I’m grateful for the opportunity to celebrate my memories of my mother with you this morning. Please forgive me if I read from my prepared remarks, but I fear it’ll be the only way I can get through this without breaking down into tears. It’ll also help prevent my going off-topic and rambling on.
Most of you know me pretty well, and know that I’m prone to rambling on. The gift of gab, or if you’d prefer, the curse of gab is one of the traits I inherited from my Dad. I’ve been told many times in my adult life that I’m just like him, and I suppose it’s mostly true. The only differences between he and I that can think of is that he was a Roosevelt Democrat and I’m a Reagan Republican, and that at 49 years old I still have a little hair left.
It never occurred to me until I started to brace myself for my Mother’s passing that I’ve inherited a few things from her as well. That’s only natural, I suppose, because she was the single, most influential person in my life.
Mom was a proud Texan. She grew up on the oil field camps North of Dallas/Fort Worth. She loved tumbleweeds and bluebonnets. I recently learned that as a young girl she preferred to dress up horned toads she’d found in outfits made of tissue paper rather than play with dolls. She and my Dad used to joke about breathing that “clean, Texas air” when we crossed the state line during vacations and tease us to hold our breath for as long as we could when we reentered “Lousyanna.”
I lived in Dallas for a little under a year in the late Eighties and travelled all over the state for business over the last decade. I’ve grown to love Texas as well, although I’ll always consider Louisiana my home.
It turns out that, like me, my Mom had trouble in school as well. This came as a surprise to me, as I remember her as a teacher’s aide at Shreve Island Elementary School standing behind me and whacking me upside the head when I looked out the window to the classroom. It turns out that she actually had to repeat a grade in school, and wasn’t considered “college material.”
Years later, we both turned out okay. We both learned to love learning for learning’s sake, and we both loved to read. One of the proudest moments of my life was graduating college in 1999 and having my Mom in attendance as I did so.
Also like my Mom, I love to eat but dislike cooking. Many people talk glowingly about the home-cooked dishes that only their mother can make properly. I can only think of a few dishes I associate with my Mom: chicken spaghetti, both the quick version and the long version; Sunday pot roasts with potatoes and carrots; and the famous Graham chocolate pie, which she inherited from her mother. My grandmother “Mimi” used to bake chocolate pies when we’d visit and always say that they didn’t turn out as well as she’d like, because when you sliced them the filling would run out all over the dish. My sister Sharon and I agree that only made it taste better and Mom’s pies were a lot like that in the beginning.
Then, there are what I now call Mom’s “four Cs”. The first is chocolate. I love chocolate! Mom loved chocolate! Chocolate was one of the two Cs Mom was told she couldn’t have during her chemotherapy, something about the caffeine messing with the effectiveness of the drugs being administered…
Another C Mom couldn’t have during treatment was Coke, or soft drinks. She and I both consumed way too much soft drinks, but she still managed to live to 87 and stay slender while drinking soft drinks. I can speak to the former, but for the latter I haven’t been so lucky.
Then, there are the cats: When I was in elementary school, I wanted a pet dog. My Dad, ever worried about budgets and lawn care put his foot down: No dogs! One day, when I came home from school I burst in through the kitchen door and after announcing that I was home heard the mewing of a kitten in a large box in the dining room. That was my introduction to Smokey, a Burmese cat that thought he was a human and became my sleeping buddy until after I’d graduated high school. Mom told me Smokey was my cat, but we all knew Smokey was really hers. We loved that cat despite his loud vocalizations and quirky behavior. Even my Dad cried when he passed away.
When I came home from the Navy and college I adopted Samantha, a cat that belonged to my former fiancé. Her daughter, Chloe, was worried I’d be lonely after we’d split up and thoughtfully gave me Sammie to keep me company. A few months later I adopted another cat that had been left on a coworker’s doorstep, which she’d named Allie, but we later renamed Alexander after it became clear “he” was not a “she.” I love both of these cats, even despite my sister and friends calling Alex a “psycho cat.”
