Twelve years is a long time but there are times when I feel like it just happened...
On this date twelve years ago (Friday, March 2, 2001), my mother, Shirley Ann (Green) Zerbel, passed away. She was born in Menomonie, Wisconsin on May 25, 1947 to George Anton and Agnes Lucille (Johnston) Green. Just before her forth birthday, they moved from Eau Claire, Wisconsin to my hometown of Stoughton, Wisconsin. She graduated from Stoughton High School in 1965 and had decided she wanted to be a high school English teacher. She enrolled at the University of Wisconsin in Eau Claire but quit after a semester. She moved back to Stoughton and eventually got a job at the Wisconsin Department of Motor Vehicles, where she worked until she passed away. She married Thomas George Zerbel on Saturday, June 28, 1969 at the Methodist Church in Stoughton (the actual church still stands but it's no longer the location of the Methodist Church). I came along January 7, 1980. My mother officially became a single parent sometime in October 1982 and we moved (back) to Stoughton, where she raised me and I, too, graduated high school.
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| c. 1980 |
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| c. 1980 |
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| c. 1983 |
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| c. 1988 |
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| c. 1987 (in Deland, FL) |
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| Christmas 1987 or 1988 |
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| Spring 1993 in New Orleans, LA |
I miss you, mom. You were taken away from me far too soon.
