Beyond The Dead Cabinet

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Avast, me hearties! Last week, mustering my best online pirate impression, I invited you to accompany me on a quest for hidden treasure …

Beyond The Dead Cabinet.

If you didn’t read last week’s column, we’ll gladly stay at anchor while you browse through that tale of the cherished possessions residing behind the glass casements of a small curio Mom and I irreverently called The Dead Cabinet. The three shelves are a storehouse for trinkets that hold the keys to the kingdom when it comes to ancestral memories. Among other things, it is home to the wallet that was in my grandfather’s pocket when his body was found washed up on a beach after the only tropical storm to make landfall in California in the 20th Century. On the shelf below that is a well-loved Raggedy Ann that belonged to my husband’s little sister who mysteriously died in her sleep at the age of 13 in 1971. My father’s pipe, my grandmother’s spectacles, my father-in-law’s favorite blue hat – all these and more serve as introductions to stories that might otherwise be lost to the next generation and the next.

Be lively now! Haul in the boarding plank, raise the anchor and hoist the sails. Let’s skim the waves through stories associated with booty that won’t fit in The Dead Cabinet.

Dead Cabinet (14)As noted more than once in this column, my mother was a Depression-era child. She was also very much a product of World War II. The events of that momentous, four-year period naturally had a major impact on her values and character. One of her most cherished possessions, stored safely in her bedroom closet, is a touchstone for that time in her life. It’s her high school sweater. When I caress its coarse, red threads and stroke the thick white and blue “S42” emblem, I instantly float backward some 73 years. I may not have even been a gleam in my father’s eye yet, but the sweater doesn’t care about that. It’s a time machine for anyone who wants to take the trip.

Mom celebrated her 17th birthday just three days before the Japanese waged their surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941. Unlike today when news of that importance would break on every television channel within minutes, it took more than an hour before the general public on the mainland started to become aware of the event. I imagine Mom missed the first announcement. More than likely, she was doing homework or helping her mother in the kitchen at 11:26 Pacific Standard Time (PST). Perhaps, though, her older brothers were listening to the WOR Radio broadcast of a football game between the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers. (Yes, it was a football game.) A sports announcer was excitedly describing a pass, catch, run and tackle when the play-by-play was suspended for the following message.

We interrupt this broadcast to bring you this important bulletin from the United Press. Flash. Washington. The White House announces Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Dead Cabinet (15)Sixteen words to introduce a nine-word headline that would change the world. Imagine the shocked stares. Imagine the sound of squeals and static from old tube radios as listeners frantically turned dials, searching the airwaves for more news. They heard it through brief interruptions and then more lengthy commentaries on regularly scheduled NBC and CBS shows. Finally, they heard First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt’s call for courage during her regular Sunday radio broadcast at 3:45 PST. Just three hours later, the entire West Coast from the Mexican to the Canadian borders went black. No radio. No lights in businesses or homes. Even automobile headlights were extinguished. The next day radio broadcasts resumed and President Franklin Roosevelt addressed the nation. He recounted what was known about the infamous Pearl Harbor attack and announced additional attacks by the Japanese on the Philippines, Midway, Guam, Wake and other islands in the Pacific. There was no room for doubt that the United States was at war.

Two months later, in February of 1942, Mom sadly watched her Japanese-American high school friends shipped off to internment camps. They were forcibly removed from their homes on Terminal Island in East San Pedro and their entire fishing village, known as Furusato or “Old Village” was razed. That same month, a Japanese submarine unsuccessfully fired upon an oil field near Santa Barbara to the north. The next day an unknown object (or objects) spotted in the sky over Los Angeles triggered screaming sirens, a blackout, and the firing of some 1,400 artillery shells. San Pedro quickly transformed from a small fishing town into a major U.S. Naval Base. Concrete bunkers concealing 16-inch battle guns that could pitch a 2,000-pound shell 26 miles out to sea were built into the hillsides. People began to suffer from what the military called “war nerves” and were easily panicked. Mom’s photo album from that era tells the intensely personal side of her experience – her brothers in uniform, friends writing from battle zones, classmates killed in action.

The Perfect Thing (15)Mom never over-dramatized that time in her life. Other than the heart-wrenching story about her Japanese-American friends, most of the memories she shared were full of nostalgia and patriotism. Food rationing spawned creativity in the kitchen. A paper shortage prompted her senior class to forgo a yearbook. Those headed for graduation chose red, white and blue as their class colors. Mom’s red, white and blue class sweater is testimony to that choice.

The sweater is tiny and, studying it on its hanger, I wonder if it will even fit my slight-of-frame, 10-year-old grandson. Surely, it won’t fit me. My daughter tries it on and the sleeves do stretch around her normal-size arms. Together we get a sense of Mom’s diminutive stature at the age of 17, and somehow we can feel her plucky, young life force in the little garment. Not only that; but the turmoil of wartime is blended right into every stitch of that old, red yarn.

Mom isn’t the only family member who left behind a touchstone too large for The Dead Cabinet. My son is the proud curator of a handmade violin once played by his fraternal great grandfather. Its smooth curves and the rich sound it emanates when chalked horsehair is stroked across the strings can magically turn the clock back a hundred years.

Dead Cabinet (11)Dell Millard, my husband’s grandfather, was a prolific composer of beautiful hymns, an accomplished gospel singer with his own radio show, and a New Age evangelist decades before the Charismatic Movement of the 1960s. He helped developed the town of Shady Cove east of Medford, Oregon, and loved to hunt for, cut and polish unusual rocks. After a chapel that he built in Medford was removed to make way for a courthouse, he constructed a picturesque water fountain and bench from petrified wood that still welcomes Jackson County visitors. In recent years, every member of our family, from the oldest to the youngest, has gone on a quest from Nevada to Oregon to drink from that fountain and figuratively summon the spirit of our departed loved one. Standing there myself one summer afternoon with my husband, I pictured Dell on that very sidewalk dedicating the fountain to the pioneers of Southern Oregon and reading his poem called “Rocks.” It was June of 1945, World War II was coming to an end, and celebrations were slowly spreading around the globe. In Medford that day, the celebration was just for a simple fountain built by a simple man, but it was no less historic for our family.

Dead Cabinet (17)These days we don’t really have to go further than my son’s farm, 15 minutes down the road, to time travel with the aid of Dell’s violin. My sister-in-law turned the coveted instrument over to him three years ago this May. The violin was not in the best of shape but, after entrusting it to the healing hands of a local craftsman, it is glorious once more. The restoration revealed that it was made between 1910 and 1912 by a violin-maker in Minneapolis named L.H. Cornell. Dell probably bought it when he was attending a Minnesota university. According to the local craftsman, the quality is on a level with the legendary Stradivarius … without the life-changing price tag.

The Perfect Thing (12)Those details are fascinating but no more so than the man who played the violin. Judging by his entertaining short story about Freddy the Freckle-Faced Frog, his uplifting sermon about “The Greatest Thing You Can Believe,” and his heartfelt song about going home to “The Beulah Land,” Dell had a winsome spirit, was a profound thinker and, most of all, was a man of deep faith. He passed away a few years before I met my husband, but his legacy looms large in our family. If I have a guardian angel, I could easily imagine it being this tall, strong, gentle, reverent and wise man. When I hold his violin, I can not only imagine it; I can believe it.

