THE TRADITION OF SERVICE

When I was little, my mother, Mary Francis, stayed at home with my sister & I.  If she worked, it was at night as a waitress or cook in a small café.  Some nights, we were in our pajamas in the car when Dad picked her up.  As Sam got to be a teenager, they would leave us for a short time with him in charge.

There was an 8 x 10 color photo of her before she married Dad that was in the house all the years we grew up.  This was a color-enhanced portrait that was made in the 1940s.  I believe it was the way Dad thought of her because, in later years, after Dad died, it was put away.  We found it on her death and used it at the funeral.  The large print that was made for that event still hangs in our home.  At her funeral, I took many friends and family to that portrait before walking with them to where she was in the coffin.  That’s another way Dad and I are alike.

I often relate that she said that if she had known that grandchildren were going to be so much fun, she would have had them first.  She was “Granny” and Cindy’s mother was “Grandma”.  The difference in the way they related to their grandchildren was easy to see.  Granny’s home had toys that were put away, but available when the kids came.  Grandma’s house had no toys, and the girls loved Grandma but said her house was boring.

It wasn’t anything I noticed all at once at some point in my childhood; it dawned on me that Dad always kissed Mom goodbye when he left for work in the mornings.  It was not a long, lingering kiss that would make a young boy yell yuck or the kind of passionate kiss that would make a teenager envious.  It was just two quick pecks on the lips.

If Mom went somewhere in the evening or on the weekend, they would kiss when she left.  If one left the house without the other at any time, they would kiss.  The public display of affection around our house was minimal.  This was the one recollection I have of them showing their tremendous love for each other in an easily recognized way. 

Cindy and I continue this tradition.  I have noticed all three of our daughters kissing their husbands when one of them leaves.  Positive, lasting traditions are thought to be hard to establish.  Sometimes the simplest is the easiest.

Music was an important part of my Mother’s life.  Mostly, it was hymns that she sang while she worked around the house.  Other times, it was the impromptu concerts we enjoyed from her and her sisters anytime they got together.  In later years, reunions almost always involved someone, usually a cousin, bringing out a guitar or sitting at a piano and playing with the aunts, adding their own unique harmonies.

At her funeral, we played a song that she loved and had heard at her Brother Bill’s funeral.  Cindy had to call Gary Longstaff, a business associate who was the station manager at KWFC radio in Springfield at the time.  The song was “God Walks These Hills”.  In researching this book, I found numerous artists who have recorded it.  The version we used was by Porter Wagoner.

Dad’s jobs at church were usually bus driver or helping with building repairs.  Mom was the one from whom my teaching ability and desire came.  She taught Sunday school, Girls in Action, WMU, and Acteens in the different churches we attended. 

I sometimes serve as a substitute leader for a lady’s Sunday school class at our church that has many members who remember when Mom was their leader.  She started chauffeuring older ladies for meals out or grocery shopping, going to church, or other activities shortly after Dad died. 

Her life of serving others has always been in front of me.  Meals were an important part of her service.  Whether it was a small family meal when we were kids or a family holiday meal or reunion, my mother was not the one who stopped at the deli to pick up a last-minute contribution.  She never said it, but her actions told me that she cared about you by cooking and serving a meal to those you love. 

Mom and Dad demonstrated to me how to stay married.  She told me the story of a doctor at the VA hospital one time when she was admitting Dad after he had a spell with his disease.  The doctor did not seem to understand why they were there.  Mom told him it was because she couldn’t take any more and they needed to do something.  Having never met her before, he assumed she meant she could not take any more of living with my father, and he asked if she was going to get a divorce.  She replied no and that all they needed was for the doctors to adjust his meds as they had done before, and then she would take him home once he was better.  When she said for better or for worse, she meant it.

Dad was at a Veterans hospital for his schizophrenia when his abdomen started to swell.  They moved him from the psychiatric ward to the medical side to determine what the problem was.  Because of the pain, he was given a painkiller.  It made him sleep.  Mom had been at the hospital in North Little Rock, Arkansas, the previous weekend to visit him.  She had told me about his pain and swelling early in the week.

On Thursday, Cindy received a call from the hospital at our home notifying us of Dad’s condition.  They had determined that he had cancer of the spleen, and it had spread throughout his abdomen.  They wanted my Mother and I to come down as soon as possible.  Cindy called me at work, and I called the hospital and then contacted Mom at work.  We decided to leave as soon as she got out of work.  That would be leaving Springfield for Little Rock at about 4:00 p.m.

Before I was able to pick her up, Mom had called the hospital again, and they recommended that we not come that evening but wait until the morning.  Dad was sedated, and they would not wake him until we got there.  That would be when he found out he had cancer, and it was terminal.  Dad never regained consciousness.

Around 9:00 p.m. Mom got the call that Dad had died.  When she called me, I went to their home and sat with her until she convinced me to return home.  While we talked, I learned many things that I had never known.  I learned they had not had sex in six years.  She told me that she had found out Dad’s schizophrenia was probably a result of the time he was unresponsive on the table during the ulcer surgery.  I had never been told about his death that day, until then.

When she died many years later from congestive heart failure, I thought back to that night.  She had continued without Dad for over 10 years and had never entertained dating any other man.  She told me one of the older ladies she drove had tried to get her to go out with someone, and her response was that if she needed a man, she had three sons who could help her with anything that she wanted.

While she was in the final stages of congestive heart failure, Cindy was concerned about her falling because she had gotten up the last couple of nights and eaten some leftover pie that was in the refrigerator.  She told Cindy that she would not get up anymore and added after a pause that was because there was no more pie.

Shortly before her death, we made a list of her possessions that she wanted to be given to different family members.  These wishes were respected except for the antique secretary that she wanted to give to my brother, Bud.  It still sits in my house, where he had me put it because there was no room in his apartment.  Someday, when he is ready, it will be moved to his home, and he can enjoy it as we have for all these years.

The oddest things that she and I never thought of were requested by more than one of her heirs and required some tactful handling.  The easiest was the macaroni and cheese dish.  Mom had one dish that was always used to bake her recipe for macaroni and cheese with a cracker crumb topping. 

That was not as much of a dispute as the talking parrot.  This animal was not alive but was a stuffed version that could record a short phrase and play it back.  More than one of the grandchildren wanted this nonsensical item.  It wasn’t what it was, but the memories of the messages she would record for each child as they played with it.

Thinking back on recordings, I must mention the gift that Michelle, my daughter, purchased for Mom’s first two great-grandchildren, Scottie and T.J.  Michelle’s dream job was to work at a Build-A-Bear Workshop.  While she was in college, one opened in the mall in Springfield, Missouri, where we live.  Yes, I said THE mall.  Michelle purchased two of the recordable voice boxes they sell to put in the animals.  After Mom died and the babies were born, she presented each with a special bear made for them by her with great-grandma’s voice.  Despite death, she expressed her love to the children.

COPYRIGHT 2014 BY CHARLES (CHUCK) KENSINGER