(This is the longer, revised edition, 12 January 2026.)

I have been captivated by the thoughtful, insightful, and often brilliant writing on what I will call authentic womanhood versus feminism by such Substack contributors as Elisabeth Stone and Abigail Austin. In fact, after reading Elisabeth Stone’s “Born to Be a Feminist,” especially the part about her grandmother’s “bitterness and poison” about not doing “her own thing” and instead settling down into marriage and family life, I could not help but see the sharp contrast between such a perspective on life compared to that of my mother, whom we only recently buried after she passed away at ninety-six-years of age. I thought it might be profitable to share a smidgeon of my mother’s story. And so I do so on the anniversary of the day she gave birth to me, 12 November 1960, sixty-five years ago.

Margaret Mary Costello was born in 1929 in Weaver, Minnesota. Her father, Patrick Edward Costello (Ed) was a hard-working, educated, intelligent, dignified, and devout Irish Catholic, who attended Mass on Sunday and holy days, prayed his rosary daily, and did not drink because he did not like beer and he feared that he might like whiskey too much. Her mother, Vera (nee Odell) was an intelligent, educated, kind, complicated woman, a convert to the Catholic Faith, whose past included some traumatic events that may have contributed to some level of neurosis. Margaret grew up with one sibling, her beloved sister, Pat, (who would also attend the College of St. Catherine on scholarship, become a librarian, and who, though two years younger, would marry three years earlier and also have four daughters and three sons). At a young age, Margaret’s teacher walked her home to tell her parents that she should move up a grade. At seventeen she attended a leading Catholic women’s college on an academic scholarship. She graduated with a degree in library science and English and embarked on an eight-year odyssey of work, service, and adventure that many a feminist might have envied. And yet, she never considered herself a feminist.

Photographs of Margaret before she became Mom made us wonder at her pitching hay, riding a horse, wearing an Inuit parka in Alaska, standing atop the continental divide, holding a shotgun in one hand and a bird she had bagged in the other. We remember paraphernalia from her former life: a view finder with slide reels of her travels in the west, Mickey Mouse ear hats, an Inuit cup-and-ball game. It was not to prove something that she excelled in academics, edited the newspaper, served as senior class president, enjoyed football, ventured out to the Iron Range, Green Bay, California, and Alaska. She never renounced men, or marriage, or children. She just lived her life with intrepidness, wonder, and faith, hope, and love. In fact, she once told me that she never had any desire to be a feminist because the men in her life had treated her so well. Of course, her unwavering commitment to the Catholic Faith influenced her experience and outlook.

She just lived her life with intrepidness, wonder, and faith, hope, and love.

At twenty-eight, she settled in Stillwater, Minnesota, where she met Jim Ritzer, also a devout Catholic, whom she married and with whom she raised seven children. What she thought of marriage and family might well be summed up by a conversation I had with her one day upon returning home from kindergarten after I had for the first time met someone—call him Billy—whose parents were divorced.

“Billy’s parents are divorced.”

“Oh, that’s very sad.”

“Would you and Dad ever get divorced?”

“No.”

“How do you know?”

“We took vows.”

“Billy’s parents took vows too.”

“We meant them.”

Any doubts I may have had about the earthly permanence of my parents’ sacramental union were thus dispelled (see also “One Big Family”).

Another memory was aroused when my sainted sister Mary was trying to coordinate a day for Mom’s funeral that would accommodate all seven of us siblings and families, especially a sister in Montana who had only recently undergone serious surgery. Mary was concerned about whether there could be an open-casket wake over a month after Mom had died. I said to Mary, “Well, you know Mom’s opinion on the subject.” Mary said, “No, what was it?” So I recounted what my mother (at least half Irish) had opined on the subject when she and I were going to attend a funeral for a relative some forty years or so before:

Oh, the Irish and their wakes. They have the casket open and everyone comes up and says, “Doesn’t she look wonderful?” No, she looks dead. Put me in a pine box. Cover it with the lid. Hold the funeral. Put me in the ground and throw dirt over me.

This put Mary at ease, though we did hold an open-casket wake and, ironically, Mom did look so wonderful that I and several other people remarked that we thought she would at any moment open her eyes, sit up, and speak to us.

Full though her life was, with plenty of joys and wonders, it also involved challenges, sufferings, and heartaches. She had several health challenges and surgeries, including a perforated ulcer that was misdiagnosed for several years as “change of life” that destroyed her duodenum and involved chronic intense pain that took its toll on her and the family until finally discovered and corrected by surgery. (One doctor had said to her, “I don’t know what your problem is; I met your husband and he seems like a nice guy.” She said that if she had not been doubled over, she would have hit him.) She relied on her intrinsic Catholic faith to forge her way through all of it.

