Tribute to Mary Frances

“Life isn’t always what you planned. Get over it.” This saying came to mind as I was berating myself for leaving photos of my mother-in-law at work. It seems that whenever I intend to blog and scan pictures, I leave my pictures one place, and I write in another. So big deal. I’m getting over it and just writing.

Last week (May 7) was the anniversary of two women who were very special to me: my grandmother and my mother-in-law. This post is about Mary Frances Bell Trudel (1907-2000), whom I had the privilege to know from 1981 until her death.

When I first met Mary Frances (I think it was after John and I were engaged), I was a little taken aback by her candidness. Some would call her blunt, but I soon grew to appreciate her tell-it-like-it-is qualities. She accepted me as a daughter right away, even though I was “taking away” her son. (I think she was really smart and knew that if she made me feel at home, she would always be in touch with John.) We didn’t exchange any cross words for 5 years. Some of my friends, like Joe Nave, who taught at Tennessee Preparatory School where Mary Frances was on staff as a nurse, might find that hard to believe. She had a reputation at TPS for hanging up on people abruptly when she was grouchy or when she decided that the conversation was over (without the niceties of “good-bye”). She was a registered nurse who dared to speak up for her patients’ best interest, even to the point of disagreeing with doctors. That didn’t exactly win her any popularity contests with the doctors, in a time when people didn’t question what the doctor said. But I think it showed the kind of person she was: a dedicated nurse who had a strong sense of right and wrong and cared about her patients.

Mary Frances was both a puzzle and a delight. We shared many laughs together, and she was always up for a party or meal at our house. She faced the realities of aging and physical decline with a mixture of courage and “I spit in the face of danger.” It was hard for her to give up her beloved car, a little white Toyota Tercel,  when she was 83, but we took away her keys after she pulled out in front of someone at Harding Mall (now a Walmart at the corner of Harding Place and Nolensville Road).

Mary Frances married the love of her life, Rudolph Emil Trudel, whom she met when both were working at Tennessee School for the Blind. R.E. was quite a card. I remember him holding up his arm toward Mary Frances the first time I had dinner at their house and saying, “Mary Frances, would you button my sleeve?” The trick here was that the button was missing from his sleeve. Mary Frances started to button the sleeve and realized that the joke was on her. She gave one of those “Harrumph” expressions, but I could tell she enjoyed his joshing.

Sadly, R.E. died on July 14, 1982, a little over a month before John’s and my wedding. He had a stroke or heart attack. Mary Frances never got over his death (you don’t exactly “get over” the death of someone you love), but she managed to get on with her life. She kept in touch with some friends she’d gone to nursing school with; I remember at least one who called her every day. A few years later, she accepted that she needed to move to a retirement community, and she sold her beloved home on Old Hickory Boulevard in Brentwood. I give her credit for listening to her children, Elizabeth, Rudy, and John, when they told her it was time to make a move and be in a place with other people her age.

The first years at McKendree (she was in independent living) were fairly happy ones for her. She enjoyed playing “canatsta,” as she called canasta, every Friday night with her friend Brownie Spain and others. She also delighted in the fact that she didn’t have to cook all her meals.

Mary Frances was a loving grandmother. When our son, Daniel, was born in 1987, she was right there at the hospital. Even though she was 80, she still got around well and helped take care of Daniel when he was sick. She continued to attend Crievewood United Methodist Church on Sundays when she’d spent the night at our house (it was right down the street from our church, Crievewood Baptist). When they took church directory photos, Mary Frances wanted to get hers made with Daniel. I treasure that photo; it was one of the best photos of Daniel’s early childhood (he was 3).

Oh, I almost forgot to give Mary Frances credit for introducing me to The Upper Room, the daily devotional magazine that is the flagship magazine of my employer (also called The Upper Room). She read her “devotional” faithfully every day and often quoted from it. At the time, I didn’t appreciate the global influence of this ecumenical magazine, thinking it was just one of those “Methodist publications.” I was snug in my Baptist world and hadn’t ventured outside of Baptist publications other than to subscribe to Guideposts magazine. Too bad Mary Frances didn’t live to see the day I started working at The Upper Room. She would have been thrilled.

