One night, when I was about eight or ten years old, I woke up around 11 o’clock sensing that something was wrong. I went looking for mom. She was not asleep in her bedroom, but just as I entered our living room, she came in through the front door. Naturally, I asked where she had been.
She said, “I’ll tell you but only if you first promise not to tell anyone about it, not even your friends at school.” When I had dutifully promised, she told me that earlier that day she had leased an apartment to a woman and her five children. During the admissions process, mom had learned that the family was broke and out of food, and that the woman would not get paid for a few days yet.
So, after work, mom had gone to the store and bought some groceries. That evening, she had stayed up past her normal bedtime until she thought the woman and her family might be asleep. She’d then delivered the groceries to their front doorstep, and left without awakening them. “You must not tell anyone”, she repeated to me.
When I asked, “Why?”, mom replied, “I don’t want to steal their pride, nor make them think they owe me anything.”
Because of that incident and many others, I remember my mom as compassionate, sensitive to the feelings of others, and – perhaps above all else, modest. She seemed to feel little or no desire to be recognized or praised for her deeds and virtues.
She was also widely recognized in her community as a strong, stoic person. A story that’s still told about her even today concerns a huge, burly contractor who once went ballistic on her, yelling and screaming at her in her own office.
She had employed him to build a six story apartment building for the elderly, and had noticed a flaw in the brickwork one day. She ordered him to tear down the wall to fix the flaw. That’s when he lost his temper, and threatened to “have her job”.
It was no idle threat. The contractor knew several people on her board of directors, and she was relatively new to her job as CEO of the housing company. Moreover, she had three young children to fend for, no husband (our father had died some years before then), and she very much needed her job.
Yet, the story goes, she didn’t blink. She stoically remained calm, stood her ground, fought the contractor before her board, and in the end, the wall came down and was rebuilt.
When she took over as CEO of the housing company, it was operating in the red. In relatively short order, she had it in the black, and she kept it in the black for thirty consecutive years. This was during a time when women were not routinely thought strong enough nor capable enough to do well at running things.
Mom was strong, but reasonable. While my brothers and I were growing up, she was in the habit of gently interrupting us whenever we made an error in reasoning. She would then not merely point out the mistake, but also patiently explain to us precisely why it was a mistake. Naturally, as a child, I did not immediately appreciate her guidance in these matters. In fact, I came to think she was a wee bit obsessed. Or, as I once insightfully put it to my best friend, Dennis, “My mom is nuts”.
It wasn’t until I was at university taking an introductory course in logic that my opinion of her sanity began to change. When my class came to the section on informal fallacies, I was astonished to discover I already knew 35 of the 36 most common fallacies of logic – knew them backwards and forwards, and knew them precisely and only because mom had drilled them into my head over the years I was growing up. All I had left to do was learn their names.
I knew I could reason with mom. There were times I thought she was wrong, but there were few, if any, times when I thought she failed to listen to my side of an issue.
When my family and friends gathered this past weekend at the visitation, we tried as a group to recall, among many other things, when any of us had seen mom lose control of her temper. Only one person, my older brother, could recall even a single instance of it. That had happened about 55 years ago -- she and a neighbor had gotten into a shouting match. Mom was capable of getting angry, of course, but between us, we knew of only once when she had failed to control her anger, and had instead allowed it to get the best of her. I myself have no memory of her ever raising her voice in anger, ever lashing out in an unreasonable or irrational manner, nor apparently, do most people.
Mom had her flaws, of course. She was perhaps a bit too stoical. And many people who remember her as the CEO of the housing company recall that, although she was fair, she was quite strict when it came to enforcing the rules. Perhaps too, she was a bit too modest in some respects. Oddly enough, I'm come to cherish her flaws as much as her virtues -- they were all part of her character.
My brothers and I often enough relied on her friends to tell us about her, for she herself was such a private person, such a modest person, that she simply didn’t think to mention to us many of the things she was involved with. When she retired, the local newspaper ran a full page article on her 33 year career, listing numerous honors, awards, and positions she’d held in the community. My brothers and I were familiar with only about half of them.
Among other things, she’d served on the boards of one university, one college, two poet’s societies, an historical society, a zoning and planning commission, and a welfare advisory council. Much of that was news to us.
She died peacefully, August 22, at the age of 99. We buried her yesterday, the 2nd of September.
Something quite unplanned happened after the graveside service. We were each of us holding a red rose, quietly conversing, when one of my young nephews approached the grave, stood silent for a few moments, and then dropped his rose onto her vault, which had already been lowered into the ground.
One by one, the rest of us followed his example, without a word of direction from anyone, until we had all said our silent goodbyes.
Thank you for listening. I shall miss her, but my memories of her console me.
I'm sorry for your loss Sunstone.
I promise there will be free hugs though. I hope your brothers, friends and relatives look out for you.
