TERRY MOSHER
TOP OF THE TOWN – I’m not crying right now, but I will be soon enough. As I write this the guy who was my mentor, my teacher of life is struggling to take a breath in a hospital in Wellsville, N.Y. Ray Mosher is 92. He has had congested heart failure for several years and the end is here, maybe as I write this. Ray, or Raymo as I call him, has been the most solid and sturdy man I have known (other than my father, who was something else). He and his late wife Peggy (she died July 4, 2015) had 14 children, 13 of whom survive. Together they raised a wonderful family, all of whom graduated college. I actually lived with my brother and Peggy for about two years in the mid-60s in Tulsa, Oklahoma when they had 6 children. Those were good times even though my brother held a job, took classes at the University of Houston and did most of the cooking for the family. When he wasn’t busy we would throw the football around with the kids. One day he and I went to give blood so we could get a ticket to a University of Tulsa football game (Jerry Rhome had been the quarterback there the year before). Raymo warned me that I would probably pass out when I gave blood. I wasn’t the one who passed out. Raymo did. It wasn’t long after I left Tulsa that Raymo and Peggy picked up and moved to Richburg, NY. They purchased the biggest house around. It has a big barn, four aces of lawn and deer that come down off the hill to visit in the late afternoons. Raymo’s son Greg has been sending me photos of his dad lying in a bed in the comfort room at the hospital and they are disturbing. It’s not the way I want to remember my brother. Greg assures me that he is not in pain (because of the medicine he is being given), but I shake with discomfort while looking at the photos. I normally don’t talk about my family. All I want to say is my brother and Peggy raised a wonderful family where love and sharing is tied for first on their agendas. The two oldest boys — Greg and Dave – rose to the top in their professions working for refineries. They didn’t escape tragic. Greg and his wife lost their oldest son to accident and Dave lost his wife to heart attack. Now they are going to lose their dad. I remember Raymo from his high school days when he was an excellent athlete who I once saw hit a home run over the steeple of the Presbyterian Church just over the right field fence. I still remember him coming back from Air Force basic training bearing a brown paper sack full of Cherry Bomb firecrackers that he gave me. Those firecrackers could blow up a mailbox (don’t ask me how I know), punch a big hole in the ground and when thrown off the Steam Valley Bridge into the Allegheny river would generate blow back that had water splashing up to the bridge. I tossed a few at a neighbor kid who I didn’t like, making sure not to hit him but just scare him. It did. I rode with Raymo one wintery day in dad’s new car when he was a senior in high school and I was in the third grade He spun the car around and around on the icy and snowy road while telling me not to tell dad. I didn’t. When I was a drinking man I used to sit around with Raymo and after a few beers argue anything. He was older and always right, of course (but he really wasn’t). Raymo has been wishing for a long time that he was ready to leave this Earth. He’s been going downhill for a few years. But he is tough as nails and despite wanting to leave he’s still hanging in there. But probably not for much longer. I will cry when he finally gives up the ghost. I know he will be better off where he’s going. But it’s painful for those he leaves behind, especially his family. It hurts me knowing an era is about to end. Like our dad, Raymo loved to work. He would get up early and read the newspaper with a cup of coffee and toast and then head out to the barn or lawn to fix something, or make something more beautiful. Every year he and a friend would go into the woods and drag out logs and cut them up for firewood for New York winters. The large lawn always had to be cut and trimmed, the house painted, the cars washed, and when it came to 4 o’clock it was time to be rewarded for all the work by heading to the country club or legion and have a couple beers or a Manhattan and talk BS with his friends. Soon Raymo will be at rest, his body residing in the Mosher section of the local cemetery. He will lie next to his beloved Peggy. His name is already etched in stone and the final date will be added. As they lower his casket into the ground a large group of people, most of them his and Peggy’s family, will slowly wilt away and my tears will flow like the Allegheny River. Bye Raymo. Thanks for everything. God is waiting for you.