My mom was born on Nov. 7, 1942 in Inglewood, CA at the Storks Nest Hospital
Carol Diane Slavin the oldest of six; three boys and three girls, Born and raised in the Catholic Church she sang in the Latin choir at age 8. Her mother was a fanatic about catechism attendance.
There was never any question whether or not Jesus had died on the cross for our sins and has risen from the dead. My mother was one of those people I have always held in awe, who had blind faith, which you could not shake.
She is survived by Her Mother and Father, Elaine & Richard Slavin Sr. Her sisters Teresa Moe & Mimi Mathis and 1 brother Danny Slavin as well as myself and my three children Brianna Tennant, Jeremiah Tennant and Isaiah Crane as well as 1 almost 2 great grandchildren Jayden Farinella Tennant and Brianna’s unborn baby Lillian Diane Hopkins due August 21st, 2011.
There have been quite a few tragedies in her family. Her middle brother Christopher was killed at age 23 flying an experimental airplane my grandpa built and it was on her youngest brother Danny’s birthday. Her mom’s sister, her aunt Marilyn was murdered 4 days later in the Virgin Islands. In 1979 her sister in law Mary Esther died of complications from gastric bypass surgery. In 1987 on Christmas Day, we almost lost Carol to a Cerebral Brain Aneurysm she spent 10 days in I.C.U. waiting for the brain swelling to go down so they could perform the surgery to put a clip in her head. In total she was hospitalized a month before returning home although not quite her old self. Next in 1991, my Dad’s Father died from three kinds of cancer 10 years after having a severe stroke, which left him with paralysis on his right side. In 2001, her mother in law died following surgery for a broken hip. The biggest tragedy was when the love of her life for the past 43 years my father Daniel Tennant died of secondary colorectal cancer metastasized to his liver on Sep.28, 2004 only 2 months after our homestead of 29 years was foreclosed on.
Not even 6 Months after my father’s death my mother was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer she did not want to have a full mastectomy and opted to shrink the tumor and have a lumpectomy followed by chemo and suppressant drugs which she quit taking due to what she called a lack of sufficient evidence that they worked, well they must have because not long after she was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer metastasized to the liver it was like de ja vú for me of my fathers diagnoses. At first, she was ready to give up; I encouraged her to fight for the sake of her grand kids and myself. She fought a long time and I am sure in more pain than she allowed us to know she was in, when we asked why not ask the Dr. if you can up the meds she would say “I don’t want to be in la la land.”
Carol’s fondest wish ever since the California lottery started was of course to win! She wanted to buy me a car and a house and go “shopping betty shopping” as she called it and to be debt free. Since moving to Fresno she had a new goal for the money if she were to win she was going to buy a patch of land and build pastor Sam and the Grove a church she wanted to help advertise and promote the church and our dynamic pastor but mostly she wanted to tell everyone about the Celebrate Recovery program which along with God helped her to be free of a nearly life long dependency on alcohol.
None of these things ever shook her beliefs or faith not even the death of her oldest brother Richard Slavin Jr. who died of oral cancer in 2009 after a lengthy battle with this horrible disease.
I have always been one to question everything to speculate and try to see all aspects of a situation, which is why my mom always amazed me with every struggle she and my dad faced she was never a gloomy gus although she was not exactly an optimist but she never said “why God” “What did I do to deserve this” She believed life was hell here on earth.
Early on in life, she did fall away from the church around the age of 19 when she met my dad. Church did not compliment her lifestyle at that point, working toward her career goals which were rooted in the fashion Industry of Los Angeles she believed the world was her oyster, I think she was the worlds oyster with a priceless gift inside and so did my dad, I am going to read something he wrote for her on her birthday in 1967:
Titled: The Find Carol Slavin
“The girl who’s setting Los Angeles aflame with her witty and perceptive fashion writing. The girl who smoke’s Sherman’s given to her by Rudy Gernrich: who puts Mr.Pants’ George Stuart at ease by interviewing him at the Beverly Hills Hotel; who has exchanged some of the best no comments in journalism with the likes of Irene Kasmer and Pat Neilan. Wherever she goes heads turn, eyes flash, and tongues move. She is setting the pace. She is on top and still young enough to enjoy it. To find Carol Slavin is to find a find. She is what Los Angeles is all about.”
