In the years that have followed since her passing, much has happened. How crazy is it? Someone you loved forever dies and yet the world and life continues to go on as if that person never was there in the first place. As life went on in the time following that autumn day in late September, it drug me along with it and you know what? I'm pretty sure that is the way my mom would have wished for it to be. Even though I miss her terribly, I don't sit around and dwell on the fact that she is now gone from us. There's too much that my mom would rather I be doing and I honour her memory by doing just that.
Soon I will be celebrating my 58th year of life and as I have grown older and perhaps wiser, I've given it some serious thought and I realize just how many lessons I learned from growing up the daughter of Lois Scott. Those times of learning came in a variety of forms, mostly just when I needed them the most. I didn't realize the value of all of them at the time I received them but this I can tell you most assuredly, I definitely realize the value of them at this point in my life.
The greatest lesson that I learned from her was how to work hard, how to give an honest day's labour no matter what kind of a job you might be doing. As a kid growing up on a farm in rural Kansas, I took my share of the chores that all farm kids did and I accepted the responsibility pretty dang seriously. Hey, when your family of 9 people is depending upon every egg that you would gather for their supper that evening, well you tend to make sure they all arrive back to the house in one piece. Later on, from age 11 to age 21, I worked at our family's restaurant on the edge of the little town of Haven, Kansas. Those were hard days and I can remember being so dead tired that it was all I could do to stay awake at school some times. But the hard work that we put in was nothing that would kill a kid, even though we were sometimes sure that our death certificates might read that we had died at the age of 14 because our parents worked us to death! I'm grateful for the way I was brought up and every hour that I was working for my parents was just an hour that I stayed out of trouble. They were doing the right thing by making us work and I know it now. Have to say that I wasn't so sure back then.
The most heart warming and humbling lesson came when she was living in a long-term care setting in Hutchinson for the last 3 years of her life. I had become a CNA and on the weekends I would work in the same care home that she was living in. Sometimes her call light would go off and I would be the one to answer it. She always hated to have to ask me to help her in and out of the bathroom. It was humiliating for her to need assistance and especially to have to ask her own daughter to be the one who did it. The same went for helping her to get dressed/undressed, having her dentures washed or to have a shower. I would be the first to admit that in the initial days of my learning to provide care for her, that it was kind of difficult for me as well. But you know what? We made it, my mom and I, and soon it just became "old hat" for me to go in and provide whatever assistance that she might have needed. I'm glad that I was able to do that for her and that after a while, it became "ok" for her to accept the help from me.
The saddest lesson? Well, it's the one I learned on September 25th of 2007 on the day that she died. When it became apparent by midday on the 24th that her time was soon going to come to a close, we kids all began to gather around her in order to be with her as she left. It's a tough thing, a very rough spot in time, to watch a parent leave you and this world right before your eyes. She'd been given medicine to calm her breathing down and to help her rest and the pills were really taking effect. For the next 12 hours, we'd sit there and watch her slip away one breath at a time. Sometimes she'd wake up momentarily and say something to one of us. Yet, only moments later she'd be back asleep once more. I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to ask her questions that I'd forgotten I needed the answers to and I knew that the time was running short. I sat there on the end of her bed, crossed-legged and made as many memories as I could before the time in the proverbial "hour glass" ran out.
A couple of hours before she passed, Mom gave me such a wonderful gift and probably didn't even realize the impact that it would have upon me that night. She woke up momentarily and looked at me setting on her bed and as clearly as could be she said to me, "Peggy Ann you are a good girl." With that she closed her eyes and slept the rest of her life away. I remember lying down next to her and putting my arms around her, laying my head upon her chest. And I cried like a baby. I wasn't crying for her because I knew that her suffering would soon be over. I was crying for me, the daughter that she was leaving behind. I learned that what they say in the "Good Book" in Ecclesiastes is most certainly true...that to everything there is a season....and that there was a time to be born for my mom and a time when it was "ok" for her to say "enough". And she did.
I usually do pretty good these days about not crying so much when I think about her. I guess the passage of time does indeed help. But today at school, in front of the kids, I had a little trouble. I told them that today was my mom's birthday and that she had died six years ago only two weeks after turning 87. I wanted to tell them that she would be happy for me that I was teaching students today but you know I couldn't get past "You know my mom would be so ......." before I was overcome with emotion. That class of 9-year olds became silent as they watched the tear roll down their teacher's face. They'd never seen that happen to me before and the more I tried to explain the worse the tears seemed to want to fall. It took me a minute to "get it together" but those kids, they didn't laugh or get unruly. They showed compassion. Sierra spoke for them by saying, "Mrs. Renfro don't worry about crying. We know what it's like to lose someone that you love very much too. It's ok cause we understand." And I know it was "ok" and that my mom would be proud of me for continuing to teach long after I said I would retire. As for me, I've kind of felt her very presence right alongside me each day any ways and for that I rejoice always.
So to the woman who taught me about life, who showed me how to garden and to can vegetables and make jelly, who taught me how to be a productive citizen and to help others, and who enabled me by her example to be a good mother to my own children, I give her thanks and praise. Some day I will be reunited with her in Heaven and you know, I can just about imagine what her hug will feel like as we greet one another again. So "Happy Birthday" to you dear mom and if you are still blessed enough to have your own mothers out there, my mom, Lois Scott, would be the first to tell you that you best be giving them a call sometime soon. Please don't wait dear friends, for in the blink of an eye, your chance might well be gone to do that.
Good night everyone out there from along the Western Slopes of Colorado. Day is nearly done here~And here's a pretty decent thought to remember these days.....Even at its seemingly worst, our life is truly good. Tonight I feel most blessed and I hope that you can say the same as well.
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