The time-worn sweater, the glorious violin, the fountain made of petrified stone and other heirlooms too large for the shelves of a small curio are symbols that give generations past a place in the present. If the sweater had once been worn by the beautiful Marilyn Monroe or the violin had been played by the talented Itzhak Perlman, they might be of interest to pirates looking for valuable plunder. Never mind that. To the landlubbers in our family, they are more precious than gold. They are the keys to our ancestral kingdom. The touchstones that take us across the oceans of time to the sacred place that can only be found …

Beyond The Dead Cabinet.

The dedication plaque at the fountain in Jackson County, Oregon.

The dedication plaque at the fountain in front of the Jackson County Courthouse in Medford, Oregon.

The Perfect Thing (13)

Mom and her friends show off their class sweaters. Mom is kneeling in front on the right.

The Dead Cabinet

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For at least the last decade, my living room has featured an unusual conversation starter known as The Dead Cabinet.

Although I am at times likely to curl my upper lip and offer “aargh, matey” as a gravely greeting, this wonderful curiosity has nothing to do with pirates. It’s not a reproduction of the Dead Man’s Chest where scurvy buccaneer Davy Jones stashed his broken heart. It’s not a rendering of a faraway Caribbean island where 15 men sang about a bottle of rum.

It is, however, very much a treasure chest.

Dead Cabinet (7)Safe behind three glass casements are keepsakes so precious that, in case of fire, I would likely choose to save them as soon as I was sure that people and pets were out of harm’s way. It’s not because any of these mementoes could add significantly to my bank account. They are, instead, an irreplaceable link to my family’s past. Dead men may tell no tales, but The Dead Cabinet surely does.

Mom and I bought the cabinet a few years after we began sharing a home in the high desert of Northern Nevada. During one of our Sunday morning coffee chats, I mentioned a long-time fantasy of creating a sort of family museum if ever I had enough space. It seemed so pointless to accumulate mementoes of lost loved ones and then keep them packed in boxes gathering dust in the garage. Mom’s eyes lit up.

We didn’t have enough square footage in our little, yellow house to devote an entire room to things that belonged to the dead, but we could certainly spare some wall space in our main living area. A trip to the local furniture store turned up the perfect size display cabinet fashioned like a lawyer’s bookcase. As soon as it was delivered, we both began unearthing treasures that hadn’t seen the light of day for decades.

Vintage jewelry, eyeglasses, Bibles, a well-loved Raggedy Ann, a pair of tiny antique baby dolls, a blue fabric hat, letters and postcards, trinket boxes, photographs, sheet music and dog-eared, yellowed documents all found a place on the shelves. As long as an item was handed down from a deceased relative, it was a candidate for the cabinet. Once we discovered that a small plastic Kewpie doll standing in one corner had actually belonged to my husband and not his departed sister, so out the little guy came. Exactly how and when we started calling the case The Dead Cabinet, I don’t recall, but it was typical irreverence for Mom and me.

There’s nothing irreverent about my adoration for what is in the cabinet, however. Every piece is a true delight. If I had to pick a favorite, it would be my grandfather’s wallet. Perhaps it’s because I never knew him.

Dead Cabinet (8)Mom was 14 years old when her father, Noble Cleveland Metzger, was one of about 45 people killed at sea during the only tropical storm to make landfall in California in the 20th Century. It was the proverbial “perfect storm” because the currents off the Pacific coast are very rarely warm enough to carry a Mexican hurricane that far north. The difference that day in September 1939 was that the area had just experienced a week-long, record-breaking heat wave.

In the absence of any kind of weather tracking system, the historic storm caught everyone by surprise when it whipped through the region with gale force winds and torrential rain. Onshore, cars floated down flooded streets past homes and businesses that had washed off their foundations. Offshore, pleasure and commercial boaters frantically fled for safe harbor when the pleasantly rolling sea suddenly turned into an angry, churning adversary.

A fisherman by trade, my grandfather was trolling aboard The Nina off the coast near Oxnard when the storm struck. The engine swamped and failed, but the captain of a nearby fishing charter loaded with guests came to the rescue and tossed a tow line. In a punishing shower of rain, salt water and foam, my grandfather steadied himself on the pitching deck, caught the line and lashed it securely to The Nina’s bow.

Dead Cabinet (9)

Mom with her Pop, sister Carrie and friend Mr. Schneider.

At first it seemed that The Nina was out of danger, but it soon became apparent that both of the wildly rocking vessels would likely be lost if the tow line was not severed. Over the roar of the unforgiving wind, the two men desperately called back and forth. My grandfather begged the captain not to cut The Nina loose. The captain shouted an anguished, “I’m sorry,” and sliced the strained line. It whipped back toward my grandfather with violent force and broke his neck. He was killed instantly, his deck hand perished, and The Nina sank.

My grandfather’s body, with his wallet still in his pocket, washed up on the beach at Point Mugu a few days later. The distraught captain of the other vessel told the authorities and my uncles the details of the heartbreaking story. It was passed down to me through my cousin, Norm Metzger, from his father, Cecil.

The fact that my mother, the youngest of 10 children, ended up with my grandfather’s water-logged wallet is a blessing to me. It’s empty now except for the fine grains of sand leftover from that tragic day. Once in a while I take it out of its place of honor in The Dead Cabinet and run my fingers across the brittle, stained leather. I close my eyes and imagine my grandfather’s strong hands flipping it open to retrieve a dollar bill to buy chewing gum or soda pops for an entourage of children, and then slipping it back into his pants pocket. The vision connects me to a man I can only dream of through my mother’s stories, photograph albums, and documents discovered on genealogy websites.

Dead Cabinet (1)Of course, not every family keepsake from the past few generations will fit into one, small Dead Cabinet. Now that she has reunited with her beloved Pop, Mom actually has her own display case. We used to talk sometimes about what items she might like me to place in the original cabinet after she passed, but she left behind so many meaningful mementoes that I simply turned the tall curio in her bedroom into a resting place for a generous selection. Inside are elephant figurines, crystals, a charm bracelet, sparkling earrings that dangle to your shoulders, a white feather boa, old tin tags for dogs who crossed the rainbow bridge more than a half century ago, a bust she made in a long-ago art class, and a lengthy list of other memorabilia. The little brass bells she chimed to summon me after our relationship evolved into one of caregiver and care receiver have a special place in front.

Fittingly, Mom’s bedroom has become the quasi family museum that I once envisioned. The curio is the centerpiece, but the room is a cornucopia of heirloom furniture, photo albums, handmade quilts, fat scrapbooks and vintage clothing. Most of Mom’s bedroom furnishings also remain in their original places. I picture her watching from a safe distance, chuckling as she remembers a conversation we had when we knew her time was growing short.

“What are those black spots on the arm of my chair?” she asked as I prepared to help her transfer from her wheelchair to her lumpy, old, beige recliner.

“I don’t see anything. I’ll have to get down there.”

“Right there!”

“Oh. Those little spots? They look like ink marks. Your pen probably slipped when you were writing down your blood sugar.”

“Oh. Oh well. You’ll probably get rid of that chair anyway when I die.”