When she was 82, Mary Frances was diagnosed with lymphoma. At first the doctor was just planning to give her palliative treatment because of her age. But the Trudel brothers, who were just as determined as their mom and often thought outside the box, differed with the doctor’s plan. They did some research and discovered the recent development of laparoscopic surgery. They asked Dr. Eddie Reddick, the pioneer (at least in this area) of the procedure, to do exploratory surgery on Mary Frances to determine the extent of her cancer. He did, and they were able to convince the doctors that Mary Frances still had a few “good years” left in her. She underwent 5 months of chemotherapy. Part of the time, she said, “I just want to die,” but underneath was a fierce will to live. I reminded her that surely she wanted to live to see the birth of our second child. Around Thanksgiving of the year she was diagnosed (I think the diagnosis happened in early October), the doctors told us that we needed to contact Elizabeth, who lived in Oregon, and encourage her to come home for Christmas, because it might be Mary Frances’s last one. Elizabeth did come home, but Mary Frances outsmarted those doctors…she lived for 10 more years.

I attribute her long life to what I call the “ornery factor.” She blew every theory I had about positive attitudes contributing to a longer life. It drove me nuts that she was often negative, but under every “Why am I still here? I just want to die!” I heard an underlying message: “I really want to live.” And live she did…on her own terms (mostly; she would’ve loved to have had her car) and outspoken until the day she died.

Mary Frances: a lovable, frank, fiercely protective and loyal mother and grandmother, accepting of people from all walks of life, realistic, courageous, faithful, loving, dedicated wife, exemplary nurse, and funny person. I still miss her.

My Mamaw Robinette

The last week has been full of memories, as May 7 was the anniversary of my maternal grandmother’s birth (and my mother-in-law’s birth) … and my daughter graduated from college on Saturday (great Mother’s Day gift!). 

My mamaw, Rosa Alice Steele Robinette, was born on May 7, 1887. I don’t know much about her early life except that she was born to Susan Lyons Steele and (maybe?) Reuben Steele. She graduated from “normal” school (maybe a couple of years beyond high school?) and was a teacher when she met my grandfather, Henry Tyler Robinette. They married in 1912, the same year the Titanic sank. My grandfather already had 5 children from a previous marriage. His first wife, Allie Kyle, died from “consumption” (tuberculosis), if my memory serves me correctly. Their children were Elvin, Curry Alton (I thought for a long time his name was Uncle Outen), Omer Kyle (known as O.K.), Elizabeth (my Aunt Liz), and Rita (a high school English teacher…yay).

So my grandmother had to be a strong woman to (1) marry my grandfather, whom I recall as a crusty old cuss (though he didn’t curse) and (2) take on the responsibility of raising at least 3 of the children. I’ve been told that they were teenagers when she married Papaw. Having been through those tumultuous years with my own children, I have come to have immense respect for my grandmother after reflecting on how she helped raise children who were not her own, not to mention teenagers.

My grandmother and grandfather had 6 girls, Eunice Mae (“Euch”), Reba Susan (“Reb”), Della Bertha (“Det”), Myrtle Virginia (“Myrt”), Edna Frances (“Ed”), and my mom, Hattie Bernice (“Niece”). They were dirt-poor and lived in Fairview, Virginia in houses that look like the peeling painted “white” clapboard of John Grisham’s A Painted House. They knew about hard times, raising their children and sending some of them to college during the Depression. My grandfather was a farmer and went off to peddle his crops and other wares. He lost not only his own farm but also his brother’s farm during the Depression. I imagine that made for some tense family relationships.

Mamaw was in her 70s when I was born. I have vague memories of visiting their house and seeing her sling a chicken round and round to break its neck before cooking it. (There weren’t many vegetarians back in my day, so this memory did not affect my appetite for fried chicken.) I also remember going to her and Papaw’s house on Thanksgiving Day and spending most of the day making sausage. (It always grossed me out to walk by the gutted hogs on their back porch on the way into the house.)

When I was in third grade, my aunt Reb bought the house next door to ours and moved there with Mamaw and Papaw. I was thrilled to have them next door. I spent many hours watching TV with them (much more than my mom knew) and enjoyed running between our houses, especially when I was a teenager and the walls of my own house felt like they were closing in on me.

When I was in seventh grade, Mamaw was hospitalized for a heart condition. The doctor gave her some medicine to which she had a bad reaction. She was never the same (mentally) after that. I think she actually had what was then called a nervous breakdown and perhaps a psychotic reaction to the medicine.

When she came home, my mom and aunts decided to move Mamaw into a separate bedroom from her and Papaw’s bedroom. They felt like she needed someone with her at night, so I was chosen to be the “night guard,” so to speak. I can’t remember how my mom presented that job to me, but I felt lucky to get to be in the same room with Mamaw.

