Ashley Jeane Woods – what’s in a name?

She was born in 1940 in England to Marjorie Lumb and a father she would not know because he was not around, she was a love child of Hitler’s siege on England. She grew up with her mother and her mother’s parents. She lived through a very abusive relationship in the home, specifically with her grandfather. After a short relationship with a military man she met in France she married and at 19 moved to the US. She started her family in 1963 with a daughter and finished with a son in 1968, there was a son in between in 1965. The marriage became fraught with issues and ended in 1975, she was 35 when she filed for divorce.

In late 1976, she met her second husband at a Parents Without Partners meeting in Delaware Ohio. After a short courtship, they were married and moved to his home, over 100 miles away. Her second husband was diagnosed with cancer and passed away in late 1985. She was, for the first time in her life, alone. Kids were gone, husband deceased. She experienced a wonderful transition to into an independent person that was not part of a team as wife or as mother to children. In 1991 she found a new man, her kids used words like “boy toy” and “cradle robber” but were happy for her, because she was happy. They were married 1996 and moved into Amish country north of Pittsburgh. Although her kids had long teased her about forgetting things and keeping lists about who she watched which movies with, in 2005 she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and in 2008 she move into an assisted living facility.

So what’s in a name, Ashley Jeane Woods started her life as Jeane Marina Lumb and when she married Marlin Alden Smith she becomes a Smith and mother of three. When she married for the second time, it was to John Robert Stephensky and she became Jeane Marina Stephensky and received another son, Jay Edward Stephensky. When John Robert Stephensky passed away, she drifted for a while and then found her true and independent self and she became a US citizen. When an alien becomes a citizen, they are allowed to pick any name they want and after much consideration, she picked Ashley Jeane Woods. She kept the “Jeane” part so she could still be Grandma Jeane to the grandchildren. When she married Harold Wimer, she had found she had truly become Ashley Jeane Woods and did not change her name. While married to Harold she did change her name again, kind of. By the time, she started writing for the newspapers and to other “email pal” she was comfortable enough with Ashley to start using AJ Woods or AJ.

In that name, there is an entire life story, a life that suffered through abuse as a child, a life that had her persevering through a tough first marriage that left her a single mother. A life that had her caring for and raising 4 children during her second marriage. A life that dealt her the loss of a spouse to cancer, I cannot imagine such a burden to bear. A life that afforded her the incredible experience of finding that she was Ashley Jeane Woods. Her life was so full of accomplishment that it would be impossible to list them here.

No matter what name she used she was my mom and I miss her.