With Love, Mom

Sometimes there are so many stories to share, all which are connected, like an implosion of images and feelings that it renders me speechless for awhile. And then I get to feeling over-full, to the point where I just have to start writing and let something loose.

So, today I'm writing about my mom--a more gentle, beautiful, strong and compassionate soul you'll never find. It was truly an honor to have her as my mother--she saw the beauty of this earth and the people on it and treasured that. For me, she was my idea of a true teacher--I don't remember any lectures or preaching from her. I just remember her living her truth and providing me with an example of living a gracious life.

I remember the one spanking that I got, if you could even call it that. Usually my brother and I were fighting, and we got sent to separate rooms to cool off.

But this time, my cousin and I were jumping on the big bed upstairs at Grandpa and Grandma's. Mom came up and spanked both me and my cousin Pat. It didn't physically hurt, but my feelings were "damaged" and I remember bawling my eyes out while Pat just laughed at her efforts with him. How she kept a straight face, I don't know.

One of the stories in our family is about Mom threatening to leave me in the ditch when I was being naughty in the car. I'd heard the story so many times that what I now think of as memories of that moment might be imaginations on my part. Anyway, true to her word, I got plopped off in the ditch while she drove a ways down the road. It worked--I bawled my eyes out again.

The ditch method and the slight spanking didn't work quite as effectively with my little brother. He was a bit more stronger willed--ha! I remember her being at her wit's end with trying to get him to stop breaking all the eggs in the chicken coop and feeding them to his dog, Charlie (Charlie had a nice, shiny coat). Spankings didn't phase him, so, as a last resort she broke some eggs over his head. I remember him "bawling his eyes out" on the front steps, egg yoke dripping down his face. But, I don't think that worked either.

Mom and Dad had eight kids, but neither of them played "the favorite" game. We were never compared to our sister or brothers--told to be more like one or the other. Mom was trained as a teacher and had taught a couple of years right before and for a year right after she was married. Both of my parents looked beyond the grades on the report card in the sense that I never felt they perceived anyone of us as being unintelligent. Our individual strengths were noted by them, but not bragged about to their peers.

And honestly, I could read, write and spell proficiently, but I had a hard time completing my thoughts and sentences while speaking--not so much at home, but around strangers and at school. Other family members had a wonderful ability to tell stories and were outgoing socially, while others were more quiet but were highly creative and inventive. Mom might call us by our list of siblings' names until she found the right one, but she was aware of the individual she was talking to.

And she loved her daughters- and sons-in-law, too. On the long drive home from Minneapolis the morning she died, my husband said that he felt like he'd lost his greatest advocate with me.

A couple years into my own marriage, Mom and I were driving down to Ludlow, SD to spend the day with my sister and her family. During the drive, I was complaining to her how terrible my husband was being with me--waa, waa, waa! Wise woman that she was, she let me vent, and then said, "Pen, you can say what you want to say about Kel, and that's okay, but I want you to know that nothing you say will change my opinion of him. You've got a good man." You see, her greatest fear for her two daughters was that they might end up with guys who abused them physically--and when we married the ones we did, she was greatly relieved.

Anyway, chagrined though I was in that moment, it was the most powerful gift she ever gave me. And, for the record, I've got a really good man.


"Pearl said, 'Dean married an angel.'" That's what a dear friend and neighbor of ours told us that Dad's mom said to her about our mother.

Mom died unexpectedly early on a Monday morning due to heart failure connected to a gall bladder attack. In retrospect, she'd spent the prior year getting ready to depart this earth--she was visiting old friends and reveling even more in the beauty of the earth and the moments she had left with loved ones. Everything was brighter, more significant.

Intuitively, I'd known she was leaving--I wrote a letter to her the week just before that was driven by the sense that I wanted her to know everything was going to be okay--that while it involved pain, there would be healing, too. I think I knew it was going to be good-bye, but I didn't really want to go there either.

Dad told me she'd chosen to stay home from going out to coffee at the Gateway that Sunday night in order to watch a TV movie entitled, "The Wedding Dress," starring Neil Patrick Harris--a favorite of ours from the "Doogie Howser" TV series. Kel and I were watching the same movie at the same time--a thought that has brought Mom closer and that's made me smile.

She had an attack in bed that night that was so bad that Dad took her the mile into town to the hospital. They gave her something to put her to sleep and told Dad it would be all right for him to go home and get some sleep. She told him she loved him when he went in to tell her goodnight--and his greatest regret, he told me later, was that he didn't say it back to her then. He woke up in the wee hours of the morning and got dressed to go back in to see her, but when he stepped outside of their home he saw a blue star arc upward from town across the sky, and he knew in that moment that she was gone.

You see, he found out something I learned years before when my boyfriend was killed in a motorcycle accident--don't walk away without telling those you love that you do love them (regardless of whether you're fighting with them or not in that particular moment). It might be the only chance you have. And regardless of what's happening on the surface of things, love is always there, through it all.

I stayed home with Dad the first couple of weeks after Mom had passed. He had to learn to wash clothes and to cook at the age of 72--and he did really well in the laundry department, but I don't think he had much of an appetite and that makes it hard to cook for oneself. He had grown a field full of corn and potatoes that summer, so he was delivering bags of potatoes to little towns all over the area--I got to go along.

He finally said to me, "Pen, Kelly needs you--you should go home to him now." So I loaded up my car and had one of the most heart-rending good-byes with my dad I'd ever felt. As I drove away out of town, I remember taking a deep breath and telling myself, "We're all going to be okay..."

On the way to Bowman the afternoon of the day Mom had died, Kel and I were turning off the interstate at Belfield, when I noticed a hitchhiker on the overpass. I just pulled over to offer him a ride--something I have never done before. He was headed west and we were headed south so he didn't take me up on my offer, but it was a portent of what lay ahead for me in the near future.

As I was making my return trip to Minneapolis, shortly after leaving Dad, I had the thought that if I saw a hitchhiker in Belfield, I was going to offer him a ride. Sure enough, there he was. I pulled over and he got in--he was going only as far as Dickinson--about 17 miles. He'd been trying to catch a ride south to look for work, but had had no success.

I asked where he was from and he named the town next to where I grew up. I told him my name was Penny and that my mom had died. That I was just returning to my home in the cities--at which point he said, "I know." I hadn't looked that closely at him prior, so that made me do a double-take. But he'd recognized me the moment I'd pulled over. Here was the guy who I had dated a couple of times prior to Kelly.

The last time I'd been home visiting my mom and dad in August (Mom died October 29, 2001), I'd told Mom I'd love to have the chance to see him again to say thanks, because he had treated me like a princess at a time when I didn't feel worthy of it. He was so sweet and considerate of me--what a gift! He was one of those reminders in my life to not pay attention to local gossip about people--people are worth getting to know, one-to-one, clean, bare slate.

Well--sitting beside me in my own car was my blessed opportunity. Thank you, my beloved friend, for changing your direction of travel in order to give me that miraculous moment. There was no way you could have possibly known my heart-felt desire. No one knew--except my mom. I felt as though it was her way of affirming, "Yes, Pen, you're all going to be okay..."