She was such a sweet and gentle woman. As a teenager, I recall pouring out my heart to her at night when we went to bed. She would murmur sweet things to me, and soon I would hear this little puffing of her cheeks, signaling that she had fallen asleep. I saw her as my confidante, even though I wasn’t sure exactly how much she understood of what I told her. During the day, she often replied with jokey remarks whenever anyone talked to her.

Mamaw was always encouraging, and she passed that trait on to my mother and probably all of my aunts. I remember her singing “Farther Along, we’ll know all about it; farther along, we’ll understand why. Cheer up, my brother, live in the sunshine, We’ll understand it, all bye and bye.” Rosa Alice Steele Robinette, thank you for many happy childhood memories. Thank you for being a stubborn, proud, and yet kind woman…I am proud that you remained a Methodist and a Democrat while married to an overbearing man who happened to be Baptist and Republican. You cherished your right to vote, and I can only imagine how exciting it must have been when the 19th Amendment finally passed in your early 30s. You set a fine example of faith, grace under fire, and fierce independence–qualities which you passed on to all your girls. I am honored to have known you and been graced with your love.

P.S. To readers of this blog, my middle name is Rose, the name I got from my grandmother. 

Remembering Reb

Who is Reb? you may ask? Reb (pronounced “Reeb”) was what I called my aunt, Reba Robinette, who was a huge influence on my life. Here is the eulogy I wrote for her and delivered at her funeral in March 2006, tweaked a bit for this blog.

Every family should be blessed (or cursed, depending on your perspective) with a matron aunt like Reb. I can’t tell you how much she has shaped who I am, but perhaps a few vignettes wiil give you an idea.

• “Read, Reb!” My early childhood is full of memories of Reb reading to me. She fostered my love for reading by bringing me books, but, more important, by taking time to read to me.  She read countless stories to me and kept on reading when I begged, “Read, Reb!” My appetite for stories was almost insatiable. When my mom tired of reading to me, Reb was there to fill the gap. She probably enjoyed practicing on me, for she had a master’s in reading from East Tennessee State University.

• “Make it bark!” Reb had a big, honkin,’ steel-blue Chevrolet, and I often rode with her to church on Sunday mornings (about a 45-minute drive from our house). On a desolated stretch of road, she delighted my 10-year-old self and made me laugh by pressing the accelator, quickly followed by the brake. The car lurched forward and then back. I described it as barking and often asked her to make her car “bark.”

• She loved to travel. (I didn’t learn until I had my first child that she was afraid to travel by plane or bus; the Reb I knew seemed invincible). She was always going to principals’ conferences or reading workshops, often with my mom (nearly every summer they went to a Reading Conference at Miami University of Ohio; I stayed with my Aunt Det, who lived in nearby Hamilton). If she went on a trip by herself, she brought me back a souvenir, usually a horse model, because I was obsessed with horses. She built most of my collection of horse models.

• Reb was my mom’s best friend, and together they took care of my grandparents when they got to the point that they could no longer live by themselves. Reb’s part of the equation was to provide a home. She didn’t care too much for the daily drudgery of cooking and bathing my grandparents (my mom handled that), but she did provide financial support. And we all (my parents, Reb, and I) washed dishes and put them away every night after dinner. It must have been a challenge to have her parents live with her. She and my grandfather often clashed.

•She loved to shop. After she’d been shopping, there was always a fashion show. She dressed in her new purchases and pranced and twirled around as she modeled each outfit. The expected response from me and my mom was “Ooh, la, la!”

My mom and Reb were always in search of shoes for their big, narrow feet. There weren’t many shoe shops in Kingsport that carried their size (Reb wore a 9 1/2 or 10 AAAA; my mom wore a size 10 AA or AAA), so we often made the 2-hour drive to Asheville to go shopping at Topps for Shoes.

• Reb taught us kids to drive. I remember her taking my cousins Sue and Joe up to a ridge and coaching them as they practiced their driving skills. I only came to fully appreciate her patience in recent years as I taught my own children to drive.

When I was in college and my parents bought my first car, a 1980 Chevette during Christmas break of my senior year, Reb was the one who taught me to drive a straight shift. We practiced going from first gear to reverse on the small strip of shoulder in front of my grandparents’ homeplace. By the time she and my cousin Sue helped me practice on the hills around Weber City and Fairview, VA, I was sort of ready to drive back to college for spring semester. (I still can’t believe my parents actually let me drive back to Carson-Newman by myself. For weeks I rolled backward when I had to stop at red lights on hills, much to the chagrin of my passengers.)