“No, Mom. Your room is going to be a shrine.”

“Well, in that case, you should buy a better bed.”

“What? Mom, you’ve waited until now to tell me you don’t like your bed?”

Priceless.

Priceless is also the most appropriate way to characterize the family keepsakes I’m fortunate to have amassed. They are like the keys to the kingdom in terms of our heritage. Clues in a vast treasure hunt through the roots and branches of the family tree. The elusive “X” every pirate seeks on his tattered map to buried booty.

Hold that thought while I curl my upper lip, clear my throat, and conjure up my inner sea-going scoundrel.

Avast, me hearties! Riches await ye. Meet me here next week. Together we’ll set sail and venture …

Beyond The Dead Cabinet.

Dead Cabinet (10)

 

 

The Perfect Thing

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My mother was the classic child of the Great Depression. Though she remembered her upbringing with fond nostalgia, the stories she told were mostly of staying one step ahead of the landlord, relying on government commodities to keep food on the table and learning to make something from nothing.

The Perfect Thing (10)Puppies and kittens substituted for dolls until she was 13 years old and the sailors of the U.S.S. Oklahoma threw a Christmas party for impoverished children onboard their massive battleship anchored in California’s San Pedro Harbor. As afternoon shadows began to fall on that 1937 holiday, she contently rode the motor launch back to the docks with her very own doll cradled in her arms.

Like so many other men and women of her generation, Mom didn’t understand or condone the throw-away mentality of the modern age. If something was broken, you either fixed it or kept it until you were able to fix it. If you didn’t need something today, you hung onto it because you might need it tomorrow.

Family folklore is packed with stories of Mom retrieving this-and-that from boxes bound for thrift stores or tables laden with items priced and ready to be sold at the next day’s garage sale. While I was her caregiver, my hands were tied when it came to clearing out clutter. Once she spotted a broken birdfeeder I had tossed on top of a rubbish pile way off in the far corner of the backyard, foolishly thinking she wouldn’t notice before we loaded our old pick-up truck for a trip to the dump. She did, and the next morning I tramped out there and found a place for the poor, maligned birdfeeder in the bushes under the crabapple tree by her bedroom slider. Another time I bought her a new wind chime to replace the mangled one hanging from the trellis near the same crabapple tree. She wouldn’t let me throw away the old one, and I’m quite sure it’s still tucked in a box in our laundry room.

The Perfect Thing (5)I also still have the last two of the four acrylic tumblers she bought at a neighbor’s yard sale some 25 years ago. Painted with pink and purple flowers and molded of thin material, they were just the right size and weight for the fresh glass of water she liked to keep handy to wet her whistle now and then. Eventually, the tumblers began to crack and leak, but parting with those last two was never an option for her and, by way of respecting her memory, it is not an option for me either. They were and always will be the best example of …

The Perfect Thing.

That was the line Mom used to justify countless stops at garage, yard, driveway, lawn and patio sales as well as the occasional second-hand store. “They might have the perfect thing,” she would say to me or my sister or a granddaughter or whoever was in the driver’s seat that day. Somehow, having a house full of her own paraphernalia was not quite enough. Someone else might have something better or different.

The Perfect Thing (1)After she moved to Nevada to live with me, we managed to squeeze two households of furniture, kitchen gadgets, memorabilia and other miscellaneous belongings into one little, yellow house. Seven years later my ex-husband and I remarried, and we bought a 2,369-square foot, four bedroom, three bathroom house with a three-car garage because wedging yet another household of stuff into our compact, 1,420-square-foot home clearly exceeded the state’s legal limit. Still, the treasure hunting continued.

At times, the accumulation was laughable. If Mom could have rolled on the floor guffawing when my visiting sister played us a video of a George Carlin routine about stuff, she no doubt would have done just that. As it was, she and I both had tears of glee rolling down our cheeks.

That’s all your house is, is a pile of stuff with a cover on it,” the late comedian quipped. That’s all your house is; it’s a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff! Now, sometimes you gotta move. You’ve gotta get a bigger house. Why? Too much stuff!

At other times, belongings were anything but laughable. Mom was already in Nevada with me when my sister and her family packed out Mom’s storm-damaged trailer and transported a small U-Haul down the long Interstate 5 through Oregon, across the northern tip of California, and finally to our little house in the desert. For years Mom was convinced that some of her things were missing no matter how many times we tried to reassure her that none of us would ever betray her in that way. She had seen too many of her brothers and sisters give up treasured possessions in their old age and too many residents of the nursing home where she worked sadly arrive with just the bare essentials.

In the end, of course, we all move on to a place where stuff isn’t necessary. We can’t pack a bag of our favorite things and take it with us when we walk into the Light, cross the Great Divide, ascend to Heaven or make the final trip Home. Mom prepared for that eventuality by amassing an inventory – on cassette tapes and on dozens of pages organized in a three-ring binder – virtually everything she owned. If she remembered when and how she acquired an item, she documented it for posterity. The tapes even have some amazing back stories that shine a light on family history, on bygone days, and on Mom’s personality. Of the tapes I’ve listened to so far, a favorite tale is the origin of the Pink Depression Glass. She recorded this memory in 1990 while living in her trailer on the Oregon Coast.

The Perfect Thing (4)Four plates, four saucers, four cups, a sugar and creamer, and a platter. My brothers, when they were very young, used to do canoe tilting. And you’ve probably never even heard of that. Two guys would get in a canoe. One would paddle. The other one stood in the front of the canoe with a long pole with a padded end on it and they went up against two other guys in another canoe and they tried to knock each other out of the boat. So a lot depended on the paddler to keep the boat in the right position and the other guy had to be really strong and steady. God, I can’t remember which of my (six) brothers it was but it was probably … Gene and Tom. The Perfect Thing (7)This set of dishes – this Pink Depression Glass – was a first prize they won and they gave them to my mother. A lot of years ago, one time when I was visiting her, she gave them to me. And I love those dishes. I’d like to be able to eat off them every day. Of course, I don’t know why I couldn’t, but I love those dishes. So whoever gets them, cherish them. They’re very special. Anyway, they’re probably worth a little bit of money. I mean, Depression Glass is considered a real collectible now and these date back to … well … Tom just died at 81 … you can see it must have been more than 60 years ago when he was a young boy. All my brothers were real good swimmers.

Mom handed down the Pink Depression Glass to my sister several years before she passed away. My sister didn’t need the story to persuade her to hang onto this treasure. But that, I believe, was the purpose of Mom’s tape recordings and inventory binder. Perhaps if we knew where certain things came from, we might be more apt to understand the sentimental value and keep them in the family.

The Perfect Thing (6)These days I love browsing through second-hand stores almost as much as Mom did, but now when I walk through the maze of this-and-that, I find myself wondering how century-old family photos wound up on a shopkeeper’s shelf or who might have sipped tea from a delicate, old china cup. Was that Depression Glass in the display case a prize in a canoe-tilting contest? Did that vintage birdfeeder once hang outside a homebound grandmother’s window? The mystery intrigues me

All right. I know that every room in our big house and too much space in our multi-car garage already are devoted to storing a lifetime of Mom’s things, my husband’s things and mine. I know I don’t truly need one more thing. I also know that the stuff in those second-hand stores represents someone else’s life; someone else’s stories. But I can’t let go of the notion that maybe, just maybe, if I keep looking, one day I’ll find …

The Perfect Thing.

