A Life Lived in Faith, Acceptance and Joy: Tribute to Mom

Part prose, part article, part poem.?All tribute. The following is a story I wrote for my mother’s recent memorial services. She passed away at the age of 96 in March. It seemed fitting to honor her again on Mothers’ Day.

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It took me until my 30’s to appreciate my mother.?It wasn’t until then that I understood the complexity and simplicity of her approach to life: living in faith, acceptance and joy.

It was likely the key to her longevity.

My mother grew up in a completely different time, place and era: rural Missouri in the 1930’s. She often spoke of growing up on her family’s farm with her sisters and brother.

It was a simpler way of living that we are just now learning to revere and appreciate.?Her family bought almost nothing—only what they could not make themselves like flour, and sugar.?Everything else they raised or grew on their land. It was still a time without electricity so they would can vegetables and peaches from their trees and then store them in the cellar which was naturally cool.

She told me about milking the cows and churning butter by hand, and the 100 baby chicks her grandmother would buy every spring. The hens would eventually serve both as a source of income by selling eggs, and Sunday dinner entrees.?Two unwitting victims each Sunday would get their necks wrung and then plunged into boiling water to be plucked.

In her accounts, though it was the 1930’s there was no mention of the Depression. Because there is always work when you work your own land.

My mother also spoke of going to a segregated one room school. There was one teacher for the first through eighth grade.?The school also had no electricity, no running water and the bathroom was an outhouse about a half a block away.?When she would walk to school with her sisters, white children would throw things at them as they rode the school bus to the large fancy school reserved for whites only.

She was a left-handed in a time when we still believed that everyone should be right.?So she would use her right hand to go up to the front of the class to write on the board, but her left when she was at her desk and the teacher wasn’t looking.

Overall, it was a generally happy life that was completely disrupted when her mother died of a stroke, and her father grieving the love of his life, followed soon after. My mother and her siblings were left without parents.

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She was only in her teens when she went on to Minneapolis to live with an uncle and is wife. My mom did not speak much of this time, but pictures bely a beautiful, self-assured young woman, always in a fabulous dress that she probably made herself.?

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She was a beauty pageant runner up in a time when we still had paper bag tests.?For those of you who do not know what a paper bag test is—it was a test back then in the black community that was often used to determine your worthiness to participate in an activity or join a club. If your skin was darker than a paper bag, you were not allowed.?But somehow her beauty and grace surmounted backward cultural tests.

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In Minneapolis, she also attended dress-making school, eager to be a professional seamstress.?But she discovered coming out of school that even in the 50’s there were no jobs for black seamstresses.?So instead she took a job at then progressively integrated Northwest Airlines and worked in food service for many years.?

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Minneapolis is also where she met my dad.?The handsome and brooding psychology doctorate student who was smitten by her beauty.?They went to parties, they danced, they eventually married and decided that California was the place for them.?It was complicated courtship as they dated off and on for nearly 10 years; a story I will now never know.?I do know that, may father’s mother was not initially happy about the union.?Lamenting my mother’s dark skin, she worried “what the children would look like?”?Though over time, my mother’s even-keeled spirit would win her over.

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I share these stories because these are all things that could make the average person angry or bitter.?Substandard segregated schools, the death of your parents early in life, continual messages that the color of your skin somehow makes you less-than, stunted dreams, and slights from in-laws. But for my mom, her purposeful acceptance and faith always kept her unphased and continually moving forward.?

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I believe it was in her next phase of life in California where she fully leaned in to her principles of kindness and joy.

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By the time my parents married, my mother was nearly 40.?The move to California from Minneapolis signified a brave move in the next chapter of her life.

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While it was my dad who was the brilliant intellectual, it was my mother’s practical savings that made the down payment on the newly built condo that would become their San Francisco home for decades to come.?In 1966, Diamond Heights, the area nestled between Glen Park and Noe Valley, was pretty much the boonies of San Francisco. Several areas around the condo were still in the process of being developed or open land not developed at all.

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So it was considered the wild west area of San Francisco at that time.?It was also one of the few areas of town outside of Chinatown that San Francisco would allow Asian families to buy homes. So my mother made a rainbow of lifelong friends and ensured that mine would always be a multicultural upbringing that mixed traditions as different as New Year’s chitterlings and Chinese New Year’s.

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Ever fashionable, in the late 60’s, her straightened hair gave way to the phenomenal afro my mother would wear for the rest of her life.?There are endless photos of her in African head wraps, mini-skirts, colorful polyester dresses and denim bell bottoms.?

