Beechers Mom

A gay man's memoir of his mother-in-law

Beecher and his Mom, circa 1982.
Photo by David Alexander Nahmod

By David Alexander Nahmod

May 7, 2006

Dolores Goodwin, my Mother in Law, was born on April 29, 1930. She passed away in February 2006, after a life of hardship that she did not deserve.

Dolores lived her entire life in Lichtfield County, Connecticut, mainly in the town of Burlington, though her childhood was spent in neighboring Bristol. She never travelled. I don't know if she ever even left the State of Connecticut.

I met Dolores in the Fall of 1999, shortly after I had met her son Beecher. She lived in a run down, two room shack. It had been her home for nearly 50 years, and in it, she had raised four children. The house had no bathroom. On cold winter nights, where temperatures below zero were not uncommon, Dolores and her family made their way through the snow, to the outhouse, about 50 steps from their front door.

We were considered poor when I grew up in Brooklyn, New York. We lived in a walk up apartment in a non-descript red brick building in a very blue collar neighborhood. It was the kind of neighborhood Archie and Edith Bunker would have felt at home in. As a child I resented the having to watch our black & white portable television. I wanted a color TV. I wanted us to have a car. Alas, we could not afford such luxuries.

But my parents, my brother and I had six rooms to call home. We had a bathroom. We had a living room.

Until I met Dolores at her two room shack, where a family of six had lived, I never knew what real poverty was.

Dolores, Bless her Heart, turned that shack into a warm and loving home. For nearly three decades she worked two full time jobs. No matter what obstacles lay before her, Dolores made sure the Goodwin kids had food and clean clothes every day. And they had a loving mother who raised them to be loving, caring individuals.

When Beecher took me to meet his Mom that brisk Fall day, I must admit that the sight of the house shocked me. At that point, I was living alone in a cramped, one bedroom apartment in Hoboken NJ. But, I had a bathroom, comfortable chairs to sit in, and Hoboken, the blue collar birthplace of Frank Sinatra, had become a gentrified yuppie paradise. I had moved up in the world.

Snob that I had become, I could not imagine living in that tiny shack for one year, or even one week, much less a half century.

Then I was ushered in to the all purpose little room that served as entrance foyer, kitchen, dining room, living room. There was a small, wooden table with four chairs around it, the only places to sit. And there was Dolores, a woman pushing 70 whose face revealed all the hard knocks life had dealt her.

I was a gay man, there to meet my boyfriend's mother, in a town not known for it's tolerance of homosexuals. And I was warmly embraced, and fed one of the best chicken dinners I ever had.

I was 43 years old, and this was the first time I had ever spent time as part of a family, completely accepted as the gay man I am.

Beecher often said that his mother was his best friend. As I watched them engage in small talk, I could see the deep bond and love that existed between them. Once upon a time, Beecher had been married. He had two teenage boys. His marriage had ended when he came out.

Dolores accepted him as a straight man. She accepted him as a gay man. She loved and embraced him unconditionally and without judgement, as she accepted all who crossed her path.

Once I asked her how she was able to so easily accept me in her son's life. I had come from a family of judgemental religious fanatics, a family that rejected who I was. Lictfield County was no better.The area's gay community was uniformly closeted in the face of the hostility they faced. This was a part of the country where public use of the word "faggot" was socially acceptable.

How did this unassuming woman who had never travelled become so open minded?

"I was raised not to judge people," was all she said.

In her 72nd year, Dolores, now confined to a wheelchair, moved with her husband to a senior's retirement community in Burlington. The last few times I saw her, it was there. It was a real home, a spacious one bedroom. She had a living room. She had a bathroom. She had a couch! She spent her last three years there. I thank God that, as her health rapidly declined, she at last had a comfortable place to hang her hat.

Dolores spent her last few months in a hospice. When the end came, she was surrounded by her family, and she was at peace with the life she had lived.

For as long as I live, I will cherish the memory of Dolores Goodwin, and the time I spent with her in that little shack in Burlington, Connecticut.

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