The Perfect Thing (8)

Mom and granddaughter Rhianna looking for the perfect thing among her late sister, Fay’s, vintage costume jewelry.

Don’t Hang On To The Dogwood Tree

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Last week’s column served as a prelude to the following story written by my mother-in-law in 1977. In it, she recounts the untimely death of her young daughter, Marsha, and wrestles with change, faith, hope and the inescapable fact that life must go on. To me, it is the perfect Easter story. Just 11 years after she wrote this, we lost her to lymphoma at the age of 62. I knew her only 16 years, but in that time she left an indelible mark on my life. Herewith is a note from my other mother.

By Joan Millard Olson

The dogwood tree stood beside the wooden walkway that led through the ferns to and over the creek to our rustic, modified A-frame home. It had never bloomed, even though it appeared to be happy in its sunny spot surrounded by the wild things of the woods, the vine maples and the alders.

Dogwood Tree 2 (4)As I stood before it one recent summer day, I could see in my mind the scene of another afternoon six years before. It was Mother’s Day. With my three teenage children gathered near me, my husband shoveled the last bit of dirt around the newly planted tree. It was to be a living memorial to our daughter, Marsha, who had so recently passed from our sight.

I now glanced at the house and my mind raced back to the many good times spent there. The preparations for two marriages, for our sons had found fine companions. Thanksgiving dinners and the twinkling lights of many Christmas trees. Snow falling softly outside and the warm glow of a fireplace within. Hikes up our hill and wildflower picking. Friends in for hot cider and singing praises to the Lord. Warm embraces. Taking our handsome, little grandson for his first walk in the woods and seeing a precious new granddaughter smile as she stood in her playpen.

Dogwood Tree 2 (1)0001And then there was that sad, April morning.

I came downstairs and looked in on my two daughters in their side-by-side beds. Something made me go to Marsha, our handicapped child. She was lying there with her beautiful, brown hair curled over the covers, her face turned to one side, seemingly peacefully asleep. I touched her, and she was lifeless and cold.

Then the arrival of the doctor who gently said she must have slipped away during the night. And the most indelible memory of all – the sight of the hearse pulling away with the body of our beloved child. How can a stranger enter your home and take away someone you love so much? I wanted to scream.

You have no right to take her from me! You have no right!

Dogwood Tree 2 (2)Supporting friends helped us through the first few days. And so did our faith that life, in spite of appearances, is indestructible. We were grateful that we had been able to share in the life of this little angel for almost 14 years. Her gentle, merry spirit was an inspiration to us all. A strong conviction came upon me then that the only thing of any real importance in life is love. All the petty complaints, the needless worries, the complexities of our lives are absolutely nothing. Only love matters.

Yes, this house represented so much, including a seven-year metamorphosis in my thinking. I had come to the mountain with my head in the clouds, an adventurer of the 60s, feeling that desire shared by many to get close to the land. A desire to touch and love. I had sensed that something was happening to mankind; that out of those turbulent times a new consciousness was emerging. Young people, particularly, were saying that there was more to life than hypocrisy, lack of love, greed. I was thrilled, too, that the expression of the feminine and masculine qualities was beginning to be balanced and that woman’s role was being appreciated. It was at this time that I wrote to a friend enthusiastically.

Never before in the history of man has there been such a challenge. There is a spiritual revolution going on and each individual stands at the point of decision. Will he live his life from self, or will he live it from Christ within? The one way leads to destruction. The other to eternal life. The Spirit of God is sweeping over the Earth like a mighty wind. What a glorious time to be alive!

I stood by the tree this sunny morning realizing that change was upon me again. We were planning to move, and it was hard to believe that a simple thing like a little tree could stand in the way. I told myself that we had, after all, moved before – several times. From our first little home in Oregon’s capital, where the first of our children was born, to a year living in a small town overlooking the Columbia River, the place of Marsha’s birth. Flavel House for BlogThen to the city and a lovely home on a tree-lined street. This was where our oldest son went from kindergarten to high school graduation. This was where we lived through the joys and trials of Indian Guides, Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Brownies, Girl Scouts and Little League. This was where we first found out that our beautiful little girl, our fourth child, was for some unknown reason, both mentally and physically handicapped. During our years there we lost three parents. But we were blessed with good friends, good neighbors and a warm church home.

Then we made our move to this home in the mountains. It’s funny how God seems to mentally move you before you ever pack a box. I was already a mountain person inside. I remember the last time I raked the leaves from our neat, trim yard in the city. This was an almost fanatical occupation with the households on our block. Not a leaf should mar the beauty of the trimmed lawns. And then one day I just left them all lying there where they seemed to belong, making an autumn carpet of gold.

Now as I stood by the dogwood tree outside our mountain home, I wrestled with the fact that a return to school and the city was beckoning. I thought how often I had declared that I would never move back to the city with its noise, its dirty air and its impatience. But we should never say never. Why, if anyone had told me just two years ago that I would come in my religious life to just a simple love of the Lord, I would have laughed and said that I could never go back to that orthodoxy. I had studied and practiced Christian Science. I knew about consciousness, the “All Inclusive Mind” and the “Principle of the Universe.” I didn’t need a personal God when I had all that understanding!

Yes, there I stood in front of the dogwood tree, faced once again with my old friend – change – and all the memories of other life changes racing through my head. But this time it was different. I couldn’t bring myself to say yes.

Dogwood Tree 2 (3)How could I possibly leave the tree? How could I leave this house? It seemed as though I was leaving Marsha there where we had last seen her – that I was deserting her. I, who thought I had it all figured out. How true it is that to know about God is one thing, but to actually know Him is altogether different. His presence had to fill me. He had to heal my memories.

Then one day soon after, it happened. He didn’t take the memories away. But over them all He flooded a love – like a swiftly flowing river – and showed me that, regardless of appearances, through all the experiences, good and bad, only Love was operating. I praised Him for each event that had shaped our lives, for there had actually been no bad ones, only clouded vision. As the poet Robert Browning said so beautifully, “On the earth, the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round.”

The truth is, although we shouldn’t deliberately seek out or wallow in suffering, it can bring its rewards when it comes. We are purified, like gold, in the fires of tribulation. The broken heart is the open heart.

Dogwood (2)With that realization came the ability to let go of the past, to start the day anew. I could treasure the memories and lessons learned, but live and rejoice in the ever-present Now.

So I knew then that the tree would always be there, reaching its roots down into the cool earth, its trunk blanketed by forget-me-nots and wild sorrel, its branches stretching toward its neighbors, the maple and the alder. And perhaps, now that I have released it, next spring will find it breaking forth in resplendent bloom.

Prelude: Don’t Hold On To The Dogwood Tree

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Last week while writing about the grandmothers and mothers who helped to shape my character, another story emerged from the synopses of their lives. It would seem irreverent to blithely skip past the brief but stunning notations that two of these four, resilient women buried children. Every parent knows there is nothing more tragic or impossible to bear. Those who have experienced it can attest to that truth. Those who have not will agree that losing a child is their greatest fear.

