Edith Putnam Michelson was a beautiful woman with a 1000-watt smile. She also had a rocking sense of humor and loved nothing more than a well-planned–and sometimes spontaneous–practical joke.

She threw great parties, was a classic flirt, danced through hip pain, and sometimes fell into very deep and dark depressions.

These were tough times for our Angel–and which baffled my sister Gayle, our dad and me. It was usually a sense of betrayal that brought her down and made her wish she could just run away. Gayle and I have quietly discussed this over the years, and I think we would both agree that while her periodic depression was certainly a treateable disease, there was also much truth and history that might have triggered these episodes.

And little of it had anything to do with any of us.

It was more the perils of growing up in a very poor and divorced family in the depths of the Great Depression. And being abandoned by her mother at the sweet and changing age of 13. It as a secret she hid–and buried–for much of her life.

A brilliant survivor, she moved with her sister to California after World War II and even managed to attend a business college in the Los Angeles area. A few years after the war, she married Lt. Robert Michelson, a dashing Army Air Corps pilot, and the two of them brought forth Gayle Michelson Dreisbach and me (in reverse order).

But none of what I’ve shared show evidence of Edith Putnam Michelson being an Angel.

She was a healer

.Friends and family knew that her touch could lessen pain–and often asked for her help. Since her slow death in 2006, I have often wanted to feel her hand on my brow, my arm. Just one more time. And to hear her soothing angel voice.

She had a heart the size of Texas

and several times during my childhood tried to adopt children in danger of abandonment. She initiated drives to gather decent school clothing for children in need and allowed an assortment of orphans into our home including a baby possum, kittens, a goat, chickens and birds. As well as five needy little children at one time.  She hated suffering and did these things with neither government nor church support.

She just did these things…because. Because that’s just who she was.

I could probably write a book about this beautiful and big-hearted woman who rose from dust of the Depression to becoming a Who’s Who Among American Women.  But mostly I want to share a birthday wish to a brilliant woman who has the love and admiration of her husband, two daughters, six grandsons and many friends on both sides of existence.

Happy Birthday Mom!

—Roberta Murphy 

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In the blogging world, an absence of six weeks is almost unforgivable.

But had I draped a black cloth over it on April 24, 2009 you might have understood. That’s the day my Dad and best friend, Bob Michelson, died in Encinitas, CA after a lengthy illness.

It’s really tough to become an orphan when the last parent exits–especially if the relationship has been a close one. I shared this loss equally with my sister Gayle, in Houston, who also misses the sage advice and counsel of our patriarch.

Our mother, Edith Michelson, died in 2006. Her

husband of 59 years and a heroic pilot of three wars, Retired Lt. Col Robert Michelson, would spend the next three years of his life gently encouraging the dreams of his two daughters and five grandsons. On a personal level, Bob Michelson in his late 80’s also abandoned a lifetime of agnostic views, and to our absolute amazement, developed a wondrous faith in God the last two weeks of his life.

He was also enormously curious about new technologies. Dad was the first person I knew to download Window’s Vista–and wished for stem cell technologies that might one day cure his own illness as well as those of others. He loved our country, watched Wall Street closely, was an Astros and Padres fan, and hated Nancy Pelosi. Dad’s idea of a perfect meal would be a bowl of spicy bean soup and a crusty piece of bread. He was modest, generous to a fault, and promised to be a guardian angel for us all.

We miss him terribly.

And that is probably why my writing gears have been frozen this past month or so. And though our real estate business continued and even flourished, I just couldn’t bring myself to write about San Diego real estate, market conditions or luxury homes–and remain indebted to my husband and partner Mike as well as associates in our company who so kindly aided me and our clients during this personal and unprecedented period of grieving.

I spoke with a Philadelphia food writer a week or so ago and she could not understand how I could abandon writing during this grieving period–because writing would be her salvation.

I didn’t write because I feared alienating you with my sadness and the process of putting a deceased parent’s affairs into final order. At the same time, I didn’t feel able to write about the things I usually favor because of this big life transition. A simple diagnosis might be writer’s block. And that is something that just has to work itself out.

Those writing gears, though, have begun to thaw and life’s rhythms are returning to normal. Laughter is easier, tears have subsided and reconnecting with friends–and you– is now a priority. It feels good to be home. –Roberta Michelson Murphy

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