I’ve heard it said that every child needs someone in his/her life to be crazy about them. Reb was that person for me.

• She was totally crabby at times. I smile when I remember how stressed out she would get when someone came to visit for a week or when we prepared meals at her house on Thanksgiving or Christmas. She got up early to put the turkey in the oven. She had me help her make stuffing (with oysters and Pepperidge Farm herb stuffing mix, celery, onions, and giblets), but to this day I can’t make it taste as good as Reb’s.

• Reb loved learning (she was what I’d call a continual learner before that term got trendy), and she continued learning on into retirement. In her latter years, she developed dementia. It was hard for me to watch her mental decline because I remember her intellectual vigor and all the interesting books she kept at her house (among them Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask…this is where I got most of my sex education!).

• “Service to humanity” was her mantra. She really wanted me to be a teacher and kept pressing me about it the summer after my college graduation. I had gotten certified to teach English and Spanish in high school, but after some unpleasant experiences in student teaching English (I loved teaching Spanish because the students chose to be there; the attitude in English class, a required subject, was quite different) and much thought, I decided to pursue a career in publishing. Reb kept telling me, “Anne, the most important thing is service to humanity,” intending to persuade me to choose teaching. I retorted, “Well, I don’t see how I can be of much use to humanity if I’m miserable in my job!”

In summary, Reb had these qualities:

devotion to family

a love for learning

educator

disciplinarian (she kept a paddle in the safe at James Madison Elementary, where she was principal; she made each child she paddled sign that paddle; it was full of names!)

examplar of work ethic

gardener

sun bather

zest for life

fun to be around (most of the time)

genuine

I am so grateful to have had Reb in my life. She loved my children as if they were her grandchildren. She was the best!

Ode to an Old Car

Dear Santa Fe,

At first I was attracted to you because of your name. A close second was your price.

You’ve given me 30,000 miles, though you started burning oil soon after I got you.

It’s been an eventful 2 years. I shared you with my son for a year after his car died.

During that time, you were hit twice, once by the infamous Steve-O of the “Jackass” TV show.

Like a Timex watch, you took “a licking and kept on ticking.”

You have kept me humble with your little puffs of black smoke and your bumpers laced together by plastic twist ties with locks.

Yesterday I got the news that your air conditioner compressor needs replacing.

I refuse to pay 1/5 of what I paid for you to repair you. The next thing will be replacing your tires, which have begun to dry rot, and God only knows what else.

Sorry, but I’m just not that sentimental. Thank you for the (cough, cough, sputter, sputter) service you’ve given me.

It’s a good thing that my daughter is graduating from college and will soon be home with her car. I can’t take many more days without AC.

Again, my sincerest, snarkiest thanks, dear Santa Fe. I will be a little wiser the next time I buy.

Yours truly,

Anne

Struggling to Forgive

Here’s a prayer I wrote some time ago for the book Prayers for Life’s Ordinary and Extraordinary Moments (compiled and edited by Mary Lou Redding, copyright @ 2012 by Upper Room Books).

Jesus, you gave us some commandments

that are really tough to obey.

I’m struggling with the one about not offering a gift at the altar

if you remember that a brother or sister has something against you.

You said we should first be reconciled to our brother or sister,

and then come and offer our gift.*

Lord, I’ve been angry with _________ for a long time.

I’m still not sure I’ve totally forgiven.

How do we reconcile? It’s been so long.

What can I do?

Maybe this is just the way things are … and may remain.

God, please forgive me

for the times I’ve failed to forgive others.

Have mercy on me for not even recognizing when I’ve wronged someone.

And please help me to continue to love, even from afar,

until healing comes to both of us. Amen.

*See Matthew 5:23-24.

It Is What It Is

I was originally going to title this post “Why Is It So Hard to Accept Our Parents’ Aging?” but the thought that drove me to blog today came from another issue, brought up by a conversation with a friend.

I just discovered that my friend’s husband has Parkinson’s-related dementia. Boy, does that ever bring back memories. Memories of my mom and her Parkinson’s disease. She was diagnosed in 1985 and took early retirement from her vocation as a teacher, which she had dearly loved. Two of my aunts staged an intervention over Christmas break and convinced her that she needed to retire before it became obvious to her students’ parents that she was deteriorating mentally. I think her 7th-grade students already knew something was up, because she would get in the middle of demonstrating how to work a math problem and be unable to go any further.

