This is my first Mother's Day without my mom. She passed away earlier this year. As I have been planting my flower and vegetable gardens, I have been thinking of her. That was something we always did together. I hope you will indulge this tribute to my mom as I think of the many lessons I learned from her.
My mom has been an amazing example. Soon after her death, several people told me they want to be just like Betty. She was active and vivacious until the end, even still driving. People never guessed she was 92.
Mom was a great example of health and hard work.
My mom maintained beautiful flower and vegetable gardens. This past summer she got up early in the morning while my dad was still sleeping and went out and worked in her yard for hours each day. She would be down on her hands and knees planting and weeding. I would say, “Mom, why don’t you hire the neighbor boy next door to come weed and plant for you? You could work with him, or sit here and tell him what to do. She would say, “oh no, I couldn’t do that.” I’m sure all this hard work helped keep her young.
She exercised and walked regularly. During the winter months, she walked on her treadmill.
Several years ago, when she was 84 and my dad was 87 they decided to redo the retaining walls in their backyard. My husband Roland and I came to help. It was back-breaking work. We had to unload big heavy terracing blocks from their truck into a wheelbarrow, wheel them around to the back yard, unload them and carry them down the steps to their patio. We did this over and over. Then we had to dig trenches, tamp the gravel, place the blocks, etc. We worked 8-10 hour days, day after day. I was exhausted. On the third day, I asked my mom, “would you like to take a break for a while?’ She turned to me and said, “no, I’ve been lifting weights and it’s paying off.”
Often when my parents were walking, if my dad started to slump, she would gently tap him on his back and say, “Stand up straight Johnny. Quit acting your age.”
During the summer months, she and Dad ate almost exclusively from their garden, and she canned or froze enough produce to last them through the winter months.
Growing up, we didn’t usually have dessert during the week, but Sundays she always made pies. She would make one apple pie, and one pie of whatever fruit was ripe right then, maybe peach, raspberry, rhubarb, apricot, etc. I especially loved her apple pie. Her crusts were light and flaky, and she would sprinkle red hot candies on top of the apples, then put on the top crust. When they were hot out of the oven, she would sprinkle sugar on top. When there was extra pie crust dough left, she would let me roll it out, sprinkle it with cinnamon and sugar, and make little cinnamon rolls that she would bake with the pies.
She also made whole wheat bread each week. She would time it so the bread was coming out of the oven when we got home from school, and we would sit down and have hot bread with butter and honey for an after school snack.
Mom was also a great example in her commitment to excellence.
When she did something, she gave it her all, and she expected the same from others.
I remember hearing the story about a teacher one of my brothers was struggling with in elementary school. My mom decided to go to his class and check out the situation. When she got to the classroom, she found the teacher asleep at his desk. She sat down in the back of the room and waited. Eventually the teacher woke up and found my mom sitting there looking at him with her arms folded. She said she was there to observe the class and would be back often, and she was.
Her house and yard were always in order. My mom’s mom grew up in a day when the women from church would come in and clean your house after you died, so her mom said, “You should always have your house in “dying order.” And my mom always did. The Saturday before she passed away, she was on her hands and knees scrubbing the laundry room tile and grout. When I came in she said “oh, I’m so glad to see you. I got to right here (and she marked a line on the floor with her hand.) Would you mind finishing the rest?
Mom also demonstrated excellence in her sewing. She was a great seamstress. When I was a Junior in high school, prom was coming up. One day I was looking through a Prom Edition of Seventeen Magazine. I pointed to three different dresses and said, I like this top, these sleeves, and this skirt. Do you think you could make it? She did. She made the pattern out of flour sack dishtowels. She would hold them up to me, cut them out, sew them together and have me try it on. When she made a bodice out of the dishtowels that fit, she unpicked it and that became the pattern. Around the neck the chiffon was supposed to ruffle, but the fabric was too limp. There was no Google or Pinterest to look up what to do, but she figured it out. She sewed fishing line into it.
It’s a work of art.
Mom was a great example of continual learning.
She was teachable and insisted on being up on things. Back in the early 80s when PCs were new, my dad bought one. They weren’t as easy to use back then. You had to boot them up in DOS, and they took a lot of work, but my mom stuck with it and got very proficient. As a result, she got a great job at the hospital simply because of her computer skills. As computers changed over the years, she adapted and kept up.
When we upgraded her to a smart phone a couple of years ago, at age 90, she asked for a tutorial saying, “I just have to figure this out.”
Several years ago, Gordon Wells came to our area and taught a series of gardening classes. Even though my mom could have taught the class, she attended with me taking feverish notes, eager to improve.
Mom was a great example of service.
She learned about service from a young age. Her dad owned 25 acres of land in Spring City. During the depression, he donated 6 acres of his land to the church and I believe it was the first “Welfare Farm.” They grew all kinds of produce, and during the summers my mom would pick produce, snap beans, and preserve food for the needy in the area.
Her mother had large flower gardens, and she donated all the flowers for Weddings and Funerals in the town.
Her parent’s examples were exemplified in Mom’s life.
She regularly volunteered at Grandview Elementary School in the office and in the classrooms, and she often served her neighbors.
A few months ago, my sister and some girls in her neighborhood were taking meals to the elderly people in their neighborhood. They had one extra dinner, so my sister said, let’s take it to my mom, she’s 92. When they got to her house, my mom was off taking dinner to someone else. The girls said, “we thought you said your mom was old.”
Mom was a great example of perseverance.
In mid December, my Mom suffered a stroke and heart attack. She almost didn’t survive it. It affected the language center of her brain, and she was very weak. On top of that her husband and sweetheart of more than 72 years died 4 days later.
She had difficulty communicating and had to work very hard in therapy to learn to talk again and function independently. She came to terms with the fact that this was her new life, and that if she was going to recover from the stroke, she would have to work at it. She studied and practiced her flash cards and worksheets, and she exercised to strengthen her body. One day she called and talked to me on the phone to let me know that she had gone down and exercised on her cardio glide and went up and down the stairs a few times.
It was such a joy to go over every day and work with her. Several weeks before she passed away, we were doing the ABCs. We got all the way to W, then - "XYZ now I know my ABCs next time won’t you sing with me" - was all jumbled. She said, “Let’s practice that last part.” I wrote it down and we practiced it until she could do the whole song. She chuckled and said, “that was so cute singing ABC's together. Maybe tomorrow we can do another one.”
Not only was mom a great example of these attributes. She found joy in good health, hard work, commitment to excellence, continual learning, service, and perseverance.
I am so grateful for her wonderful example of living a great life, enduring to the end, and doing it well.
I love you mom, thank you.