cared about on Sunday was that it was the first Mother’s Day my mother wasn’t here to enjoy. No gifts, no laughs, and no happiness were in store.
Pat, or Mom, or Patty P., or Momkoke – it depends on which phase of the last six years we’re talking about – died on December 26 due to complications from pneumonia. It is a common denouement for seniors who struggle with health conditions and a lack of physical activity. Hers was exasperated by depression, which had been weighing on her for decades, and dementia, which had been most likely brought on by advanced age and a severe bump to the head caused by a fall in early 2017. I bore witness to her decline in a way that I never got to see with my father, Bill, and it was paralleled by the wearing down of her husband, Carl, who passed away a few months before her. I won’t get into my observations and reality checks and minor regrets, other than to say it really saddened me in how the condition robbed her of the mechanics to independently do all the fun things that she once loved to do.
Born in Chicago and raised in the near west suburb of Stickney, Mom attended beauty school after graduating from high school and had designs on going to Illinois State University, but it never came together. She eventually met a Commonwealth Edison meter reader from Forest Park named William Pankoke through mutual friends and bowling partners, Bob and Honey Langbein, and they married in 1967. My mother settled in as a homemaker once my brother Eric and I came along.
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While Dad was dutiful on the clock for ComEd, often working long hours and on weekends during bad weather, Mom made the most of her time when she wasn’t taking care of our needs. She filled the hours with all manner of arts and crafts activities, sewing and knitting and embroidering, practicing on the organ, toll painting and acrylic painting, reading and writing, shopping and collecting, playing board games and video games, cooking good meals and baking wonderful goodies. She treated us to restaurants and friends’ houses for lunch and to visit “the Grandmas” back in Chicagoland. She wanted us to have a solid education, try new things, and pursue what inspired us. We did many family outings and they both gave us space to grow and explore. She was proud of her “good kids” and made sure everyone else knew it.
As I sit in her kitchen, every direction I glance is filled with details that point directly to Mom, who moved here with Dad in 1990 after he retired and we began college. Mendota was the farthest point that either of them had ever lived outside of Chicago and, to make it worth the haul from Aurora, they picked a neat 1940s cottage-style home and had three rooms and a porch added on. Mom and her friends took many round trips in advance to furnish and decorate it. The Pankokes remained here through the end of Dad’s life and then Carl arrived a year later. This became the Pellow home until it wasn’t able to accommodate them anymore. I’ve done my best to keep it afloat and have to shore it up greatly in the coming months.
A couple of days ago, I couldn’t help but think of a poem that I wrote for a class at Illinois Wesleyan University some 30 years ago called “Where She Was;” meant to evoke a hazy recollection, it pictures my grandmother Sophie as she quietly and slowly moves about her flat in Forest Park like a spirit. Mom loved that poem more than anything at the time and now, sadly, it’s déjà vu all over again.
After her health failed her at the house, Mom received care in assisted living for all of 2020, split between Oswego and Mendota, and then in a skilled nursing facility in Shabbona for all of 2021. She passed away in peace at Northwestern Medicine Kishwaukee Hospital of DeKalb and is survived by her two sons, her daughter-in-law Jamie, and her grandchildren Hope, Rose, and Adam. Her brother Robert died in 2016 in Florida, where his widow Sandra and several children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren still live. I helped our funeral director add some human touches to Mom’s obituary, which is available to read here. A memorial event for immediate family members and close friends is in the works. As you might imagine, there is so much more I could share about her, although it should probably be saved for another time and a different platform. Sometimes, you can only go through so many memories at once.
I’ll always love you more, Mom, even when you say you love me the most.
~ Jason Pankoke
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Patricia A. Pellow
December 29, 1943 – December 26, 2022
R.I.P.
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