Margaret was not perfect, as she was well aware. Like the saints, she knew she was a sinner.

Margaret was not perfect, as she was well aware. Like the saints, she knew she was a sinner. But she had the courage to give herself in love to God and His Church and, through its Sacrament of Matrimony, to her husband and the family she formed with him (see also “Making Room and the Courage to Love”). Her self-awareness surfaced once, back in the 90s, when I told her about a television program I had seen about the common characteristics of those who live long lives. When I mentioned that one of them was the ability to let things roll off one’s back, she laughed and said something like, “Then, I’m sunk.” And yet she learned well enough to do so that she lived to be ninety-six. Of course, that laugh exposed one of the other longevity traits in which she proved enduringly proficient, exercising a sense of humor. Then there was the matter of patience. Margaret would say of her sister about her dealings with their mother, “Pat has the patience of Job.” Margaret did not, and yet, as Christ, “learned obedience through what he suffered,” she developed great patience in serving husband, children, grandchildren, and friends, which was never more evident than in her caring for her husband, Jim, into her nineties, as he slid ever deeper into the grip of Alzheimer’s disease.

A note about the obituary: it mentions that “working full time” was something Margaret did as “an expert multi-tasker.” Of course, she did work full time, but for years that was at home as wife, mother, and homemaker. In addition to that full-time work, she would at times add more work to help make ends meet. Hence, she put her sewing machine to good use altering clothing for a local men’s store. She also sewed many a garment for the family, including not only bridesmaids’ dresses for her daughters but even one daughter’s designer wedding dress based solely upon photos in a magazine. That project caused her enough psychological distress that a son and son-in-law, fresh from (and in the clothing and condition of) a full day of physical labor, in response to the emergency, were reduced to discussing the various body shapes of the daughters with a clerk at a sewing store in the process of buying Margaret, on behalf of all her children, a dress form that would fully meet her stitching needs. As for working full-time out of the home, it was not until the economy of the late 1970s put such a dent in people’s earnings, and her youngest daughter was in school, that Margaret went back to work outside the home as a school librarian, with the understanding that she would be home when her kids came home from school.

Margaret had told Jim before they were married that the one thing she did not want to do was live on a farm. Nevertheless, not long after they were married they took her savings from several years of work as teacher and librarian, along with his savings (which included the money he had made from the sale of the house that he had designed and constructed by himself) and bought a farm with a greenhouse just on the outskirts of Stillwater. Jim drove the rats out of the house and put as much time as he could into home improvement as the family grew. They started what Margaret called a truck farm, and she would sell their produce, her young children beside her, on the side of the road, wearing a dress that she said was held together with safety pins. When one farmer offered a low price for her tomatoes, she told him that she would feed them to her family before she would sell them at that price; and so she did.

Providence made its presence known throughout Margaret’s life, perhaps never more apparently than in her final years.

Jim had returned to college and, while on the farm, earned his Bachelor of Science in agronomy with a minor in art from the University of Minnesota. It was also during their years on the farm that they formed an entity with Jim’s parents and his brother and moved the family landscape business to the farm. Jim dug out a pond with a bulldozer, and they planted a sod field and a tree nursery and started a garden store down the road on the corner with the highway. In time it became obvious that the business was not going to provide the income necessary to raise their family of seven, which would grow to nine. So, after no little consideration, Jim accepted a job as a landscape architect in Wisconsin. Margaret wanted to sell the house and use the proceeds to start their new life and keep making payments on the rest of their farm, but the house lot included the well needed to supply water to the the family business. So instead, Margaret and Jim, now in their mid-thirties, turned over their farm and the equity they had invested in it, along with its mortgage, to the family business and drove away with their five children, and little more than what they could fit in the station wagon, to start a new life from scratch in a place hitherto unknown to them. That was one of those things, with all that it entailed over the years, that Margaret found difficult to let roll off her back. Of such things are ulcers made. And yet, decades later, providence would bring the farm back into Margaret’s life in a most unexpected but welcome way.

Providence made its presence known throughout Margaret’s life, perhaps never more apparently than in her final years. At ninety-one years of age, after serving as the primary care-giver for Jim, who had been sinking into Alzheimer’s for several years, Margaret fell and hit her head. Suddenly, Margaret and Jim could not be left alone. Their four children from the Twin Cities area nobly drove out and rotated overnight shifts, and those of us from afar flew back as we were able, to make sure they were never alone in their home in the woods of western Wisconsin. When we all accepted that this situation could not continue, Croixdale, the one place that Margaret had said she would consider moving to, suddenly had an opening in its years-long waiting list for assisted living, if they could take it right away. They took it. Margaret and Jim moved in, and in so doing, moved back to Minnesota, and back into St. Michael’s Parish—the parish where they had met, probably at daily Mass—after fifty-four years away. (Margaret said she used to know if Jim were behind her at Mass because she could hear him clear his throat, a lifelong habit.)

