Thank you for coming today.
Mom would have loved seeing all of you but would have hated that all this yah yah yahing was about her.
Remember that as we live life with Linda that it’s ok to laugh. It’s ok to cry. We all grieve in different ways.
For those with small bladders like my Mom and our family we are almost there – cross your legs. It’s just a little bit longer – I’m the last thing on the agenda.
I spent quite a bit of time avoiding writing these remarks … reading, gardening, playing with the dogs, cats, steers & donkeys, buying lots and lots plants online for spring – basically being my Mom and doing anything and everything to not do my paperwork.
In hopes of yet another distraction I looked through our AppleTV and came across a lot of mom’s favorite movies…Out of Africa, The African Queen, Driving Ms. Daisy, My Fair Lady, Sister Act (she loved her some Whoopi) and her number one favorite movie of all time – The Sound of Music.
So of course, I pressed play – it’s a very long movie – a lot more time to not do what needed to be done.
Mom loved The Sound of Music. It’s up there with Dolly Parton, the OSU Cowboys and Kansas City Chiefs, pumpkin pie, fishing, gardening or teaming up with Taylor to give me a hard time and push every single button I have…repeatedly.
Our special tradition was to watch the Sound of Music every year at Christmas.
And every time Mom would sing along from the very first notes as Julie Andrews twirled above the alps to the end when the family hiked over those same Alps to freedom.
Even when the shadows had fallen across her mind – she would belt out Climb Every Mountain, Edelweiss and My Favorite Things.
So in order to avoid writing these remarks I settled in to spend some quality time with the Von Trapps and not with Microsoft Word; but then the nuns and the Mother Abbess launched into the song Maria and all I could think of was Mom.
She climbs a tree and scrapes her knee Her dress has got a tear She waltzes on her way to Mass And whistles on the stair
I even heard her singing in the abbey
She's always late for chapel
But her penitence is real
She's always late for everything
Except for every meal
Unpredictable as weather She's as flighty as a feather She's a darling! She's a demon! She's a lamb!
She'd out pester any pest Drive a hornet from its nest She could throw a whirling dervish out of whirl She is gentle! She is wild! She's a riddle! She's a child! She's a headache! She's an angel! She's a girl!
This.
This was my mother.
And because I had finally reached the age where my Mom wasn’t just my Mom, but a fully realized woman with a life before me and after me who was a force of nature. A god in the OR. A steel magnolia or should I say since we are in Oklahoma - an iron cottonwood.
A bundle of contradictions rolled up into an always smiling and warm enigma.
Looking back on Mom’s life, I can imagine my saintly grandmother singing her own version of Maria when Mom was a kid.
Linda running wild on the banks of the river and in the fields. Fishing and horseback riding instead of learning to sew or cook.
When Mom sprinted away from all that was expected of a woman at that time in history and into a life that no one could have ever imagined, Edna Mae would be singing “how do you solve a problem like Linda” to my grandfather.
The answer to that question is something that I have wondered about a LOT in my life.
How do you solve the riddle of the mom who loved me deeply and gave me an incredible life, but also tried to kill me a lot as a kid and who’s parenting philosophy was a wicked mix of free range, outsourcing and raised by wolves?
Before you jump to conclusions, she wasn’t some Lifetime movie killer Mom but just a bit inattentive. As I was able to survive and thrive, we laughed and came to call this “outside the hospital” syndrome.
My experience with outside the hospital Linda started when I was still in the womb. Mom climbed on top of the roof and fell through the roof of our house and got stuck because of her big ol’ belly aka me while trying to fix a shingle. The first of many fixer projects that she would tackle with me – willingly or not.
Then when I was maybe two to three weeks old she took me fishing, set me on a blanket on the bank and then proceeded to catch a big catfish. But as Rachel discovered the next morning when she undid the blanket I was wrapped up tightly …this was after Mom dropped me off and ran…Linda had forgotten the sunscreen – so every freckle on my Irish/English face is from her.
There was the emergency trip to the ER with Rachel because I kept belching something that would make a zombie hurl. Upon arriving at the hospital, poor sainted Rachel had them pull Mom out of surgery because “the baby is dying!” Turns out Mom let me drink some fish emulsion fertilizer by accident and then didn’t tell anyone.