Paul Daniel Samsel

Paul Daniel Samsel January 30, 1914 to October 14, 1914

Paul Daniel Samsel
January 30, 1914 to October 14, 1914

Imagine holding your firstborn baby boy in your arms, smiling down at him with more joy than you ever dreamed one person could feel. It’s January 30, 1914. In Europe, World War I is beginning to brew. In America, Henry Ford starts mass producing cars and Babe Ruth is about to sign his first minor league contract. None of that matters to you. Everyone and everything else in the world could disappear like snowflakes in summertime and you wouldn’t notice. You no longer own your heart. It now resides in that baby boy’s beautiful eyes and in the grasp of his tiny, perfect fingers. The only thing you know is love. Your only expectation is that he will grow and learn and play and ever after be the greatest source of your own rapture.

Less than nine months later you are standing in the surreal landscape of a cemetery, staring at that baby boy’s gravestone. He has died horribly of a mysterious condition that stole his strength and turned his skin dark and scaly. Because it caused hideous lesions to erupt in his tiny mouth, doctors called it Black Tongue Disease. No one would know for decades that it was actually just a niacin deficiency easily addressed with a diet change.

For the rest of your 93 years, you will rarely speak of the little spirit who entered and exited your life in a shockingly short span of time. Oh, you will be a mother again. You will smile, laugh and love again. But shards of your broken heart will forever reside in your firstborn baby boy’s closed eyes.

Marsha Ann Olson

Marsha Ann Olson October 21, 1957 to April 19, 1971

Marsha Ann Olson
October 21, 1957 to April 19, 1971

Now imagine you are a young mother in the late 1950s. Your fourth child has come along unexpectedly but your delight in this happy little girl’s presence is not diminished by the surprise. About a year of normal childhood milestones comes to a screeching halt one day when she is scrambling up the stairs in yet another gleeful attempt to explore the uncharted territory of her siblings’ second-floor bedrooms. In the single tick of a clock, she can’t remember how to climb. Soon, any words she has learned are gone. Her hands are compulsively clenched, often with fists raised as if poised for a boxing match, and her siblings gently hold her arms down for family photos. Seizures grip her without warning. Eye contact is increasingly rare. She understands little except perhaps the fact that she is loved.

At the time, you are a Christian Scientist who puts more faith in God than doctors. Yet, you still consult them. They are clueless. You accept the reality and continue to love your sweet, unusual child with all your heart and soul. Your other children are protective when neighborhood bullies tease her. They periodically sing to her, “I love you a bushel and a peck.” You sometimes buy her little hand bells to see her eyes light up in momentary enchantment. You help her walk and eat, take her to a special school, change her diapers and put her to bed at night for almost 14 years. Then one morning you go into her bedroom and find her precious body lifeless and cold.

Doctors still have no answers for you. They shrug and state the obvious; that she slipped away in her sleep. More than 40 years later, your other children come across a website that indicates she probably suffered from a rare genetic condition first identified as Rett Syndrome by an Austrian doctor in 1954 but not widely recognized until 1983. Even if you had known, what could you have done but exactly what you did when your little girl was mercifully freed from her mortal prison? You would pray, carry on, and plant a dogwood tree in her memory.

Don’t Hang On To The Dogwood Tree

Joan's Original Manuscript

Joan’s Original Manuscript

“Don’t Hang On To The Dogwood Tree” is the title of a story my mother-in-law, Joan Millard Olson, wrote six years after the awful morning she walked into her daughter’s bedroom and had her heart ripped from her chest. As only a bereaved parent could, she describes with painful honesty what it’s like to suddenly lose a child and then be confronted with the need to move forward in life. My mother-in-law has been gone 27 years this May and is hopefully dancing on some ethereal plane with her sweet, unusual daughter. Here on Earth, I am blessed to have her manuscript in my possession. It’s a different kind of “Note From My Mother,” and one I will be most proud to share with you next week.

Until then, I will leave you with one particularly poignant line from her story that, curiously, she red-lined. Why she wanted to delete it, I can’t say. Perhaps she thought it unoriginal or too esoteric. I, however, find it achingly hopeful in its eloquent simplicity.

The broken heart is the open heart.

Marsha and Joan in a rare moment of connection.

Marsha and Joan in a rare moment of connection.

Be a Good Girl

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Not every note my mother left me was on paper. Some messages go so far back that they are part of who I am. Over the course of 60-some years, I’m sure that I heard today’s four-word lesson literally tens of thousands of times.

Be a good girl.

That reminder followed me out the door every day when I was a child. Whether I was heading off to school or to a friend’s sleepover or to visit one of my grandmothers, that was Mom’s fundamental rule. Becoming an adult didn’t alter her parting words. Becoming her caregiver didn’t change the ritual either. In her last years, I began to tease her that she had ruined my life with that phrase. What if I had wanted to be a bad girl every once in a while?

Alas, with sugary nicknames like Pollyanna, Goody Two-Shoes and Mary Tyler Moore, it’s no secret that I have, indeed, been a good girl most of my life. When I was about 5 years old I tarnished my reputation by putting gum in my sister’s hair, forcing an unwanted haircut. In high school I got caught parking with my boyfriend on a dark, quiet road and then made things worse by lying about it. But, compared to serious problems like drug addiction, alcohol abuse and criminal mischief, my transgressions were ridiculously tame. Bad … really bad … just wasn’t in my genes.

At times, I’ve wondered why Mom routinely told my sister and me to “be a good girl,” but she peppered her farewells to our little brother with a fairly large repertoire of less constraining phrases like “have a good time” and “if you can’t be good, be careful.” Perhaps being a girl herself, she knew what kind of childish shenanigans or youthful escapades we could engage in and the potentially devastating consequences thereof. I prefer, however, to think it was really because she wanted to continuously instill in us the extraordinary character of the women in our family.

Carrie Elizabeth Heasman Metzger

Good Girl (1)No woman in my family lineage was more amazing than my mother’s mother. In the early 1900s, she toiled tirelessly with her husband to cultivate unforgiving homestead land in Montana. World War I, the military confiscation of horses for the overseas cavalry and the Navy’s strong “invitation” for my grandfather to build warships in Washington’s Puget Sound interfered with their plans. When the war ended, they found themselves living nomadically in the valleys of Northern California, much like the Joad family in The Grapes of Wrath. Ultimately, they migrated south to the Los Angeles harbor area where my grandfather took up ocean fishing. Soon he wanted their six boys to forgo school and work with him. My grandmother objected, the two separated, and my grandfather was later killed in a violent storm at sea. Shockingly for the times, my grandmother lived openly with another man out of wedlock, helped to take care of his elderly mother, and determinedly continued to raise her children and some of her children’s children. When she died in 1979 at the age of 90, she had 10 children, 25 grandchildren and 56 great-grandchildren. The fact that there was standing room only for her memorial service was a testament to the love she so richly deserved.