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My mom and dad would host dinner parties.?She carefully documented each one—who attended and what fabulous meal she cooked.?Over time, as money grew tighter, there were fewer dinner parties, but her creative energy fueled just as much cooking and baking.

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One of my fondest memories as a kid was coming home from school to the fresh-baked bread my mother would make nearly every week.?The mesmerizing smell would pervade the hallways of our condo and I would beg my mother to slice me a piece before the loaves even had enough time to cool.??My impatience would win me a deformed but delicious buttery slice of heaven.

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It gave her joy to share her talents. At Christmas time she would make a special sweet version of her bread, drizzle it with her homemade icing, wrap the loaves in holiday paper and leave them on each neighbor’s doorstep on Christmas eve. Even the grumpy neighbors received treats.

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When I entered middle school, my mother started to work outside our home.?She spent nearly a decade as a cashier at Loehmann’s, an “off-price” designer clothing chain. ?I remember asking my mother if she ever wanted to be a store manager. “Oh NO.”?She exclaimed.?That was a headache she did not want.?She was perfectly happy serving the customers and the continual hunt for discount fashion. She knew what she wanted in her life and what she did not.?It didn’t matter what other people thought she should do.

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My dad retired and eventually she retired too, and now in their mid- 60s my parents did a little traveling. An Alaskan cruise, a church mission to Haiti.?But this phase of life was cut short by my dad’s major stroke in 1996.?For 8 years she navigated his endless doctor’s appointments as he learned to speak and walk again. Theirs had been a very traditional relationship in gender roles, but with the stroke, many of the things that had traditionally been his, suddenly became hers.

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Only in my years caring for her later did I come to understand how much work and weight it must have put her.?To care for the fallen oak.?I am sure she struggled, but I don’t remember any complaints.

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After my dad’s passing from colon cancer, she had to do a lot of recalibrating.?They had been married for almost 40 years. She took a pause, but eventually took on her next phase with enthusiasm.?She worked out at the YMCA three times a week, she went on monthly Senior Y outing trips around the Bay Area—Rose Gardens and Jelly Bean factories.?She was excited to see new things and have new experiences, and be surrounded by friends.?She did activities with Seniors at Grace, the senior group at her church.?She volunteered regularly at Bayview Mission, which provides food, supplies and services to residents of the Bayview/Hunter’s Point neighborhoods of San Francisco.?She even had a group of friends she went out to dinner with regularly.?

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Around this time I had moved back home to San Francisco from the East Coast.?Even though I was in my mid-30s, I often joked that my 70 + year-old mother had a way more robust social life than I did, even if it did include dinner with her girls at 4:30pm.

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I feel lucky to have had the kind of relationship with my mom that I did not think twice about moving in with her when I first moved back to San Francisco.?At first, I thought it would just be temporary while figured out how to afford my own place.?But my mom made it hard to consider going anywhere else.?I still had my childhood bedroom intact and when I wasn’t traveling or dating, my mom made me dinner and did my laundry.?She would pick me up and drop me off for my morning and evening commute.?I decided I wasn’t moving until I got married.?

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They were great years we had together. When her 80th birthday was approaching she mentioned that she had never had her own birthday party.?She had orchestrated so many fabulous ones for me as a child so it was the least I could do.?

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So she had her first birthday party-- a surprise party at her house at 80. Surrounded by her friends and family, she gleefully sat on her living room couch, wearing a birthday tiara and opening presents.?It was a small gift for someone who had given so much to everyone else.?She finally had her own moment in the sun.

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A few years later, I did get married and I was proud to have my mom walk me down the aisle in a champagne-colored suit and of course one of her trademark fabulous hats.?Unlike my dad, my mother had never harassed me about when I was going to get married or have children. It was just not her way.?

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Nevertheless, when her granddaughter Haven arrived she was over the moon two times.?It was wonderful to watch them color and play together. Theirs was a special bond.

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I often forgot that she was already in her 80’s when her first grandchild was born.?It can be a cruel joke and a bitter joy to have the beginning and ending of life conflated.

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Our major first warning sign that things were changing happened over one Christmas. We planned a family trip to Hawaii, but my mother announced that she was not traveling anymore so did not come with us.?When we returned, I made my required call to let her know that we were back safely.?

“How are you Mom?”?

After some small talk she gently said, “Well, I got a little confused and had a small accident driving to church.”

