Here’s the thing I always tell
people about my Mom: she’s the closest thing to perfect you’ll find aside from
Jesus. Mom’s gentleness is her defining
feature. I don’t recall her ever saying
anything bad about anyone (even people who were pretty doggone rotten). I hardly remember her ever yelling, even at
us kids. I alone gave her plenty of ammunition for yelling had she chosen to
use it. I only remember her cussing once
and that was because a certain younger sister who shall remain nameless (all of
my sisters are younger than me) was complaining about something and Mom was up
to her eyebrows with it. I don’t think
Mom knew I was there. Frankly, as I
recall the event, Mom didn’t even really directly cuss at my sister, but simply
suggested all she did was complain (using a different, but not so nice word for
complaining). The whole thing lasted maybe
two minutes. That was Mom’s worst day ever (in my experience), so far as I’m
aware. How many of us would give our eye
teeth for that to define us at our worst?
Mom was super smart. She read widely (when she could see well
enough!) and learned as much as us kids as we went through school. She could converse about the solar system,
politics, religion, math, history, and health with equal aplomb. I remember she and I reading the James Herriot
books when I was about 14 or so – we both often laughed so much we had stitches
at some of the silly things that happened.
Mom understood better than me having been a farm girl for much of her
life. She always enjoyed learning new
things and was a pretty decent Trivial Pursuit player in her day!
She was a registered nurse who
had worked in the emergency room and between that and the farming there was
little that bothered her. I made some
effort to test her, though. In my
skateboarding days she repaired me again and again. I remember one time she had patched me up
with some gauze and bacitracin. I went
back a few days later for her to look at it and the gauze had actually started
growing into my knee! She clipped around
the edges and told me not to worry about it!
Being 13 years old, I thought it was super cool, so I didn’t care. Mom knew it wouldn’t hurt me and it wasn’t
infected, so she didn’t care either. When
I got bit by a dog and wouldn’t use my leg because it was too tender, she
forced me to walk around the block, heel to toe, until I stopped limping. When I complained that it hurt, she just said
she knew, but assured me if I toughed it out, I would be glad. She was, of course, right. I once let a friend shoot me in the face with
a pellet gun (too long a story to repeat here) and Mom acted like I had just nicked myself
shaving (even though it required an ER visit).
I’m convinced I could have had a limb dangling with blood spurting and
she would have just wrapped it, iced it, and calmly driven me to the emergency
room, all the time suggesting (not yelling) I might want to reconsider ill-advised
use of chain saws!
Mom wasn’t the kind to dispense
unasked for advice. To my recollection
she never once told me “I told you so” even though she could have so many
times. More often than not, what I got
from her was just a look – the kind that says “really, now, did you think that
was a good idea and aren’t you glad you’re okay even though you might have
gotten yourself maimed, killed, or psychologically disfigured?” It was enough.
The other thing that amazed me
was her patience. Mom had five children
in a span of seven years. I can recall
long trips in our various station wagons (for those of you under about 40 that
was what people drove before minivans) during which any ordinary human being
would have torn out most of their hair.
Dad didn’t have any (hair that is), so that was never a big problem for
him. Mom, however, had plenty (although
she always kept it short because it was “just too much” which I now realize is
euphemistic for “I have five kids, I don’t have time for hair”). Nonetheless, despite herding the five of us
during long trips, Mom never seemed frazzled or out of sorts. Around the house, somehow the laundry always
seemed to get done, the dishes were always clean, and the house was always
clean (my sisters did help out with some of this as they got older – I was
exempted due to lawn mowing and other outside duties). During the numerous times we moved Mom never
seemed to even twitch about all the packing and cleaning that went along with
leaving one duty station for another (my Dad was an Air Force lifer – almost 30
years). It seemed like Mom never got
tired, never failed to make dinner, never got sick, and never said she didn’t
have time for us.
Mom died recently. She had become more fragile than in the old
days, but, as we learned, she was one stubborn gal! She didn’t give up anything easily. When I would
call and talk to her she still had an ever present sense of “life is
good.” Many of her older relatives lived
into their 90’s. My grandmother died at
around 80 years old but ONLY because she had been fighting cancer for
years. There is a toughness in those
genes and Mom represented it well. Her
unfailing good cheer while dealing with some very tough blows in the past ten
years was truly remarkable. Dad drifted
into dementia and finally went home in 2019 and Mom suffered some very serious
health problems herself. Yet, to have heard
her tell it, life remained an ever blessed gift from God for which she was
always thankful.
Gentle, kind, patient, loving, caring, smart, tough but tender – I think when Mom entered heaven, there were people pointing and talking, in a good way, because they were saying there’s that lady who looks just like Jesus.
