Doris Marie Janke

Doris was our mom. She was complicated, and as a result, so were our relationships with her.

Mom was sensitive and fragile. In her life, she suffered several hurts, caused by people close to her, that changed the trajectory of her life. They largely defined who she was. Mom carried those hurts with her until the end.

As a result, Mom retreated from people generally, only allowing a few people close, but always guarded for fear of being hurt, again. Avoiding confrontation in relationships, Mom cut people from her life, feeling that they wronged her somehow and she knew how to hold a grudge or slight: but for those she allowed to be close, her love, empathy and compassion were deep. Mom felt and cared genuinely for the people who she let into her life. Her sisters Carol and Joyce were included in this group. She was sincere and honest, though sometimes interpreted as “salty” by others – we enjoyed that about Mom.

Mom felt all of her emotions deeply, including love and anger, both of which forged her identity, along with a lifelong struggle with depression. She carried an enormous capacity for love, although often conditional, even for her children. Those were hard lessons for us to learn.

Highly intelligent and strongly opinionated, she did not suffer fools although she was largely ruled by her emotions rather than her intellect. Mom did not pretend that she was perfect and placed a high importance on authenticity and genuineness – traits that we both see and value in ourselves. Omitting the hard parts or embellishing the complementary would have been unacceptable. She lived her own life, to the best that she could, and that was enough for her. And for us.

At times, Mom made it hard to love her – but we did, and at times, did so in spite of herself. Towards the end, we reminded Mom that we knew how much she loved us and that she was loved by us. We have gratitude for the perseverance and vulnerability with which Mom chose to live her life – we recognize that much of “who we are” today came from the best parts of Mom. We benefit from the way she chose to live her life, and the way she loved us. Thank you, Mom.

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