Beulah Ann Todd Samsel

Good Girl (8)My father’s mother was equally tenacious, although not as beloved as my maternal grandmother. She had no children except for my father. Her firstborn son tragically died as a toddler of a vitamin deficiency hideously called Black Tongue Disease in 1914. My grandfather was a drinker and, although family references to him were always vague, I suspect he was abusive. Sometime after my grandmother divorced him, he was struck and killed by a truck while walking intoxicated down a country road in Tennessee. Meanwhile, my grandmother was bravely raising my father and working in a café at an aircraft manufacturing plant in El Segundo, California. She somehow also found the wherewithal to take care of her aging mother in her last years. Life wore my grandmother down and, by the time my parents married, she had become a somewhat bitter, critical, meddlesome presence. In hindsight, I know that she was doing her best, in whatever misguided way, to ensure that her son was loved and her grandchildren would someday find a place at God’s knee. Sadly, she denied she even had a family just before she died in a nursing home at the age of 93. That doesn’t change the fact that she was courageous and strong when she most needed to be.

Joyce Maxine Metzger Samsel (Joy)

Good Girl (4)Although I didn’t give her enough credit while I was growing up, Mom’s inner strength is solely responsible for our family’s survival. Back when it still wasn’t generally accepted to be a working mother, she kept the books for medical doctors and raised three children while my father traveled the world as a Merchant Marine. She was forced to finally and forever become the head of the household in 1970 when my father had a late-life diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia coupled with bipolar disease. His breakdown while alone and far from home destroyed the family emotionally and financially. Yet, somehow Mom found the will to rise from the ruins and rebuild a stable life for us. At first, I don’t think she believed she could do it. Decision-making was never Mom’s favorite task, but she pulled up her proverbial bootstraps and marched ahead into the unknown. When she passed away in 2013 at the age of 89, she had little to show for her efforts in the way of material possessions, but she enjoyed the priceless devotion of her children and grandchildren.

Betty Joan Millard Olson (Jo-Anne)

Good Girl (5)When I was 20 years old, I was lucky enough to marry into a family with another remarkable maternal presence. She wasn’t my mother by blood, but she became my second mother by heart. She was a traditional housewife in the 1950s and 1960s; raising three children and unexpectedly losing one to a mysterious genetic condition. By the mid-1970s, though, she had evolved into a dynamic, free-spirited woman whose circle of friends ranged from laid-back, mountain-dwelling hippies to driven, progressive yuppies. Breaking free from mid-century expectations was not easy since her husband was the quintessential ruler of the roost with staunchly conservative values. Regardless, she went back to college and earned a master’s degree in religion, converted to Catholicism when she fell in love with Mother Mary, and became a compassionate spiritual counselor. For several years she watched over her elderly, widowed stepmother who, by all accounts, was not a particularly warm and accepting substitute for the mother she had lost as a child. Yet, it was not in her nature to feel anything but love for the tiny, straight-laced, Christian poet we called Grandma Millard. My mother-in-law died of lymphoma in 1988 at the age of 62. It’s hard to believe I knew her only 16 years. Her example of love, kindness, forgiveness and spirituality has followed me every day since we lost her. In difficult situations, I often find myself pondering, “What would Joan do?”

Laurie Joy Samsel Olson

Every one of these women was strong, self-reliant and had a significant influence on my life. Collectively, they were seekers, doers, fighters, achievers, lovers and believers. All were mothers. And all were caregivers.

I look at their lives and their photos and I see … me.

Good Girl (6)Next week I’m turning 61. In July, I will have been married to, acrimoniously divorced from, and happily married again to my high school sweetheart for a grand total of 43 years. The descriptors that fit between those milestones run the gamut from joy to hostility, dependence to self-reliance, forgiveness to contentment. In October, I will have been a grateful mother for 40 years and a doting grandmother for 13 years. Sometime this year, though I’m not sure exactly when, I will pass the 35th anniversary of the day I became a full-time career woman. And in December, I will observe the second anniversary of the day I said good-bye to the woman who cared for me when I came into the world and who I cared for when she made her exit.

My path does not exactly mirror those of Carrie, Beulah, Joy and Joan, but the basic journey shadows theirs in almost storybook fashion. The Brothers Grimm could not have written a better parable about children walking squarely in the footsteps of their forefathers.  I am my grandmothers’ granddaughter. I am my mothers’ daughter.

Maybe that’s why Mom didn’t write down the most important lesson she ever tried to teach me. Maybe … just maybe … she thought I had already learned it. The only thing left to do is pass it on to my daughter, stepdaughter, daughter-in-law, nieces and the great-granddaughters’ who are still just a gleam in my grandsons’ eyes. To all of them … and to all my readers of the feminine persuasion, remember to …

Be a good girl.

Grandma Carrie Metzger (about 1930) at Cabrillo Beach, California.

Grandma Carrie Metzger in 1930 at Cabrillo Beach, California.

It’s All About Me, Revisited

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Last fall, I wrote back-to-back columns that used comedian Al Franken’s trademark line – “it’s all about me” – first to describe the world of a dependent care recipient and then to remind caregivers of the need to stop and take care of themselves periodically.

I’m no longer a caregiver, but I’m heeding my own words today. I’m taking the week off from blog writing.

Last Sunday afternoon, after happily polishing off my weekly post, I was outside repotting a thriving Christmas cactus. While walking back to the house, I unceremoniously tripped and fell on the brick patio. My beautiful, new, green ceramic pot went flying and, of course, broke when it landed on the unforgiving surface. Meanwhile, I went down hard on my right knee and then found myself nose-to-nose with a rather inhospitable octagonal block.

Let’s just say, the brick won our little skirmish.

A week later, my nose is improving but my knee is not. Sitting at the computer increases the pain. So, after wrestling with my inner sense of responsibility over a self-imposed deadline, I’m taking my own advice about self-care. I’ll check in again soon with another Note From My Mother, but today I think my Momma would approve of my decision to invoke Al Franken’s declaration …

It’s all about me.

Have a wonderful day and week, everyone, and may you all win any battles you might have with gravity and hard surfaces.

1 - Mom and Me 19540001

Mom was my caregiver long before I was hers. Here we are shortly after I arrived March 28, 1954. (And get a load of that early television and that funky lamp in the background! Wish I had both of them now!)

Here Are My Accolades

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My mother took her first breath in a small, white houseboat floating in the cool waters of Potato Slough on the California River Delta on December 4, 1924. She took her last roughly 200 miles northeast in the big, brown home we shared in the dry desert of Northern Nevada on December 9, 2013.

Nothing of global importance happened on either of those days. No wars were declared or peace treaties signed. No major scientific discoveries were announced or natural disasters reported. There wasn’t even a full moon. Yet, those two days are of supreme importance to me. They marked the beginning and the end of a life that affected me more than any other has or will.

Between those two Decembers, Mom lived 89 years. But, in her mind, she was ageless. She used to tell the grandchildren that she was in Ford Theater when President Abraham Lincoln was shot in 1865 and, while they were young and impressionable, they believed her. She used to lament to me that she was nothing more than an 18-year-old trapped in an aging body and, the older I got, the more I understood how she felt. She professed to everyone that she was going to live forever, and we all wished it could be so.

When I began writing this column last August, the primary purpose was to share the words of wisdom Mom left behind for me in a priceless series of cards and notes she entrusted with family members to deliver posthumously. Week after week, I’ve taken the quotes and catch phrases she preserved for posterity and turned them into stories about her, about caring for her, and about losing her. I would like to believe that, in some small way, these columns have served to support her wistful dream of everlasting life. As my gifted British friend, Chris Bannister, wrote in his lovely song Everybody Knows, what we leave behind is our best hope for immortality.