Not long after they moved into their delightful new apartment at Croixdale, it became obvious that Jim’s Alzheimer’s was worse than could be accommodated in assisted living. So Margaret and Jim moved into another lovely apartment in Croixdale’s memory care. Then they both came down with Covid and were moved into quarantine in a hospital. Then they were moved back to memory care, where it was determined that Jim needed more care than could be provided. So we children found an Alzheimer’s-special-care facility that specialized in the 24-7 care that Jim required. Margaret then moved back into assisted living.

After all those moves, Margaret had wound up in an apartment looking out over Jim’s grave. That is providence.

Those were five moves each, within just a few weeks, at ages ninety-one (Margaret) and eighty-nine (Jim). As stressful as all that moving was, the greatest stress of all was that they were now separated. Margaret was often brought to tears because she was living apart from Jim, after sixty-two years of marriage, and not fulfilling her obligation to care for him. We all had to convince her that Jim needed around-the-clock care that not only she but even the memory-care unit at Croixdale could not adequately provide. Then there was Covid, and the mass formation that caused the deranged overreaction to it, which made visiting Jim—at a facility that previously had an around-the-clock-unannounced visiting policy—now complicated almost to the point of being impossible. On the one or two occasions that could be arranged for Margaret to visit Jim, her encasement in a hazmat suit combined with his dementia served only to agitate Jim and compound Margaret’s anguish. After about three months, Jim, who spent much of his days walking the halls, fell and shortly passed away from his injuries, with Margaret and all their children present, including two of us by phone. He received the Last Rites of the Church, including the Apostolic Pardon. That was on St. Patrick’s Day, no small matter for these Catholics, as Jim was a quarter and Margaret was half Irish. The night before Jim’s Mass of Christian Burial, Margaret noticed activity on the top of the hill outsider her window. The next day, at the graveside portion of the funeral, she discovered that that activity had been the digging of Jim’s grave. After all those moves, Margaret had wound up in an apartment looking out over Jim’s grave. That is providence.

Eventually Margaret fell and broke her hip. Not only did she survive the surgery, but she soon learned to master a walker, though she made sure to let you know that her need for it was only temporary. Even so, when she would attend Mass or other activities, she would advance that walker across the room with stunning alacrity to greet her friends. Cognitive decline required she move from her assisted-living apartment at Croixdale to a memory-care one-bedroom apartment—sunny and bright with windows overlooking the pond and its fountain—but she was still able to eat in the dining room and attend the many activities with her friends.

Then she fell and broke the other hip, and survived another surgery. The care she thereafter required led her to the stately Boutwells Landing. Like Croixdale, Boutwells Landing provided excellent care and activities and interaction with our family. As providence would have it, Boutwells Landing had been built on the very land that she and Jim had bought as a farm after they were married. It had been sold years before, and much of the proceeds had gone to the care of Jim’s youngest brother with Downs Syndrome in his final years, which had brought Margaret much peace. The land on which she had begun her life, family, and home with Jim—and which they had lost in a way that had caused Margaret (and Jim) so much pain of mind, heart, and soul—was again to be her home at the end of her earthly life. So there she was, back in the town, the parish, and on the land on which she and Jim had started their married life over sixty-five years before. And there she died. Peacefully, in her sleep. She too had received the Last Rites of the Church and the Apostolic Pardon. Although Margaret had been named after St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, apostle of the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the day on which she died was the Feast of Blessed Margaret of Cashel, an Irish laywoman who was martyred on 13 September 1647 at the Massacre of Cashel. It was also the anniversary of the second to last apparition at Fatima in 1917, significant for anyone who observed a lifelong devotion to the rosary, as Margaret did.

Though Margaret had lived a full ninety-six years and had declined substantially by the time of her death, she was loved and appreciated right until the end, and therefore missed. On one of my trips back to visit her, one of her care providers, a mother of five originally from Ethiopia, had told me how much she enjoyed Margaret and expressed how wonderful it was that she received so much attention from her children and grandchildren. Indeed, my oldest sister, Mary, regularly visited and took care of most of Mom’s affairs. The three other local children and their families visited regularly and cared for Mom in various ways. Those of us from afar telephoned regularly and visited at least once a year. And relatives and in-laws also visited. After Margaret died, the overseer at Boutwells Landing told Mary that the staff had loved Margaret as a resident and had loved working with our family and that they would miss her and us. He said that one of Margaret’s caregivers, who used to enjoy occasions when she could sit and visit with her, had gone home the day she died and wept uncontrollably. When her concerned husband asked her what was the matter, she answered through her tears, “Margaret died.”

