Lifetime of Living in Columbia
90 years – Mother lived all but 2
years of her life in a 5 miles radius here in Columbia. She often traveled far to all corners of this
country, many times to visit us in California.
But this was her home, her place, her people, her garden.
She touched so many lives – so many
people – I look over all your faces today and each one of you carries with
you a part of my mother. I know we have all learned many lessons from
my mother.
She loved to teach and she taught
us all well.
Her ministry was her God. She was a true disciple of him. She was proud of those of you who followed
in her footsteps. Ninabeth and Lynn –
you achieved the highest honor of Betty by becoming pastors. Congratulations to you both and thank you for giving my mother that joy and
fulfillment .
The teaching gift my mother gave me
was to know the glory of finding the meaning of my life. Just as my mother committed her life to
teaching about her God, our God, I have given my life to caring for his
creatures. She led me by example to
finding my life’s purpose. That is her
legacy to me.
Dark Days
As a lay speaker, an achievement
she was immensely proud of she would give sermons several times a year. As we were cleaning out her house in
preparation for her move to Chelsea I came across some of her sermons. I made copies of them to save.
I have found great comfort and
great closeness to Mother these past few days by browsing through some of her “teachings”
as I call them.
In one of her sermons that I think
was written in the late 70’s Mother wrote about a very dark time of her life,
actually our family’s life:
She wrote:
I’d like to share with you a part
of my personal life. I think back to
1974 when my sister-in-law Barbara died from cancer after her battle for
life. In 1975 Chet’s (my father)
accident and 5 weeks later his death, in
1976 his mother lost her battle with cancer, 1977 my father had his last heart
attack. I can remember sitting on the
end of the walk in front of my house waiting for the ambulance to come and take
him to the hospital, sobbing and saying “how much more can I take?”. 2 months later I was tested again while visiting
a friend in North Carolina with my widowed mother I received a call from Jann
telling me my mother’s house had
burned. What I really want you all to
know is where my strength came from. It
came from God and his son Jesus through your prayers, your love, your caring.
Mother’s faith and belief pulled
her through those dark years and she emerged to build upon her strength to find happiness and content in her
church, her community, her family.
Part of those dark years was my own
angst as a teenager. Instead of
embracing the pain my mother was experiencing I rebelled against it. I worked hard at trying to move off the
path to adulthood but somehow I kept
coming back to the right path as Mother tried to gently steer me in the right
direction. She admitted to me years
later that she found great relief when Preston and I became a couple then
married. He was quite literally the boy
next door and the man of her dreams for me.
Thank you Preston for giving my
mother one of the greatest reliefs in her life
Her family grew when she married
Bill in 1980, His children and
grandchildren became her own.
Michael, she treasured those years
that she helped care for you as an infant, a toddler and a young boy.
Chris and Jess – you gave her so
much joy. She always talked about you.
She loved and cherished the times spent with you and the children.
Bill, you have been a wonderful companion to my mother for 35 years. You lived a full life as a couple, traveling,
spending time with friends and family, relaxing at your lake house, you Bill
making beautiful things with wood and Mother with fabric. May you find comfort
in the memories of all your years together.
Buttons
I brought something today that I
want to show you all.
My sisters and I have spent the
last 2 months preparing for Mother’s move to assisted living and preparing her
house to sell. As we went through her
belongings so many memories have surfaced and Mother refreshed our memories and told us
stories. Her recollection of the past
was so sharp right to day before she passed when she told me the origin of a
quilt made by an ancestor. My memory isn’t so great as I will have to go back
to the notes I made to remind myself which grandmother it was that made the
quilt!
In cleaning out the house I found
this box of buttons. It was tucked in a
corner of a shelf in the garage. I also
found a couple other jars of button which I emptied into this box. Jill sugggested that no one would want a box
of buttons and we should probably deposit it in the dumpster. She was a bit confused at my emphatic “no”.
Mother was a very gifted
seamstress. She could sew anything. As children she made many of our clothes –
not that we really were thrilled about it at that time. As adults her skills were displayed at the
windows of each our houses as she created beautiful curtains and window
coverings. That was a legacy she
received from her mother and grandmother as they both had talent with needle
and thread.
So, these buttons intrigued me and
captured my sentiment. I just wasn’t
sure what to do with them. I just kept
moving them around the house, protecting them from the hands of my sisters who
looked at them as dumpster fodder. My
mother acknowledged them when I mentioned the box to her and I now regret that
I didn’t ask for more details because I know she could’ve told me stories about
many of the buttons in the box – maybe this one was from a sweater that I wore
on my first day of school. This one
could be from my father’s favorite western shirt. Or maybe this one came off Jann’s winter coat
when she was in junior high. And, Bill I’m sure there are buttons from your
work shirts in here.
As I was packaging up things to
ship to California I couldn’t think of a reason to ship a heavy box of old,
dusty, sometimes broken buttons. So I
dumped the whole box on the kitchen counter and sorted through them one by
one. I put aside all those pretty and
interesting buttons to include in my “ship to California” pile. The rest I put back in the box. Now could we put them in the
dumpster Jill asked? I still couldn’t
bring myself to do it. I said I would
take them to the church thrift store.
Surely someone would love to have all these buttons for some craft
project or to use as – well – buttons.
In the many things Jill and I had
to do before leaving I never did get this box of buttons to the thrift
store. As we were putting the last few
things in the car Jill asked me what I wanted to do this with them? Put them in last bag of garbage? Put them in the car I told her.
That car was packed tight and I
could see Jill rolling her eyes as that box took up precious space. As we dropped off some packages to mail I
shifted the button box and some buttons seeped out the bottom of the box. By now Jill was resigned that the box was
making the journey with us and she taped it up.
As you know, our journey to Dallas
was cut short as we received the call that Mother had passed in her sleep.
On Saturday we took some items from
Mother’s room at Chelsea to the thrift store and Jill once again asked if I
wanted to leave the box of buttons there.
Absolutely not!
These buttons are memories of my
mother. They are memories of 90 years of
giving, loving, living – good times and bad times. Memories, like these buttons, are not all the same. Some are big, some are small, some beautiful,
some downright ugly, some new, some old.
Some happy looking, some very chipped and sad.
These are memories of my mother
that I and all of you have. And it’s not
just about those nice, pretty buttons in a package on its way to my home in
California which I will put back together with their not so pretty mates as
soon as I’m home. It’s about a whole lot
of many kinds of memories – all together they make up a life – a very full,
satisfying life. My mother’s life that
each and every one of you were a part or.
Each of you have a button or two or three in this box.
Prayers Answered
26 years ago when my grandmother
Mildred Davison died Mother wrote this in a letter to Jill, Jann and I:
Many people
have told me what a beautiful service we had for her and you each participated
which made me feel good and happy. That
you cared and have so much love for your family. This is a very important part of life to have
a family who is caring and loving. Not
to have this, so much would be missing.
I pray that never changes.
26 years later I know I speak for myself
as well as Jann and Jill in saying that it
hasn’t changed and we are all committed
to seeing that it never does.
I think your prayers have been
answered Mother.
Love,