When my Dad fell ill, a hospice worker brought a shy, stub-tailed cat named P.C. to keep her company, and they became fast friends. “P.C.” stands for “Prince Charming” which I always found funny because charm is not one of his greater assets. He used to hide under the nearest bed as soon as he heard me enter the house or sometimes even drive up the driveway. Family and guests called him a “ghost cat” because while they stayed in the house, P.C. would only come out at night, and seldom show himself.
When Mom entered the hospital in Houston for the first time, I was tasked with feeding P.C., cleaning the litter boxes and, if he allowed it, ensuring he wasn’t lonely. Over the next few months, slowly but surely, P.C. grew to know me, warmed up and later even allow me to lie on the carpet and rub his fur. I showed her a short video clip I’d made while petting P.C. on the bed when I visited her in the hospital and she had a broad smile on her face when she saw her feline friend. When Mom entered the skilled nursing unit we took P.C. up to see her, and Mom lit up petting her beloved kitty again. Toward the end, I’d scoop P.C. up in my arms and take him into my mother’s bedroom so the two could visit for a moment. Sadly, the noise of the oxygen machine and the feel of the hospital bed covering made P.C. too nervous, and Mom didn’t smell like Mom anymore. When she passed away she was content in the knowledge that P.C. and I had become best buddies.
The final, and most important of the “four Cs” I take from my mother is my faith in Christ. My Mom and I both became Christ-followers at an early age. She brought me to preschool in the rooms just down the hall, and when I was a little boy I used to lay my head in her lap and sleep on one of the rows right there. One time, when I was awoken from a nap during a vigorous portion of Brother Claude Spearman’s sermons I sat up, raised my arms over my head and let out a loud yawn. Everyone here in the sanctuary laughed for a moment and then Brother Spearman resumed. My embarrassed mother, God love her, never punished me for that.
Although it was Ed Carter’s Sunday School class where I first came to my decision to become a Christian, and Brother H.B. Fuller who baptized me, it was my Mom’s faith, dedication and influence that has shaped my own faith even today. Unlike myself, she never had a crisis of faith, although she was tested over and over again through the years. Even when she lay in Intensive Care, connected to all sorts of tubes and wires, unable to speak, feeling like she’d been run over by a truck that had backed up and run over her again, her faith in God never waned. I should only hope to be that faithful!
After she’d recovered from the second treatment, she decided she just wanted to come home. She never said it, but Sharon and I both quickly realized she’d come home to die, in her own bedroom. Over the 12 days that followed, she told Sharon and I, as well as friends and neighbors that she loved them as she said her goodbyes and readied herself to meet her Heavenly Father face-to-face. Sharon would read her passages of Scripture every night, and during my visits I’d pull out my phone and read entire chapters to her. On the day we expected her to release I read the entire book of Philippians, interrupted by tears, because in it, Paul speaks of contentment despite adversity and deliverance. Philippians 1: 20-23 says:
“I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me, Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far…”
I can only pray that God would grant me half the faith my Mom had. Through her marriage, her child-rearing, her teaching, her stewardship, her friendships and her involvement in this church she lived the exemplary Christian life. As I told her in my last words to her: She has always been the voice in my head… my moral compass.
My Dad passed away six years ago. With my Mom’s passing the only immediate family I have left now is my sister Sharon, whom I could not have stood up to the strain of the last four months without her support, her husband Frank and my nephew, Matthew. I’ve inherited the use of a four-bedroom house which feels oddly quiet despite having also inherited her cat, P.C. in addition to my two cats. But, I’ve inherited much more than that: I’ve inherited the example of a life well-lived, I’ve inherited the example of an unshakable faith in God in the face of death, sickness, adversity and loss; and I’ve inherited the lessons of discipleship from a woman whom I have absolutely no doubt in my mind was received with loving, wide-open arms by our Heavenly Father.
