In Memory of my Mother Who Passed Away.

Her quiet entrance into this world must have been something of an embarrassment to her grandparents, to see her—if ever they saw her—lying helpless and naked but alive. Perhaps her own parents viewed her—if ever they viewed her—as a reminder of a regret. Not abandoned by her mother, but not raised by her either, she loved her enough.

The love of her mother meant a sacrifice for the sake of this new life. An anonymous unwed girl swallowed her pride, bore a baby, and sent the infant off into an unknown future without her.

The baby landed in the arms of a childless couple, a bricklayer and a seamstress. Words fail to express their joy to give what her own mother by herself could not—a home with both a father and mother to love her and provide for her and raise her to know right from wrong.

From that small familial beginning, she would go on to marry and raise nine children of her own. Her posterity, now numbering more than 150 descendents,
is grateful not only for her personal sacrifices but the sacrifice of the mother she never knew.

There were limits on my mother’s love, to be sure. Against this day of free speech court cases over high schoolers exploding in tirades of profanity, my mother was the Supreme Court. She didn’t believe in free speech where her children were concerned. She believed in cleansing a foul mouth with soap. And she believed in marching her offspring to the offended party with an apology and an offer to make it right. She loved me enough to cancel
my privilege.

And as all devoted mothers do, she endured the embarrassment young ones foist on unsuspecting parents.

In a fourth-grade talent show I played the role of a fairy godmother in a cringe-worthy skit that I directed and starred in. She had innocently gone to the school that day only to be ambushed by the spectacle of her middle son, on stage, clad in one of his older sister’s petticoats, making a complete fool of himself. In public. I don’t recall her ever saying anything about it afterwards. She simply lived it down without complaint.

It was her lot to quietly suffer thousands of indignities. But she took the long view and encouraged her children to develop their God-given talents.

She could have had a good career contributing to the family income. As a single woman out of college, she embarked on a career she loved during the War. When she married and my oldest sister was born, she continued it out of necessity for a short time. After two years, she stepped back into the role of full-time homemaker and welcomed eight more energetic little ones. This filled her days with endless mounds of laundry and ironing,
countless meals and dishes—including for many other families who needed a hot casserole—and late nights and early mornings. Children offered prayers at her knee, ate her after-school snacks and learned from her Cub Scout and 4-H leadership.

She cheerfully ran a full household that would never have been compatible with a regular, money earning job, no matter the generous flex-time policies.

Her summertime jars of blackberry and strawberry jams, bottled green beans, peaches, pears, and applesauce, which she required us to harvest by the sweat of our brows and preserve with her in a hot kitchen, made a far greater, inter-generational impact than any short-term economic benefit a mere job could have provided.

In short, my mother’s life was a sacrifice of herself for her posterity.

We don’t know the end of MaryOlive’s story that began with a young woman giving up her baby to a foundling home a century ago. She has gone into the eternities and embraced the mother she never knew, but her influence lives on and her sacrifices remain as a lasting legacy to as-yet unborn thousands.

Like the Mary for whom she was named, future generations will rise up and call her blessed. No doubt the glory of her eternal reward will shine brighter as she greets each of her posterity when they follow her one-by-one to where she now resides, and where she is immune to grade-school embarrassments. In memory of my mother, who passed away.