Tag: Loss of Parent

My Mother’s Talking Stick

On the evening of my mother’s memorial service, I was the only person who rose to speak of her. The sadness of that is ineffable: that no one knew her well enough, or cared enough, to speak a farewell at her passing — or perhaps that no one trusted their painful memories of Betty Jean enough to speak kindly.  Truely, as my father said to me later, all those present at her memorial were there on his behalf.  As she aged, Betty had retreated farther and farther from nearly all social interaction, until she lived primarily lying on her bed, reading and smoking alone, seeing no one, calling no friends or former coworkers, not knowing her neighbors, leaving the house only for doctor appointments.

In the days leading up to Mom’s memorial service, I struggled with what I could say about the woman who gave me life. I adhere always to the principal that it is wrong, at a funeral or memorial, to speak ill of the dead, partially because they are not there to defend themselves, but primarily because there are people present who are wrapped in grief and mourning, and who do not need or deserve the load of another’s unpleasant remarks about the person whom they loved.

But my mother had been a seriously mentally ill woman, challenging to live with and difficult to love. I racked my mind, but most of all my heart, for words that would say farewell calmly, and without condemnation.  And finally, after much soul searching, I realized that I needed to concentrate upon the rare and precious moments when the other woman – the healthy, kind, brilliant and loving woman – peeked out from behind the tormented soul.  The woman, as I thought of her, whom God had actually intended, before whatever concatenation of mental illness and painful experiences set my mother on the path to her own destruction.  And from that perspective, I found words to speak my mother’s memorial.

Although speaking in public is to me absolutely terrifying, I stood before my father’s friends and our relatives on that November evening in 2010, and spoke these words of my Mother with all the kindness and understanding possible.

“As an adult, working with the Bradshaw material, I came to have some understanding of the complex woman who was my mother, and the myriad forces that drove her.

“Also as an adult, I learned that our thoughts do not choose us; we choose our thoughts.

“And so, thinking of my mother, I choose to remember her as she was on the nights when I, as a little child, sometimes could not sleep. She would lay me on the couch beside her and read me poetry.  Not children’s poetry; beautiful, majestic works from books, and things she liked from magazines.  Poems that were far above my head, at that time, and yet,  from how well she read them, I learned the cadence and rhythm and power of the written word.

“And that is how I choose to remember my mother, Betty Jean: She read me poetry.”

It was a brief and simple speech, quickly delivered. My father wept, but no one else cried — not even I, who weep at woeful movies or sad novels or a cross word.  We were all dry-eyed.  No one else rose to speak, either, and sometimes that fact still haunts me.  One should not go down into the darkness with so few people to genuinely mourn.

There is a ceremony used in some NeoPagan communities, called A Crossing, in which a Talking Stick is passed from person to person sitting circled in a room. Each person, taking the stick, describes a pleasant memory of the one who has gone.  And if they have nothing pleasant to remember, nothing kind to say, they merely sit silent as they hold the Talking Stick.

I’ve asked that this ceremony be held for me when I leave this life. I hope that I will not have outlived all those who have known me, and that there will be more than one person to say farewell at my passing.  I hope that there will be more who wish to speak than to merely stay silent as they hold my Talking Stick.  I hope that those who are present will put aside remembered differences, and speak of only pleasant memories, at least for that brief ceremony.

There was no one but me to speak my mother’s Talking Stick. But I hope that was enough.

In Memory of Betty Jean Snoddy Gregory
1930 -2010

Saving Things For Good

My mother died in November, 2010. Following her passing, it took months — quite literally months — for my Dad and I to go through all her hoarded possessions and decide what to do with them.

One of the last things we sorted through was her china cabinet. The shelves were packed with her best china — lovely, thin, translucent white dishes with gold rims. There was expensive glassware, too,  and silver and crystal salt shakers, many of them.  Sadly, although unbroken, everything was in dreadful condition.  Each piece was covered with a pasty, thick film comprised of yellowed nicotine residue and grey dust.  The two prettiest salt shakers, exquisite cut crystal from the former country of Czechoslovakia,  were capped by ruined lids, the silver badly corroded because the seasonings put into them years before had never been removed. Nothing, not one of these lovely pieces of china or crystal, had been used in over twenty years.  They hadn’t even been visible, hidden behind the closed doors of cabinets, slowly gathering dust and grime.

For hours I carefully washed each piece, using a heavy mixture of nose-and-eye searing ammonia blended into scalding water; it was the only way to remove the thick film. Then I rinsed them multiple times and dried them gently until they shone once more, and took the dishes home with me.

A few mornings later, as I prepared my breakfast, serving myself on the pretty white-and-gold china, salting my eggs from the glistening Czechoslovakian crystal shakers, (newly capped with replacement lids that I’d hunted down at a flea market), it struck me forcibly that my mother had lived with these beautiful things all her life, and never enjoyed them.  It wasn’t just that they weren’t used — they weren’t enjoyed.   She took no pleasure in them; she merely owned them. They weren’t cherished, but accumulated.  They weren’t treasures, maintained and conserved; they were merely possessions.

A dear friend told me of a proverb she’d one heard, from another country, another age: that when something precious breaks, like a piece of valued china or a crystal cup, it is taking upon itself the harm that would otherwise have come to a loved one.  Therefore, when some precious possession shatters, one should rejoice, for now a loved one is safe.  In consequence, there is no point in packing precious things away or refusing to use them, for if they are destroyed, they have served even a greater purpose than the sheer pleasure of appreciating them.

So I use my mother’s fine china every day, and salt my food using her crystal shakers from a vanished country. Most of her plates are chipped now, touched with the “chigger bites” that indicate long use, their gold rims fading. Many have been broken. And often, too, I now use my own personal fine china and lovely pink Depression glass teacups — admiring them, holding them before my eyes and drinking in their beauty with my tea — taking pleasure in them, because no matter how precious they may be, they are valuable only if they are appreciated.  And if, as sometimes happens, one shatters and breaks, then I rejoice, knowing that my loved ones, my true treasures, have been kept safe from harm.

Hoard nothing.  Treasure everything.  And save nothing “for good”, for our good is right now.