Yesterday I was multitasking, taking a walk as I skimmed a chapter from a book on coping with transition and loss in aging. I mused on the following passage:

“Why is it so hard for us to accept our parents’ aging? The grief for me is wrapped in the knowledge that I no longer have parents, except in name. I have become Mother’s parent. I have her power of attorney. I write her checks, reconcile her bank statements, and make decisions concerning her finances. …

“At my father’s death Mother expected others to do for her what Daddy always did. Some of this was cultural. Southern women of my mother’s age learned to be helpless and let others do for them. It was unthinkable for my mother to open a door, carry her own packages, or put on her coat without help. This was the way it was when she grew up, and the way it was in her marriage. My father enabled this behavior. He felt big and strong, and she felt cared for and protected. My parents were a set. They belonged together. Clinically we would say they were enmeshed. My father was a pessimist, my mother an optimist. I have often wondered if they were this way at the time of their marriage, or if his pessimism created her optimism, or the reverse.”*

Reading this, I thought of my friend and how she is dealing with her spouse’s dementia. That has got to be a huge challenge, even harder than caring for a parent with dementia. My heart goes out to her and her husband.

And this leads me to think of my 90-year-old dad and the many adjustments he has been forced to make over the years, caring for not only my mom but his second wife, whom he married 3 years after my mom’s death. Now he is at the point where he needs someone to assist him, though he is still sharp-minded and fiercely independent.

I have no answers, only questions and ponderings. One thought has stuck with me about dementia: When you have a family member with dementia, it’s like losing that person twice. First you lose the person you knew, and you grieve over that. Then when death comes, you grieve again. I’m still working through my grief over losing my mom when she was still relatively young (69) and I was a young mother. It’s not an easy situation, though time has softened some of the pain.

*The above passage is from page 30 of And Not One Bird Stopped Singing: Coping with Transition and Loss in Aging by Doris Moreland Jones. Copyright © 1997 by Doris Moreland Jones. All rights reserved. This book was published by Upper Room Books and is now out of print but available through amazon.com: http://amzn.to/XTMbmA

My Life in Piano Lessons

Up front, a confession: I totally ripped off this title from an article in The New Yorker. Just started reading the article this morning and haven’t had time to finish it, but it centered around a black composition notebook (like high school & college students use) that the writer kept from his piano teacher. He went back years later and read the comments his teacher had left him in the book.

I enjoyed reading about his piano teacher’s creativity in not using the usual system of adhesive stars that many piano teachers use to grade their students’ performance of a piece. My piano teacher, Mrs. Conway, was a slave to gold, red, and silver stars. I had some gold stars on a few of my piano pieces, but it seems that she gave them grudgingly. For some pieces that she worked with me on for a long time, she finally got disgusted and just made a X on the page to show that we were done with that piece. (We both rejoiced.)

When I think back on my piano teachers, I am grateful for their unique personalities. My mother loved Mrs. Conway because she knew Mrs. Conway would instill some badly needed discipline in me. Oh, how I hated music theory lessons that she held at her house (they didn’t last because most of them were miserable experiences for everyone). Oh, how I despised practicing my scales. And oh, how I fought Mrs. Conway when she complained about hearing my nails click on the piano. She urged me to curve my fingers (something that my first college professor spent months trying to cure me of because I held too much tension in my fingers) and trim my nails. One Christmas she gave me a guitar-shaped pair of nail clippers. After that, I didn’t mind trimming my nails so much.

There was enough of an obedient child in me that I did practice, and eventually, probably after about 3 years of lessons, I started ENJOYING practicing. I think that was due to my mother’s smart move, however…she asked me whether I would rather wash the dishes or practice piano. You can guess which one I chose. (I would have done almost anything at that point to avoid washing dishes by hand. Ironically, today, it is soothing to me to wash dishes.)

Bless Mrs. Conway’s heart for putting up with me all those years (3rd grade thru my senior year of high school). I do wish she’d known how to gently remind me to practice instead of constantly saying, “An hour a day. An hour a day.” Oh, and she hated when I wanted to play sports (not that I was at all athletic, but I tried). She worried that I’d break or “stove up” my fingers. I never injured my fingers in sports. Uneven sidewalks, though, were another matter. One time in 7th grade, I tripped on an uneven sidewalk in my haste to get to French class, and I broke four fingers. As luck would have it, that happened right around the time of piano recital, band concert, and final exams. Mrs. Conway was just disgusted that year. Too bad!

This is all I have time to write today and probably all you want to read, anyway. I had two excellent piano teachers in college: Paul Ridgway and Dr. Louis Ball. More about them later.