Starting a New Chapter of Life

Somehow we have survived these past few days of raw emotions, misunderstandings and ragged jagged nerves.  Decisions were made about what to dress mom in and what kind of flowers for the pall and what pictures to use for a memorial video.  We wanted to show and introduce our Mother to people who didn't really know her.  She had so many facets to her that most people never knew.  Mother was sort of like an onion.  A sweet onion with many many layers that had to be peeled back to appreciate the complex person that she was.

She touched so many lives and was a mentor to many.  The young minister that gave the message knew Mom.  Bro. Will really KNEW her.  He understood our feelings of loss because he had seen all that we had seen.  He knew her stories, well some of them, but he knew some good ones because she had shared with him.  He knew how she would help someone out and give an admonishment along with the loan.  He knew her facial expressions and her mischievous side.  No one else could have delivered such a wonderful, funny, poignant eulogy as Will Turner did on October 11, 2014.

Mom was born on a cold Saturday in Pittsboro, MS on December 3, 1932.  Born at home on the kitchen table beside Great Grannie Russells big wood burning stove.  They paid the doctor with a chicken. My grandmother Sallie Pearl Russell Gray named her Jimmie Lois.

Mom was a big baby girl.  One of her early photos is her sitting in the grass wearing a diaper.  She was smiling and the biggest chunk of a baby I have ever seen.  Her early years were spent learning to shoot hickory nuts out of trees and plowing behind a cantankerous old mule and tending to chickens and little goats.

Mom attended school at Pittsboro where she met a blue eyed boy named David who was in the same grade as Mom.  When Mom was 14, Grandma Sallie remarried and they moved to Memphis TN where Mom finished highschool.  Young David dropped out of school.  Or as he liked to tell me, he went all the way through school. He walked in the front door, walked down the hall and exited through the back door and that was in the 9th grade.  That was about the time my mom moved.  I will always wonder if he quit because of that.

After Mother graduated from Tech High in Memphis, Class of 1951, she worked as a telephone operator.  And David was in the Army.  He apparently had never forgotten Jimmie and while on leave he called her to see if she would meet him for a date.  Mom said ok but that she had changed.  She was bald and wore a wig, She had a peg leg and no teeth.  She said he could pick her up on the some corner close by her house.  David said he had a buddy do a drive by so that he could check her out and if he didn't like what he saw he was not going to stop.  They drove by and he saw her standing there with one leg tucked under her dress so she did look like a one legged woman.  Then she put her foot down and grinned with a full set of teeth.  Mom said he jumped out of the car.  Daddy just always said she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. I don't think the courtship lasted very long because they married on September 1 of 1951.  I look at their early photos an all I see is absolute adoration.

Through thick and thin, hard times and good times, that same look of unabashed love is in my mothers eyes as she looks up at my daddy as I sorted through old photographs.  After he died in June of 96, a piece of her died also.  I often said that the day Daddy was buried, Mom was too.  I found a poem that she wrote some time after he died and it spoke volumes about her last 18 years of living without him.

She withdrew to her little "Happy Valley" she called it,  only leaving to go to the post office, the beauty shop and sometimes the grocery store.  You would see her on the lawn mower or walking her dog  or sitting on her front porch.  But she would not leave often because home was where she felt close to Daddy.  Eventually she had her errands run by me or my sister or one of the grand daughters as they came of driving age.

Mom wished to die at home, not hooked up any beeping machines monitoring her vital signs, not poked full of holes with needles and IV lines.  We granted those wishes and pretty much just moved in as we cared for her 24/7.  Life went on around her.  School homework for Bella had to be done, Erin had to jump up and go on EMR calls leaving dinner on the table, we cooked all the meals at her house and the other family members came to eat there or just to visit and say I love you and keep her up to date on the latest goings on in town.  We watched her television programs and sometimes she might let one of us have the remote so we could watch the programs we liked,,,,,but not often did she relinquish that remote.  We welcomed the loving and caring hospice crew that came and  helped us care for Mom for her final 10 weeks of life.

My sister and I have just lived through an amazing ten weeks of life.  It has been a time of bonding, of sorrow, of laughter and of silent tears.  It has been a time of adjustment as the person that once took care of us became the person that we had to to take care of.  We had to learn that sometimes the words that came out really were not from her but from the horrible disease that was taking her from us.  We learned that silence is deafening in the still of the night, and any change in her breathing would be cause for us to wake up suddenly.  We discovered things about ourselves that we didn't know existed...primarily that we could function on little or no sleep and that we could not rest away from our mother much less rest in the same room.

Now that precious golden heart has creased to beat.  The frail broken body no longer holds the spark that was Jimmie Lois.  She is free of the shackles of earth and clothed in a glorious robe with a full head of hair and no more cancer and no more tears.  I fully believe that the Lord came for her and upon arriving in heaven he pointed out a mischievous blue eyed man that came and took her hand and he said, "welcome home"...and she is.

As I left her grave site this afternoon, our little friend Michaela came and asked me where Grandmommie was.  I told her she was in heaven with all the angels and my daddy now.  She nodded and said, "yeah she has wings now Nonnie.' Michaela walked off and a tiny gray feather floated right into my face.  I caught it and looked around.  My husband and nephew were looking at me and I asked if they saw that feather just float down to me. They did.  I know intellectually it came from a nest in one of the trees that were nearby, but I still think Mom was sending me a sign that she was near by.  Michaela said she has wings, perhaps she does.
Call me crazy, call me grieving, I don't really care.  You weren't there.  I was.  I love you Momma.

Moms feather