You would think she learned from this…she didn’t…fast forward about 50 + years and Mom did the exact same damned thing to poor Martha Jean. Mixing the fish fertilizer in the ice tea jug and then leaving for anyone to drink on a hot day.
Plugs left out of boats when they were full of kids, setting my coveralls on fire while welding, letting me play on a construction site when I was two….the list goes on and on and on.
She even tried to kill poor Kendra. Mom was driving the RV with one foot up on the dash when her beloved cocker spaniel launched himself off her lap and through the window at a covey of quail while going 55 down the highway. Mom slammed on the brakes and Kendra proceeded to fly down the hall of the RV head over heels.
My Maria was the woman who knew that her maternal genes were a little bit lacking. So she enlisted a group of amazing and wonderful women to help raise me – Rachel, Brenda, Dorothy, Ms. Kym and all the nurses who watched after me, taught me the alphabet and took me to the hospital cafeteria while Mom operated or did rounds and rescued me from the morgue when I got lost.
A surgeon who thought nothing of having her 12-year-old son cut a fishing hook out of her hand at the kitchen table. Talking me through the whole procedure – dowse it with betodyne, shoot me up with local, cut it off right behind the barbs, push it back through and now sew me up. Her lessons stuck because I could do a running whip stitch before I hit puberty and the sight of blood does nothing to me.
The woman who did some of the first laparoscopic surgeries in the state, was the first female chair of the state board of health – and told the governor at the time to take hike when he wanted to give her seat to a crony…and could take one look at a patient and know what was wrong was also the lady who served the infamous gray mashed potatoes at Christmas. Secret we learned that day – boiling in cast iron causes the iron to leach out into the food. From that point forward cooking holiday dinners was delegated to me.
The Mom who when we would be in the grocery store, church or at a livestock show would greet people with a smile and a hug and say “I’m gonna get that gallbladder of yours.”
But was also the lady who did many minor surgeries off the books because she knew folks couldn’t afford it and was constantly looking for ways to find free meds or services for patients because as she would say medicine is just a mess right now.
But for every time that I wasn’t sure how to solve a problem like Linda Marie there were fifty times that she saved me, lifted me up or inspired me to be a better person.
It was due to her love, her understanding, her acceptance, her selflessness, and that heart which would not quit. She had an ability to overlook character flaws including an Irish temper, a very liberal use of curse words and oh so many others. Even that famous inattentiveness taught me independence, self-reliance and showed me the path I should and would follow in life.
And now as I go on down the road I can only hope to have a fraction of her kindness, her brilliance, her determination, her grit and gumption.
I could go on forever about what an amazing, inspiring, selfless woman Mom was.
But if she was here, Mom would already be giving me the hook - brevity was key with Linda Mae.
Going forward I know that every time I dig in the garden, spread mulch or make pumpkin pie – I will think of her.
Because of who she was, I will think of Mom every time I do something different
Something out of the norm
Something crazy
And I will pause and thank God again that she was my mother.
A mother who believed that you should always be yourself,
Who forged her own path and damned the naysayers
Who believed in living the life you want instead of the life others expect for you
A woman who suffered no fools
But who treated all with respect, and saw beauty everywhere in this crazy, maddening world.
And I for one, know that this world is such a better place because Mom was in it.
We’re going to end this hoopla as Mom would have called it with a letter.
Mom dictated it to me a few years ago when the twilight had crept in but night had not yet fallen on her mind.
A letter for when she was gone.
Dear Ones –
I am going on down the road.
I’m not scared and when the lord is ready; it’ll be my time.
Don’t cry. Be sad if you need to, but don’t let the sadness take over.
I’ve had a good life. I’ve loved and been loved. I knew who I was and what I was meant to do.
I’ve done the things I wanted to. I helped the ones who needed it.
Death is part of life and I will be with the Lord.
Carry on. Live your life. Eat. Drink and be merry.
There is far too much life to live to be sad. And remember…I’m so proud of you and I was so lucky to have you in my life.
And I love, love, love you.
- Linda
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