Everybody knows that nothing lasts for long except the sky. We can’t live forever but we try … by leaving something beautiful behind.

The something beautiful in those lyrics need not be a classic novel, a life-saving vaccine or a celebrated work of art. Exceptional experiences like those happen to so few. What every one of us is able to leave behind, though, is the unique way in which we’ve touched others. Most of the time, we aren’t even aware that the ripples of our lives circle out farther, ever farther, and gently collide with other lives. The impact may be no more than a tap, but it can alter a course, transform a life or simply create a precious memory that makes us smile or provides comfort in times of sorrow.

Here - Mom With StudebakerFor me, the ultimate example of this phenomenon was embodied in a condolence letter that arrived about a month and a half after Mom died. It was from her old friend “Little Mary” who took the opportunity to share a story that brought my mother’s vibrant youth to life. I paraphrased the tale when I wrote about Mom’s free-spirited nature last fall in the column This Hunt Is Dedicated. While driving a carload of friends from San Pedro to the opera in nearby Los Angeles, the rather unreliable coupe broke down and blocked the Red Car trolley. Mom hopped out in the rain, Little Mary wrote. “She lifted the hood and with her comb she tapped something, got back in the car and we drove off. The passengers in the Red Car applauded wildly. I’ve never heard the name Joyce that that video didn’t play in my head!”

Here - Mary's LetterThe tap that started the car on that otherwise forgotten day stayed with Little Mary for more than 60 years. Her condolence letter was the ripple that brought the story full circle. When it showed up in my mailbox, the colorful anecdote tapped me with a lovely reminder that the sum of my mother’s life was not wrapped up in her last years of ill health and dependence. It was as though Little Mary was the unsuspecting guardian of a secret that was long ago destined to comfort me in the wake of my mother’s passing.

Here - Memorial BrochureIn 89 years, Mom touched countless people as she drifted from the harbors and valleys of California, to the mountains and beaches of Oregon, and finally to the high desert of Northern Nevada. Some folks she knew well; others she did not. Either way, it was her Joie de Vivre that most of them remember. As I’ve said previously in this column, she was a fan of the weird and wonderful, the bright and beautiful. She loved to explore, wonder, dream and hope. Most of all, she loved to laugh. So much so that, in an unattributed poem she left with her Last Will and Testament, she told us to “remember me with smiles and laughter” or not at all. We honored that by using the poem in her memorial brochure along with a photo of her smiling gaily.

Sometime in her last year, when it was clear that time was growing short, I asked her what she remembered about helping her older sisters take care of their Here - Mom and Birdie90-year-old mother in her final days. I wasn’t making casual conversation; I was fishing for advice. She thought about it for a minute and said rather sheepishly that her most vivid memory wasn’t of bathing her mother or changing her soiled sheets or engaging in meaningful conversation. Instead, she clearly remembered sitting in the living room of her mother’s home laughing hysterically at a skit on Saturday Night Live. What made her and our equally unconventional relative, Birdie, giggle uncontrollably, she couldn’t say. Based on the month and year, though, I have a pretty fair guess. I can imagine both of them cracking up over the 1978 Christmas message that Gilda Radner’s recurring character, Roseanne Roseannadanna, shared with viewers as part of her trademark rant on the Weekend Update.

Life is just like a fruitcake. When you look at it, it’s rich and sweet with honey and sugar and spice, tastes delicious, makes your mouth water and everything. But if you look at it real close, there’s these weird little green things in it and all that and you don’t know what it is!

I’ve probably never heard a more perfect … and perfectly hilarious … analogy. Life is, indeed, like a fruitcake. But I would venture to say that the weird little green things in it are not necessarily all distasteful. An unexpected turn of events – for instance, living with and taking care of your mother for the last 12 years of her life – could prove to be just as rich and sweet as the honey, sugar and spice.

Today’s column heading is the last line from Mom’s posthumous notes that I have to share with you all. While that puts a punctuation mark on the foundation for these essays, it doesn’t end them. Mom left so many more “notes” for us to explore through things she often said but did not write down, through tape recordings she made more than 20 years before she passed away, and through scrapbooks filled with intriguing memories. My intent is to carry on for as long as the stories find their way from my immortal maternal muse to the keyboard of the computer she and I shared.

Here are your accolades, Mom.

Here - From Card

Here they are – bringing a smile, a tear, a laugh or an insight to every reader who scrolls through these columns. As of this morning, your stories have been viewed 2,162 times by readers in 34 countries. Your body may have returned to ashes, but your spirit is alive and well. Your playful inspiration is the something beautiful you left behind. That and your Joie de Vivre are rippling around the world at this very moment. Someone, somewhere just felt your gentle, joyful tap.

 

(Desiring to give credit where it’s due, I want to note that the poem “Remember Me” may have been written by Laura Ingalls Wilder or by Michael Landon when he wrote the script for a Little House on the Prairie television episode called “Remember Me.” Mom probably heard it on the television show since I know she didn’t read the books. )

Live Long and Prosper, Revisited

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Last November, I wrote about Mom’s passion for all things Star Trek and how the epic space franchise played into birthday and Christmas traditions in our household. Mr. Spock’s most famous line, “Live long and prosper,” served as the foundation for the story.

A couple of days ago, the man who embodied Mr. Spock for nearly 50 years permanently beamed off this planet to explore strange, new worlds in ethereal dimensions. Actor, director, photographer, writer, global icon Leonard Nimoy died Friday, February 27, at the age of 83. When his gentle spirit arrived on the other side, I would like to think that Mom was among the crowd of friends waiting to greet him.

Mom always had a soft spot in her heart for the half-human, half-Vulcan who nobly struggled to maintain a logical decorum even in the most challenging situations. One of the quintessential moments for Mr. Spock was written into the television episode called This Side of Paradise, one of Mom’s favorites. It took several, increasingly inflammatory insults by his space cohort, Captain James T. Kirk, to raise his ire and free him from a mind-altering alien spore. “You belong in a circus, Spock, not a starship!” Kirk shouted, “Right next to the dog-faced boy!” It was hard not to feel sorry for Mr. Spock when he was jolted from utopia and compelled to sacrifice romance for duty.

"Live Long and Prosper"

Mom’s soft spot grew to embrace the real Leonard Nimoy when she, my two children and I had our photo taken with him at a jam-packed fan convention in Sacramento in 2006. Event staff were tasked with quickly herding dozens of people in and out of the banquet room where Mr. Nimoy and his Star Trek co-star William Shatner stood in front of a gold backdrop, smiling on cue through flash after flash. In the few minutes we shared with the two men, we at least were able to thank them for three generations of unparalleled entertainment. Mr. Shatner was suffering from a cold that day and, understandably I suppose, was not particularly engaging. Mr. Nimoy, though, treated Mom like a person instead of a prop. Unhurried, warm and welcoming, he leaned in toward her wheelchair and rested a friendly hand on her shoulder for the souvenir shot. She often recounted how special this simple, sensitive act made her feel.

