ARMCHAIR ARCHIVES – A son’s debt to his mother is never fully repaid

Posted on May 10, 2026 in Armchair Archives, Rothenburger // 0 Comments

This column was first published Saturday, Aug. 10, 1996 in The Kamloops Daily News. It is republished today on the occasion of Mother’s Day, almost 30 years after the death of my mom, Nora May (McLean) Rothenburger.

I REMEMBER, when I was a kid, sitting at the dinner table fussing over a helping of green beans.

“Never mind,” my mother said, “just eat them. They’re good for you.”

That’s about the harshest thing my mom ever said to me. Just eat them. In the 87 years she lived, I can’t remember one single moment — except maybe for those awful beans — of unhappiness between me and my mom.

She died Monday, slipping away quietly while she slept, and I cannot put into words the pain I feel. I know my brother Bernie and other family members and friends are going through the same grief over the loss of this wonderfully kind, generous woman.

All mothers are special in their way, but ours was the best in the world. In her younger years Nora May McLean Rothenburger was a beauty; at 87 she was even more beautiful.

Despite her gentleness, she had a strength of character I’ve seldom see. During the past year, as her health declined, our mom’s resilience, sense of humor and will to live never failed to renew our admiration for her.

She was born, raised and died in Kamloops, though she lived elsewhere for a good many years in mid-life. She was one of 11 children of Duncan Joseph McLean, of the famous “Wild McLeans” family, and Edith Eugenia Wilkie, of another well-known pioneer family.

Her father once killed an American outlaw in a gunfight after the bad guy drew on him. I never tired of hearing that story about the granddad I never knew.

My mom grew up on her parents’ ranch at Black Pines, and on the ranch of her grandparents, Alex and Margaret McLean, also at Black Pines.

After Grade 8, she had to go to work. She worked at various farms, at a cannery, and in a candy store. After she married our dad, Ben, she worked with him as bookkeeper in the garage business, and later at their fishing camp.

As a kid, I guess I was undisciplined at times, which didn’t sit well with my father. Mom tried to keep me out of trouble with him, and it’s fair to say she understood me better than he did.

Not that I didn’t love my dad, but he took a dim view of some of my escapades. He and I didn’t communicate well.

Mom, though, was always there whenever I needed cheering up, or needed mending.

Though she was a working mom she was devoted to her two boys, never hesitating to sacrifice her own interests for ours. Here pride in us was unfailing. Every scrawled drawing, primitive ash tray and ugly plant stand we brought home from school was precious to her, and several choice pieces held places of honour in her home right up to the day she died.

I made a vow, after dad died three and a half years ago, to always respect and protect her and, most of all, never neglect her. Fortunately, she had a great number of people who cared about her: sisters and cousins, neighbours and friends. They were wonderful support, and she stubbornly succeeded in living on her own until her death.

Yet I can’t help thinking that, if I’d given her more hugs, told her more often I loved her, spent just a little more time with her, done more, I could have repaid her more fully for all she did for me and meant to me.

I wish I’d gotten to her hospital bed five minutes sooner so I could have been with her at the end. I wish lots of things. That she could have been with us longer, that I’d had more time to repay a son’s debt — an extension on the loan, so to speak. I wanted her to live to be 90, then 95, then a hundred. And then more.

I still hear her voice, see her smile, every day, and will for the rest of my life. Though neither she nor dad was religious, she believed they would be together again. I want to believe that, too.

“I don’t know what I’d do without you guys,” mom often told me and Bernie. And we’d assure her we didn’t know what we’d do without her, either.

Now, we must learn. But it’s going to be hard.

Mel Rothenburger is a former regular contributor to CFJC-TV and CBC radio, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, writes for the Kamloops Chronicle and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, and was a Webster Foundation Commentator of the Year finalist. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.