I wanted to share with you the parts of her life that made her to me otherworldly. Her writing career began with the La Mirada Lamplighter in La Mirada California where she attended high school at Excelsior Union and was an active member of the Teenage club. She also worked for the Chamber of commerce in La Mirada while waiting to pursue her real dream being a fashion columnist she was assistant advertising director for two fashion trade publications Fashion Week and the California Apparel News and California Stylist as well as California Trade Publications, she coordinated publicity for some major corporations and also served as publicity chairman for L.A.’s fashion group which is an international organization of women executives. In addition, she was director of advertising and publicity for Daisy of California, which manufactured the hang ten label. All this and she was my mother, she later became fashion editor of a national fashion trade magazine, she hob knobbed with the likes of Sonia Rykiel, Ralph Lauren, Givenchy, Karl Lagerfeld, Carey Grant even Erin Magnin of the I. Magnin department stores. She attended store openings like Gucci and for her the cocktail circut was the norm. My mother loved clothes by Liz Claiborne and Channel so I took it as high praise from my mother the couturier when she put away her Dooney and Burke for a purse I had sewn for her. She always had a very chic air about her she was very much a sophisticant unlike I have ever seen before she was regal and stylish, witty and feminine and of course persistent to put it mildly… In the summer of 1979 the city mouse, became the country mouse when we moved from the rat race to God’s little acre in rural central California where she and my father attempted on several occasions to start up their own companies and try and launch national product lines. To no avail and one failed attempt after another but still they kept trying; meanwhile on the side my father had always wanted to open a bar & restaurant after the second one of those failed also due to my fathers money managing skills were not very responsible but as he would say “he who dies with the most toys wins.” So when we got money it was here and then gone. They were on the brink of financial ruin many times my father was a financial finagler robbing Peter to pay Paul I believe that all of the stress combined with the drinking a lot of drinking… took a toll on both of their health I believe they were the major contributing factors and studies have linked alcohol to both types.
No matter what life dealt my mom no matter what church she went to or if she went she never ever wavered in her belief that she was eventually going to go be with Jesus at some point. One night via the telephone with one of my friends moms who was a foursquare born again Christian she gave her life again to the lord and accepted him as her savior. I do not want to bore you any further with the trivial details about our lives or the daily chaos that was a constant part of it. I will tell you this she was always a loving, loyal, faithful, considerate, compassionate, generous and talented. She was a daughter, sister, aunt, wife, mother, grandmother, friend, as well as a dedicated career woman and employee. If someone needed something and she had the power to do something about it she would, even at her own expense.
This is the beginning of the end…
My mother’s death you see has particularly hit me very hard because for all but 2 years of my whole life I have lived with or next door to my mom. She and I were not unprepared that she was dying, due to her terminal cancer; it was the abruptness of the onset of her death we were unprepared for. We went to her Dr. appointment on a Monday and had been given two choices one more chemo or some quality time, we opted for the chemo she wasn’t ready to die or give up. So we were supposed to start chemo two weeks from that appointment and by that Wednesday she was in a lot of pain in her abdomen and jokingly asked “ don’t I look pregnant?” Jon, Aaron, and I just looked at each other we knew it wasn’t good, According to my aunt its called acseites it is the failing of the liver. I encouraged her to ask the doctor, somewhere inside me I had a feeling and I’d had it for awhile but didn’t want to speak it. Friday was upon us and she still felt very bad but she hadn’t had chemo in five weeks and usually when she had not in a while, she was in more pain. I knew that is was a three day weekend and if she didn’t see her doctor she would be in agony all weekend, well no doctor was available so her doctors office said go to the E.R. and they would be able to drain the fluid which was filling up her abdomen. We hadn’t had a vehicle since December 11 I had to arrange a ride for her with my sister in law Renae. During the time with out a vehicle we both became so depressed and tired of looking at these four walls knowing without chemo the
Cancer was probably ravaging her. We secured funds for a vehicle but it wasn’t a lot and we searched when we could. My mom sat in the St. Agnes E.R. where she waited for seven and a half hours waiting to get some relief from her pain and discomfort yet there she sat waiting… She was admitted and then spent aprx. 6 days in the hospital she had two or three procedures to drain the fluid and then we waited for the hospice evaluation meanwhile I searched for a car I could afford that was dependable so many times my dads car would break and leave him stranded on chemo day… denial was still in my head and my heart knew this car may get me to visit her but she probably would never ride in it. I noticed that her moments of lucidity were few for me so I began to prepare the house for her homecoming I shopped for what I thought she would want to eat and made
Jell-O and dream whip and apple pie but really wasn’t prepared for what was to come she ate almost nothing and spoke even less I was no longer her daughter I was Gwendolyn whoever she was I will never know, she was mad at me I was the nag that kept bugging her to eat and wake up. I stared at her a lot in disbelief of the fact that this was happening and so fast, there was a lucid moment where she sat up and said “I didn’t know this would be so hard and it all happened so fast, but this is taking so long.” it was as if she had read my mind. Since the moment she left for the hospital I have been a big knot of frayed nerves I feel like my insides have been kneaded like dough over and over everyday since. I am your poster child of grief. I have never felt like this before and I know she wouldn’t want me to. The 6 days she was home from the hospital were filled with family and church family and hospice and if it weren’t for them and my children and my husband Aaron who was strong when I was no longer. Also for my Father in law who made arrangements for the things I could barely think about I would not have been able to do any of it and especially without God who mercifully sent people who were loving and well equipped to provide comfort for her. There was little for me… it was like a whirlwind I couldn’t seem to catch my breath. I tried to make her time here as calm and painless as possible but with Isaiah who needed me as badly as my mother I was torn I kept thinking I think I can, I know I can, I can’t !
She never said that to me, I had asked her the day before she went to the hospital to watch Isaiah so I could go find us a car to save her life. This wasn’t about saving her life it never was, it was only about precious time, just a little time we had three years extra but it’s never enough and when everything is ok you don’t want to do or say those things you should because you don’t want to spoil the moment. Say it, Do it when you feel moved to, because you may not have another chance… My Mother, my very beautiful Mother, strong Momma, and brave Mommy passed away on March 2nd 2011.