I’m sure that brief moment did not impact Mr. Nimoy in the meaningful way that it did Mom. After decades of photo shoots, the parade of fans he touched must have been a blur. However, when I read the last comment he posted on Twitter four days before he died, I was amazed by the way his powerful words seemed to reflect on moments just like that one.

A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP.

Preserved in memory. Through this weekly column, I am the guardian of my mother’s memory and the storyteller entrusted with commemorating her life and experiences. Today I am also privileged to be one of the many guardians of Mr. Nimoy’s memory by chronicling his small act of human kindness toward my mother.

I can’t help but be reminded of Admiral James T. Kirk’s eulogy when Mr. Spock died at the conclusion of the film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. “Of all the souls I’ve encountered in my travels,” Kirk said, “his was the most human.”

Kirk’s voice broke during that monologue. Poignantly, he struggled to keep it together to appropriately honor his friend. Today, in real life, there are millions around the world struggling to do the same as they remember Mr. Nimoy. He was truly our friend, if only through television, film and photo opps. If he could speak to us, perhaps he would repeat the dying words of Mr. Spock as he slowly succumbed to radiation poisoning after saving the ship and all hands on board.

Don’t grieve, Admiral. It is logical. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one. I have been and always shall be your friend. Live long and prosper.

One of Mom's favorite axioms, commemorated in a posthumous note.

Mom’s favorite signature line, commemorated in a posthumous note.

Beam Me Up, Scotty!

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“Beam me up, Scotty” is an oft-misquoted catch phrase from the grand patriarch of all television and film space odysseys, Star Trek.

Contrary to popular belief, Captain James T. Kirk never issued precisely this command to his Chief Engineer, Montgomery Scott, at any time during the last half century. He came close in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home when he said, “Scotty, beam me up,” but no script contains the exact words in the exact order that fans ‘round the world love to repeat.

Mom loved that hijacked line, too. It was one of the axioms she commemorated for posterity when she dictated some recollections to my sister in her final days. After she passed away, we borrowed the essence of it for her memorial brochure.

The mortuary that handled Mom’s cremation suggested the brochure even though we weren’t planning a service, and we thought, well, why not? However, the samples they provided completely turned us off; they just didn’t reflect Mom’s spirit. I’m sure our faces looked as if we had just sucked lemons when we read standard language like, “Entered into the world on (insert date) and returned to the loving arms of the Heavenly Father on (insert date).” Finally, in a moment of dazzling inspiration, we decided to characterize Mom’s arrival and departure in Star Trek terms.

Beamed Down: December 4, 1924.  Beamed Up: December 9, 2013

She would have loved it.Beam Me Up (5)

Like legions of other Trekkies, Mom used the altered quote, “Beam me up, Scotty,” as a synonym for escape. Who wouldn’t want to be transported from an unfriendly planet to the safety of a powerful starship? From a stressful workplace to a peaceful tropical island? From a miles-long traffic jam to the serenity of home? From a time in your life when insulin shots and a wheelchair are your best friends to a better day when you enjoyed good health?

While many Star Trek innovations like communicators and hand-held electronic tablets have emerged in real life as cell phones and i-Pads, scientists haven’t quite come up with a way to dematerialize matter and rematerialize it somewhere else. I understand that a handful of brilliant Montgomery Scott wannabes are working on it, but it’s not likely to come true in my lifetime.

It certainly didn’t come true in Mom’s. She had to settle for virtual trips through time and space with her Star Trek comrades. Once she had an opportunity to become part of her favorite crew through a green screen technique at a Universal Studios souvenir shop. Years later she enjoyed a museum tour, a make-believe battle with the cybernetic species known as the Borg and lunch in a futuristic Ferengi café – all within the earthbound walls of the now defunct Star Trek exhibit at the Las Vegas Hilton Hotel.

Beam Me Up (3)Mom wasn’t really content with fictional interstellar exploration, however. She was the quintessential skywatcher. My niece, Rhianna, and I both have vivid memories of midnight adventures oohing and aahing with Mom as we watched the Perseid and Leonid meteor showers. Most of the family also remembers being with Mom when we excitedly spotted Comet Hale-Bopp hanging over the Pacific Ocean in 1997. Half a dozen years later, while cruising through Alaska’s Inside Passage, I clearly remember rousing her in the middle of the night and pushing her wheelchair to the observation deck to witness the unique spectacle of the Northern Lights.

Memories of her delight in heavenly mysteries are the intangibles Mom bequeathed to us, but she also left behind hard evidence. Ever the organizer, she preserved some of her celestial research in a big, white binder labeled “Things That Interest Me.” The thick scrapbook commemorates her fascination with everything from The Lord of the Rings to Charles Schulz and his immortal Peanuts cartoon strip, but the last section is all about “Outer Space.” It begins with a 2008 article from Parade magazine about the final repair mission of the Hubble Telescope and is followed by Internet printouts of photos snapped by the amazing contraption. Breathtaking galaxies, incredible star formations and other stunning cosmic anomalies constitute a proverbial feast for the eyes. Meanwhile, the cover she chose for the binder erases any doubt about her principal interest. It’s a portrait of the Pillars of Creation inside the Eagle Nebula.

Beam Me Up (2)Until I was preparing to write this column, I never paid much attention to the details of Mom’s enchantment with those far away images. Now I know that the Eagle Nebula is essentially a cluster of gas and dust, that the Pillars of Creation are giving birth to stars, and that the phenomena is situated near the constellation that is Mom’s astrological sign – Sagittarius the Archer. Interestingly, some astrologers say that people born under this sign enjoy experiences that are beyond the physically familiar and are eager to explore new dimensions of thought. Whether Mom was aware of that last piece of trivia is unknown but, for me, it opens another window into the soul of the person who was my own Pillar of Creation.

While poking around on the Internet, I was sad to discover that the Pillars of Creation that Mom so loved no longer exist. They were destroyed 6,000 years ago by a supernova, but the shockwave hasn’t reached Earth as yet. We are basically seeing ghosts carried on beams of light over the vast expanse of space.

Learning about the Pillars’ demise is a little like finding out that “Beam me up, Scotty” is not actually a true line from Mom’s beloved space franchise. Yet, I somehow find both realities rather poetic.

Mom’s physical body is gone but her spirit continues to light my way like a heavenly beacon. The letter, cards and notes she left behind for me have served as a loving foundation to document priceless memories about living with her, caring for her during her last years and loving her for a lifetime. As I said to her grandchildren and great grandchildren in last week’s column, she will never truly be gone as long as we keep her in our thoughts, our conversations and our hearts.

As for the errant line from Star Trek, I take comfort in what Captain Kirk and other crewmates often did say when they were ready to return to the safety of their interplanetary home on the starship Enterprise. By the time she passed away five days after her 89th birthday, Mom was exhausted and no longer able to move or talk. Her physical resources were completely used up. In Star Trek jargon, her Dilithium Crystals were depleted. I’d like to think that, when she finally departed, someone somewhere issued the simple but beautiful command that restored her weary soul.

Energize!

Today I’ll borrow one more line from Star Trek in salute to Mom. In the words of 20th Century whale biologist Dr. Gillian Taylor when she had to say good-bye to Captain Kirk at the end of The Voyage Home, “See you around the galaxy.”

Beam Me Up (1)