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"Mom"Cynthia's Column March 2005 "These many beautiful days cannot be lived again. But they are compounded in my own flesh and spirit, and I take them in full measure toward whatever lives ahead. " Daniel Berrigan. My mother died on January 16 after a dozen years with Alzheimer's Disease. It had been our family's hope that we could keep Mom at home throughout this final journey, as she and all of us had cared for her mother Ruby in her final months twenty years earlier. We were so fortunate to have been blessed with a perfect combination of support. Dad, as primary caregiver, worked tireless hours tenderly caring for Mom in a way that is rarely seen in the world and is so very precious. My sister Laurie came over to the house several hours each day to read to her and sing to her. And with myself in third position, plus my kids and a wonderful team of hospice workers in the last few months, the dream for Mom's last months was beautifully fulfilled. Some people are born wise and Mom was one of those."Wise" was actually her maiden name. I want to talk about the mother that Susanne was. How does a person become this kind of patient, loving, kind mother? By the time Mom was kindergarten age, she had three younger brothers and a sister to be her live dolls. Maybe it had something to do with that. Not the oldest or the youngest, so not too bossy and not a baby. Being one of six children in a preacher's family during the Depression, meant that nobody was greedy or materialistic. There was joy and abundance in the weekly trip to the library where each child would check out the maximum number of books. And this family tradition got passed down from Ruby to Susanne to all of us. There was also joy and abundance in good company and good humor. In friendliness and affection. Mom had the amazing ability to magically defuse tension by inserting humor at the exact right moment to lighten things up and get everyone to see the funny side of things. Her life was a story. And it was a love story. When she was thirteen she first saw David playing basketball and recognized that this was him. The boy who would become the man she would one day marry. She was very highly intended, patient and smart. She arranged for a friend to set up a blind date with him when she was fifteen. And they were both so shy they hardly spoke a word the whole evening. Susanne was determined. She completed her junior and senior years in high school in a single year so she and David would start college at the same time. Completely unaware of this plan, Dad dropped out of school for a year after high school at the end of the war to do service in the Merchant Marines and by the time he came back, Mom was a sophomore and Dad was a freshman. On their second date Mom brought a little crib sheet. A list of things to talk about. But it stayed folded in her pocket. This time they didn't need it. While only a junior she was editor of the college yearbook. She and Dad talked about getting married and decided that they couldn't afford to. They sat down with a paper and worked out on the numbers and it wouldn't work. They didn't have the money. Then they both started crying and they knew that they had to be together, so Mom dropped out after three years of college and in May of 1948, they were married. Then they had us four kids. And took turns getting their educations. The year I started kindergarten, Mom started teaching kindergarten. The year I started college at UCLA, Mom started working on her doctorate at UCLA. When we were little she read out loud to us, a whole chapter each night. So bedtimes became something we hurried to get ready for so we could continue the adventures. Of Peter Pan, the Five Children and It, Alice, Anne Shirley, The March girls, D'Artagnan, and Tik Tok, Handy Mandy, Jack Pumpkinhead and all the other inhabitants of Oz. Mom was also a remarkable teacher. The fall before she started teaching at an inner city school in Pasadena, she went shopping for a rocking chair. It couldn't be too big. It couldn't have arms. She finally found the one she wanted and took it to school. And if a kid would misbehave, be wild and off the walls impossible, she'd keep him for ten minutes after school. When all the other kids had left, she wouldn't say a word, just sit in the rocking chair and put this little unhappy, wriggling six-year-old in her lap and rock him for ten minutes. And by the end of that ten minutes, he would have relaxed into that rocking and for days afterwards he'd be okay. Because he'd know he was loved. She taught kids to read by having them tell her their own stories in their own words and she would take dictation and print the stories verbatim in her perfect printing and the kids would illustrate these stories with vivid pictures. And amazingly they could read them. Even with big words in them like "ambulance" and "refrigerator." When my son Nick was five or six he was having a hard time, angry about a lot of things. He said he was as mad as a big mad red bull. He wouldn't talk to me, so I got Mom on the phone and handed it to Nicky. I told him that he could talk to Grandma for as long as he wanted and no one but he and Grandma would ever know what was said. He went into his room and an hour later he came out and he was fine. I'm sure Mom probably said wise things to that little boy, but more than that I know that she listened to him and understood him and knew absolutely that he was fine and everything was going to be okay. She had that way of knowing it about each of her kids. You always felt that she knew you, and that she loved you and respected you. She taught us that every person was equally precious and unique. And that there was nothing we couldn't accomplish if we wanted it and worked for it. For more than fifty-six years she kept the romance alive in her marriage. My entire life there was no time when my parents weren't in love with each other. Sharing things, making each other laugh and smooching in the kitchen. It's just the way it was for us growing up. At the time we thought this was the way everybody's families were. Now we know how rare this kind of marriage is. For Mom to have evolved from the cute, shy teenage girl with the twinkle in her eye to the sweet little old lady we had with us the last few years, and through every evolving spiral to keep heart and humor alive and growing in a marriage, well, this is one of those great mysteries of life. How did she and Dad do this? I don't think they even knew themselves. It's just who they were. We lost the old Mom gradually over the last ten years or so. And in the last three years, we had a different Mom, one we could mother and take care of like a sweet little old lady doll. She never lost her sweetness of spirit. There were many times of laughing in these last few years. Even in illness, with Mom there was always some humor twinkling in there, too. One morning when Dad woke her up he said, "Do you know who I am?" She smiled sweetly up at him and said, "Of course."He asked, "What's my name?" And with complete confidence she said, "Santa Claus." One of the most beautiful parts of this experience is that for a time during the last few months, in Mom and Dad's bedroom, the door was open between earth and heaven. And Mom would move back and forth between this world and the next. Sometimes you'd look at her and know she wasn't home. She was on the other side. And sometimes after being gone for awhile she would come back more lucid than she had been, able to speak English again. One evening a few weeks before she died, she pointed to the open doorway over my shoulder and touched my arm."My mother is here," she said. I said, "Your mother Ruby is here?" She said "Yes." And I know that she was. Just as I know that one day when I'm a little old lady, I'll be able to say the same."My mother is here." The day before the memorial service, Dad came across some of Mom's writing and this paragraph was so comforting that we included it in her service so she could speak for herself. Let me introduce you to my Mom: "There are times when our lives change abruptly, when what has been is no longer and what is to be is unknown. This void, often filled with anxiety, is the open space that is necessary if we are to experience transformation. As we move into the path we have chosen, we find that we live always in the Open Moment, when what has been is behind us and what will be is not clear. This Window-in-Time is the place of Transformation, where the Light catches us and Future Vision becomes Present Reality." Susanne Wise Whitcomb Dec. 2, 1928 – Jan. 16, 2005 Cynthia Whitcomb is president of Willamette Writers, and has had 29 of her screenplays produced. She is author of The Writers' Guide to Writing Your Screenplay and The Writers' Guide to Selling Your Screenplay. She teaches screenwriting classes at Portland State University.and through Willamette Writers. |