Margaret and Jim centered their lives, their marriage, and their family in the Catholic Faith.

And about Margaret and Jim’s return to St. Michael’s parish: Jim’s Mass of Christian Burial had been celebrated at St. Michael’s Church, and his body had been laid to rest at St. Michael’s Cemetery. Margaret’s funeral would also have been held at St. Michael’s Church, but the church was having work done on the floors. So, Margaret’s Mass of Christian Burial was not celebrated at St. Michael’s where she and Jim had met and married, but a few blocks away at the other church of the parish, St. Mary’s. St. Mary’s had been the parish of Jim’s family, the parish in which he had been baptized, grown up, served Mass, attended school. It had been combined with St. Michael’s some years before. So, in her death, Margaret not only returned to the parish of the beginning of her life with Jim but also to the parish of Jim’s life before. Then, the graveside part of the liturgy was held at St. Michael’s Cemetery, and her body was laid to rest next to his. In so many ways, this culmination would seem to fit the sense of “coming full circle.”

The following obituary, amalgamated by her children, summarizes Margaret’s abundant life:

Margaret was born to Patrick and Vera (Odell) Costello in Weaver, Minnesota, on 22 June 1929. She spent her early years in the Mississippi River Valley and would later fondly recall adventures with extended family throughout southeastern Minnesota. When Margaret was in fourth grade, her father accepted the job of grain buyer at Hamm’s Brewery, and the family moved from Wabasha to St. Paul.

Margaret attended Harding High School, where she was editor-in-chief of the school newspaper, Saga, and graduated salutatorian in 1946. She then attended the College of St. Catherine on an academic scholarship. She studied Library Science, served as president of her senior class, and graduated at the age of 20 in 1950, with a bachelor’s degree in English.

After college, Margaret went to work as a teacher and librarian in several communities, including Mountain Iron, Minnesota (where she experienced Iron Range culture) and Green Bay, Wisconsin (where she often saw her beloved Green Bay Packers eating lunch at the YMCA). In the summer of 1956, she and a friend traveled by car to the California coast and back, before the construction of the Interstate Highway System. She then ventured north to accept a summer research position at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, prior to Alaska’s statehood.

Finally, Margaret followed her heart to where she had long hoped to settle, beautiful Stillwater, Minnesota, and accepted a librarian position at Stillwater High School. She loved her new job, but tragically lost her library in the 1957 school fire, and then went to work at the new high school. While working at Stillwater High, she found herself admiring a house under construction that she would pass on her way to work. Eventually she met the designer and builder of that house, a fellow daily communicant at St. Michael’s Church, James (Jim) Ritzer, an army veteran and Stillwater native. She would later say that her life did not begin until she met Jim.

Margaret and Jim were married at St. Michael’s Church in Stillwater in 1958, and in 1959, welcomed their first daughter, Mary. Peter, Mark, Gretchen, and Thomas followed. In 1966, they moved to Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, where Rebecca and Catherine were born, and Margaret and Jim raised their seven children as members of Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary Parish. Jim worked as a landscape architect, and Margaret attended the University of Wisconsin and acquired her Wisconsin teacher’s license and returned to her profession within the Sun Prairie School District.

Margaret retired from teaching in 1991, and she and Jim moved to rural Menomonie, Wisconsin in 1998. In their retirement they savored the beauty of the land, foliage, birds, and animals of Reverie, their home in the woods. They also loved attending Mass, praying the Rosary, traveling, entertaining family and friends, watching the Packers, and volunteering for their church and community. They returned to the St. Croix River Valley in 2020, where Margaret enjoyed her final years among the wonderful folks of Croixdale and Boutwells Landing, built on what had been the farm she and Jim had bought and on which they had raised their family until they moved to Wisconsin.

Margaret and Jim centered their lives, their marriage, and their family in the Catholic Faith. Margaret taught her children the importance of faith, hope, charity, humility, frugality, challenging work, sticktoitiveness, and adventure. She also imparted an impressive understanding of, and appreciation for, literature and English grammar. She was an expert multi-tasker: raising a family, working full time, cooking, sewing, helping elderly neighbors, and volunteering for her parish. We will miss her devout faith, sincere smile, kind heart, selflessness, clear logic, quick rejoinders, witty sense of humor, and expansive vocabulary.

Rest in peace, Mom, in the Beatific Vision, toward which your faithful life long tended. We pray you have already heard these words: “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

Margaret’s funeral may be viewed here.

Her obituary slide show here.

Please like, share, comment, or subscribe as you feel inclined.

Thank you,

P. A. Ritzer

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