On The Anniversary of My Mother's Death

To the little girl I used to be, Ethel Maria Sepulveda Lent (my mother) was a series of contradictions. She was born on an island, but never learned to swim. Personally conservative, she was politically liberal.

She was a strong early advocate of sex education in the public schools even though she  disapproved strongly of premarital sex and abortion and the school system  is ambivalent about moral judgment.

I don’t think it was until I had to write her memorial that I could examine her life as a journalist should. What I thought were contradictions were simply life in the context of her era.

Ethel Lent was born on Dec. 5, 1922 in Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico, not long after her only brother Eugenio, to teacher Antonio Sepulveda and his young wife, Monserrate Rivera. Tragedy came quickly to the family when Monserrate died in childbirth; my mother was only two. Antonio never recovered enough from the loss of his wife and infant to raise his older two children as a single father.

One of mom’s earliest memories was of her aunt with 10 children not being willing to make it a dozen under one roof. They dressed my mother up and took her to the orphanage: there was no room.

Therefore, the care of two little children was left to a spinster Aunt. On scholarship, for high school- mom attended the exclusive Blanche Kellogg Institute, associated with the female equivalent to the male Ivy League colleges — Mt. Holyoke. The virtues of Christian values and temperance were in addition to the public school curriculum were taught in English.

In 1943, Mom received her bachelor’s degree from the Polytechnic Institute of Puerto Rico. Now know as the Inter Americana University, the Christian founded institution was dedicated to being a cultural bridge between North and Latin America. From the school's web page, this school is “devoted to preparing students in all branches of humanistic endeavor; social and scientific.”

Mom was offered a scholarship to continue her education to be a physical therapist; however the same opportunity was not offered her brother. Her family would not let her accept. Instead, mom got a job in a bank. She had a desk and was paid less than what a carton of cigarettes costs today for her weekly salary.

World War II broke out and on Sept. 6, 1944, Mom flew to Jacksonville, Florida to enlist in the United States Navy. She became an occupational therapist at Bethesda, MD. That is where she met my dad, the late George Daniel Lent.

He was a serviceman who landed in the hospital with a broken arm. His doctor thought they were a cute couple; he kept my dad in the hospital a little longer. He wanted to be a lawyer. Upon discharge, George brought Ethel to California to meet his family. 

They married Oct. 6, 1948. Nine months and two weeks later my beautiful sister, Gina, was born. Next: Candace, who was stillborn. Then me. Last, my genius baby sister, Marina. Dad never finished college. 

Early in their marriage, Mom worked in a lab. But they preferred she be home raising the girls, giving us guidance, filling spare moments with volunteer work. She didn’t drive and we were generally not allowed babysitters, so we frequently were brought along to PTA meetings and  food banks. 

Gina and I worked shifts at Whittier Hospital as candy stripers under mom’s direction.

As we girls came closer to college age, mom headed back to college for fresh credentials. She said too much had changed in chemistry. She earned her Master's in Spanish and her teaching credential from CSULB.

In this order: she bought a car, learned to drive, and returned to the workforce as a high school teacher, a job which she retired from with a pension that cost of living adjustments drove up to just over $500 month when she passed away 31 years later.

My father died in 1993. Mother never dated or remarried. Instead, she focused all her love on her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. Her garden, until health separated her from it.

My mother’s health was never what we refer to as “good.” It is a miracle of God’s love that we got to enjoy her company for as long as we did. At 4:15 in the afternoon, when her soul took flight, it was with Gina, Kenny and I at her side, praying for her safe passage to heaven.

As much as the family regularly argued politics, mom was pretty mum about religion until her  waning months, when she opened up about matters of faith. If she had not told me that she considered herself a Christian, the past year would have been far more difficult. 

The faith that she is now, at long last, getting to know her own mother and the sister none of us ever met is a comfort. That her earthly body is no longer bound to a wheel chair and tied to routines of pills and shots — for her, I am happy.