That “small accident” turned out to have deployed her airbags, completely totaled her car and taken out one of the railings downstairs in her church’s underground parking lot.?Luckily, she was only slightly bruised physically. At least it saved us from having to have the conversation about taking away her keys entirely.

But as was Dorothy’s way, she was still determined to get to church each Sunday, so she had a special car service that had a bit more patience with seniors, pick her up and drop her off every Sunday. Like clockwork, she would leave at 10:10am so that she could arrive early for the 11am service and take her favorite seat two or three pews back from the altar. After service she would head up to the church’s columbarium to have a talk with my dad.

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She was diagnosed with dementia in 2016.?Of course I would not find out until years later when the symptoms became even more obvious as and her mind and body started to crumble at about the same time.

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Arthritis left her in a lot of pain.?She would lament her aches, but never let them turn her into the grouchy curmudgeon as is so common with age.?In her nineties she was still pleasant and joyful.?Even when she was a bit confused.

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When it initially became clear she needed more help, of course she did not want it.?It was a struggle to get her to let someone in to help her. At first it was just help with her laundry and a walking companion.?Later, it would become full support from sun up to sun down.

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She had a tapestry of caregivers so she could stay in her home where she was most happy. She asserted that she would NEVER leave her home.

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So in addition to caregivers or “helpers” as she called them, she also had a medic alert button she wore around her neck for use when she was by herself. I tried to train her how to use it and braced myself for what it could mean if she did.

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One morning very early I got an automated text that my mother had pressed her medic alert button.?I immediately called her upstairs neighbor to please check on her and hopped in the car to race across the bridge from Oakland to San Francisco.?By the time I reached the Bay Bridge toll, I reconnected with our wonderful neighbor Tom who had been a life-saver so many times before.?

“How is she?” I asked.?He hesitated.?“Well, she seems fine. She didn’t fall and she’s not hurt…”

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But she was hungry.?So he had gone into her fridge and cooked her turkey bacon, scrambled eggs and made her beloved Trader Joe raisin bread, which she happily ate all of.?By the time I arrived, she had finished her plate, but was still sitting at the table looking out the window.?“Hi babe, what are you doing here?” She said to me.?“Hi Mom, are you ok?” I said, trying not to look or sound as stressed as I felt.

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“Oh yes, I’m fine! Tom made me a delicious breakfast!” and then that 1000-watt smile.

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A highly stressful and charged situation dissipated for the moment.?Later we would laugh and call the medic alert necklace “Dorothy’s room service button.”

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But this story is just one of many that let us know that the beautifully crocheted afghan of her mind was gradually being unraveled by an unseen mischievous hand holding one end of the yarn and starting to pull.?Progressively unlooping each carefully crafted stitch until the tangled ball of yarn has grown bigger than what’s left of the original masterpiece.

I worried when she transitioned to an assisted living facility she would be unhappy and continually want to go back home. But in true Dorothy fashion she just rolled with it.?In the welcome meeting on the first day, she met all the staff.?She surprised me by stopping towards the end of the presentation and saying,

“So, I guess this is going to me my new home. Okay.” And a nonchalant shrug.

She went on to enjoy her new community attending music and exercise classes.?When I would visit, residents and staff would come up to me and gush. “Is that your mom, we love her, she is so wonderful!”

Miraculously, to the end, she still recognized us.?When I went visit her she always greeted me with a big smile.?Her two favorite questions to me were “What are you cooking for dinner?”?and my personal favorite, “Where’s Haven?”

Even though she recognized us, her mind could no longer share stories of churning butter or deciding to move across the country to start a new life.?Her mind could only live in the moment.?

As perhaps we all should do more often.

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I mentioned in the beginning that I didn’t really start to appreciate my mother until my 30’s.?Now that I am in my 50s I have a deeper understanding of how she approached her life and how difficult it is to live an authentic life in faith, acceptance and joy. ?Here is my summary of the principles of Dorothy:

First, she was not phased by difficulty or tragedy.?She found peace in her faith and would quietly say, “well, that’s the way the good Lord wanted it.” And moved on with what needed to be done. No brooding or overthinking.

Second, she was quietly comfortable in her own fabulousness, but completely humble and always generous.

Next, She had no delusional ambitions or desires to climb aimlessly higher, but continually looked for ways she could be better or give more.

And finally she knew how to give unconditional love.?The kind that comes without judgment but does come with endless hugs, and kisses with miraculous healing power.

Thank you Mom for your love and wisdom.