(through her daughter Terry's eyes)

Mom was a farmer's daughter, and that basic fact seems to me - looking back - to be at her core for her whole life. She was an incredibly hard worker. She was in touch with the rhythms of life and had a reverant appreciation for  nature and animals. She understood what it was to nurture and cultivate life, and so many of us were the beneficiaries of that ethic and devotion.

How she loved family.  That love was of course for her children and grandchildren, but it also always remained for the family that she was born into and especially for her dad. As she moved into the later stages of Alzheimers, she would sometimes think of herself as a girl again and want to be close to her father. Her deep love for him seemed to only become more amplified in those years. We would smile to each other as the tales of his feats would grow and grow.  She would tell of his gentleness, his wisdom and his strength. Anything that anyone might be commenting on as admirable - her dad had done too. One day she told how the chickadees would land on his shoulder, the wild deer would come eat out of his hand and the skunks 'would not release their odor' in his presence. He was that grand in his daughter’s eyes.

She was a compassionate woman. When I was young, I thought that it was us kids that were always rescuing some needy animal (or occasionally, person) and it was only as I matured that I could look back and see that yes, we so often brought the poor souls home but she was the one that did the lion's share of all the caring for all those previously lost souls. One little kitten that I found on the side of the road, only a few days old - abandoned and nearly dead - was carried home and then nursed by our cat Mona, who was just about to wean her kittens. That little guy ‘Peanut’  took to Mom and was devoted to her his whole life. And that was the story with so  many that came across our family's path - Mom went out of her way to  be there. She wasn't overly sentimental; she just got the job done.

Mom didn't wear her heart on her sleeve, but from my vantage point she seemed to have had two great romantic loves in her life - my dad Charles and our step-father Bill. They were her love stories, not without challenges and sometimes heartbreak, but lovely nonetheless. She was a devoted doctor's wife, there time and again when Dad's work kept him away. She and Bill ran a wholesale plant nursery and then had a wonderful retirement in Vermont, and they opened their hearts and lives to my sons and me when we also moved to Vermont in the mid-1980's. She gave so much of herself. Later she would move to Alabama, to be near Andy and Susan and their growing boys, and it truly became her home nest for the later years of her life.

As a farmer’s daughter, she had a great interest in the weather. It must have been mightily important to be able to know and (to the extent possible) predict the weather when one's livelihood was made on the family farm in days gone by. And for all her days, that interest remained. She told of how Grandpa would be able to tell by the behavior of the animals and nature - how the cows held their tails, how the birds behaved and whether you could hear the train whistle over the mountain - when a storm was approaching. And storm or no, she always treated the nightly weather report as an event to be well attended to.  She would call my boys Jeremy, Pete and Justin in just before it was about to come on - "come on in, boys, come quick...the weather is about to come on"...and if she was able to wrangle them, she'd have them watch the weather news with her. If not, she would watch and report.

As death seemed to become something that was getting inevitably closer, she would express her longing to be with her parents and her siblings again. She looked forward to that reunion. And she wanted her ashes to be mixed with Bills, and to be scattered in Waitsfield, her home town and the place that I think she still, in her heart, considered home. We will be doing so on October 25 as our family gathers to honor her life and wishes.

Mom loved life and always had good friends. When she met and married Bill, they had the opportunity to take off on a few adventures here and there and she embraced those times but I think was always glad too, to get back home. She sacrificed so much of herself for her grandchildren. She was always there for whatever they needed - occasionally impatient, not always soft but (again) in that get-the-job-done devotion from which she never waivered.  And how she could cook!  We in the family, many friends and sometimes strangers would go out of their way to take an opportunity to share a meal she had prepared. Senator Jim Jeffords said many a time that he would prefer to eat one of Mom's home cooked meals to dining in the finest restaurants. That really made her happy.

She did know heartache in life.  She was a survivor. Even in her last years, even faced with dementia and a failing body, she would try to find the good in most every day. Andy and Susan bore the responsibility of caring for her, and if she was on a given day irritable or difficult, she would come back to her gratitude to them. She loved them for it.

As I look back, I think…what a wonderful woman she was, and what a wonderful life.  She was so different from me, and it took us both a long time to appreciate the other with a freedom that fully allowed for that..but we found our way.  She rose to every challenge. She helped make the world a better place, one beloved life at a time. She was deeply kind in unexpected moments and ways. She maintained her humor and resolve. She made her peace with herself, her world, and any regrets she may have had. She found and loved God.  She forgave. She loved....she loved.

So many times in the last while of her life, she would look out from her favorite spot on Andy and Susan’s front porch and say something like, “See all the colors of green. They are just beautiful. How many colors do you think there are? All green. Maybe a hundred colors of green, or maybe a thousand.”  Each time she saw it as new, and each time she loved it with a fresh, solemn wonder.  I miss her lovely, aged hands – the mischief that could still spark in her eyes – her “I love you’s” – her courage, her grace in suffering, and the way she treasured each of us. I miss that she always determined in her heart to keep us safe. But then I look in my own heart, and I reach out to my God, and I realize that of course she is not lost – she is right here in my heart and in the hearts of those who loved her. She is loved forever and I feel her close. She is at home with her heavenly Father and free of pain and suffering. I have the promise that I will see her again. Till then, Mom, I love you…a bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck.