(written by Joe)
I was with mom when she passed away. She had been in the hospital for a couple of
weeks and then in the nursing home at Raintree for a week. She was in pitiful shape. Death came as a blessing - for which I had
been praying. For most of the day she
had been staring straight at the ceiling with no response to the presence of
others, but breathing on her own. I was
by her bedside with my hand resting on her forearm. I had leaned away, not touching her, just
blankly watching TV when I realized that she had stopped breathing. Then, it occurred to me that that for which I
had prayed had come to pass and I was struck with the idea that she was
gone. There was a great sense of relief
and an empty sense of loss at the same time.
I realized that once again in my life, things would never quite be what
they had been in the past.
Mom was probably the least materialistic person I have ever known. She did not value “stuff” and felt disposed
to give away many things that I would have thought essential. Extended family members would sometimes ask
her for money and thought her generous for giving it to them; but, in reality
she often felt put upon and taken advantage of.
Even the generous want to be treated fairly and generosity gives way to
resentment when you feel taken advantage of.
Mom valued learning but always felt very unlearned. She was required, by her father, to quit
school in the 6th grade. But
she spent her whole life reading and self-educating herself. In recent years she would announce to
visitors that it was time for her to go to bed (meaning, it was time for us to
leave) even though it was only 6 p.m. or so.
Bedtime did not mean sleep time.
She wanted to retire to bed and read until 10 or 11. She liked to read about travel (but she didn’t want
to go anywhere) and she liked to read news magazines. She also liked Readers Digest because of its
great variety.
She was very courageous in physical ways but very
intimidated by people she thought above her in social class. She was self-conscious in social settings and
avoided them in every way she could. The
exception to that would be her friends from her childhood. She liked to see
them at church and in short community visits.
Any visit she made herself was always very short. Upon arrival she quickly became anxious to
leave and return to the comfortable surroundings of her own home and property.
She loved to raise and exchange flowers. A favorite was Iris (which was a favorite of
her mother). But, she also loved many
other flowers. She particularly loved
giving starts of them to others and also getting starts from others.
She did not like house work or cooking. My childhood memories are of pinto beans and
potatoes cooked early in the week and then warmed up for the rest of the week.
My adult memories are that she wanted to be sure you were not at her house at
meal time. I don’t know if she was
insecure about cooking or just hated to do it.
She liked working outside in her vegetable garden. A favorite was growing a variety of pole
beans called “cut-shorts”. It is a short
bean pod that is also my favorite of the green beans. But, she was very careful to keep her seeds
of this bean and share them sparingly with others. In earlier years she used to can a lot of
them as well as pickled beets, kraut, blackberries, huckleberries, soup
mixtures, jams and jellies.
Being the oldest comes with certain privileges that the rest
of the siblings don’t get. For one
thing, I was an only child for a couple of years. Mom used to say I had the “prettiest little
fat white legs”. Only a mother would
think fat white legs were “pretty”. Mom used to work with me to get me ready for school. Reading material was in short supply but some
of the older cousins had some primary grades text books and mom brought them to
our house. In those days you bought your
own text books for elementary grades just as you do for college now. With those books she taught me to read before
I started school. There is a line from
the poem “The Reading Mother” that has often come to my mind throughout the
years. It goes “…richer than me, you can
never be, for I had a mother, who read to me”.
My memories of Mom will not be of Alzheimer’s disease or of
days with back pain. They will be a
young woman who played ball with us and sang songs like “I Want to Be A Cowboy’s Sweetheart”. She liked
listening to the “Grand Ole Opry” before we had TV and then watching music
shows of all sorts afterwards. She liked
walks in the woods, gathering honeysuckle bouquets (the bushes, not the vines),
and digging good “flower dirt” from rotted wood areas. She was a good woman whose life spanned the
days from the depression to well into the 21st century. She was more at home in the world of her
youth, but then, aren’t we all!
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