Family lights up mom with ride in style

Ailing Thornton woman, 66, enjoys night out with loved ones in limo to see holiday displays

By John C. Ensslin
Denver Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer

Cold air washed into the back of the white stretch limousine Thursday night as Mary Cossin lowered the tinted window to stare out at the holiday lights in front of the City and County Building in Denver.

"Oh, it's beautiful" the 66-year-old Thornton woman said to no one in particular.

This was the first time she had seen the lights in person. She watched them lit for the first night two weeks ago in her bed at St. Joseph Hospital. By then she had been in the hospital for 18 days with pneumonia in her left lung.

Last night, her son Michael Peterson rented the limo and put his mom and some of her children, grandchildren and a great-grandchild inside.

He wanted it to be a memorable Christmas for the family. He worried that it might be the last they get to spend with his mother.

It had to be a white limo, he explained to Rich Mancuso, co-owner of Awesome Limousine. White was for weddings and happy events. Black was, well, too somber. This was to be a celebration.

Cossin said her jaw dropped when the limo pulled up. It was more than half the length of the mobile home where she lives with her husband, John.

"This is my first time in a limo," she said. "It may be my last time."

At first, it was to be a surprise, then Peterson and his wife figured they best tell his mother.

Their daughter Ashleigh broke the news to her grandmother, who wears her pajamas most of the day since getting out of the hospital.

"Grandma," Ashleigh said. "You better wear a dress tonight."

For two hours, they took a circuitous route through Denver, stopping at City Hall long enough to get a couple of inflatable Grinches for the kids from a vendor.

Cossin's husband changed her oxygen tank midway through the trip. As the limo cruised down Broadway, he pointed out a Walgreens.

They had met at a Walgreens in the mid-1970s. He was the maintenance guy. "She was the SOS girl — stock on shelves," he explained. They've been married 24 years.

Six stops. Six sets of lights.

"That's where Sonny Liston used to live," John Cossin said, pointing out an undecorated home in northeast Denver. "He's been dead a long time."

The kids started falling asleep as Mancuso turned the limo back toward Thornton.

"It's been really beautiful," Cossin said, toasting her family with a fluted champagne glass full of Sprite.

"Champagne and no pain," she joked. "I'm too ornery to die now, but I'm getting there.

"It's like John says, 'You can't live forever."'

The car falls silent for a while as Cossin looks out the window at the lights going by.

Contact John Ensslin at (303) 892-5291 or ensslinj@RockyMountainNews.com.

December 15, 2000