When my mother died in 2020, I felt like a ship without a rudder, drifting aimlessly in the very choppy sea of life.
I had lost my dad young. I was 33. He was 65 and riddled with cancer. Seeing him in terrible pain, being unable to alleviate it, shook me. God was merciful, however, because my mother lived another 24 years, so I wasn’t fully orphaned until I was in my late 50’s. However, no matter how old one is, losing a mother is a primal pain, unlike any other kind of grief.
Yesterday, I was reminded of that pain, when my friend Debra texted me that her mother had passed away.
Lots of tears. I felt like I had lost my second mother.
For four years, from my infancy to kindergarten, my family lived in an old Victorian home in Augusta Georgia that my mother lovingly restored and my father referred to as “the money pit.”
Next door, a couple lived with their daughter, who was right between me and my brother in age. Mom and Dad became friends with Gwendolyn and Jack. Brother and I became friends with their daughter Debra. [Note: these are not their real names, to protect their privacy.]
Brother, Debra and I were the three fearless musketeers. Some of my happiest childhood memories center around those days. We were busy and active kids, always outside unless it was raining. We climbed the tall trees in the backyard, played in the sprinkler, and slid down the bannister of the grand staircase in the entrance hall.
One of my earliest memories is “going to ride” with Gwendolyn and Debra in Gwendolyn’s new Mustang, zipping around the streets of Augusta listening to the radio. Gwendolyn’s bouffant would be in a scarf, and she wore sporty sunglasses. I admired her beauty.
Debra always wore lovely little dresses and she was always polite and ladylike, unlike me. I was a Hot Mess. (You can learn more in my memoir, Talking Back: Stories from the Big Hair and Pantyhose Years)
Gwendolyn and Jack’s house, next door to ours, impressed me. It was elegant, kept immaculate by Rosa, a tiny housekeeper who didn’t put up with any nonsense. Debra had a lovely, dainty little girl’s beautifully decorated room that I admired. My room had an old chenille bedspread and linoleum on the floor -- but we spent a lot of time playing in there.
Unlike Gwendolyn’s elegant and sedate home, our house was noisy and messy. (Of course, we had a boy and a big mutt dog.) One memorable afternoon all of us kids cleaned out a large old cotton basket that normally held toys and took turns riding it down the stairs. Mom discovered us and was initially upset -- but when she saw that we weren’t getting hurt, she shrugged and just let us play.
The friendship was so close, Debra was like Mom and Dad’s third child. She often ate with us, spent the night, accompanied us on family outings. It worked both ways. We spent time at her house. Gwendolyn was my other mom. I obeyed her just as I obeyed my mother.
When Gwendolyn got divorced and sold her home I felt bad for her, and bad for Debra. I knew nothing about divorce, which was not as common back then. Gwendolyn seemed to come through it well, in my eyes, and my parents took her side although they remained cordial with Jack because they liked him, too.
One of my chief memories of Gwendolyn is her smiling and laughing. We made her laugh. Mom made her laugh. Their conversations were always frequently punctuated by laughter. There was a deep reserve of shared memories and stories.
After we moved to Tennessee, when I was 8 years old, we saw Gwendolyn at least once or twice a year when she and her second husband came to Knoxville to visit his daughter. I would often spend time with Debra at the daughter’s swanky home.
Sometimes our family went back to Augusta for visits with our relatives there, but we always made time to see Gwendolyn and Debra.
I spent a lot of time at Gwendolyn’s home where she lived with her second husband for more than 40 years. It was more familiar to me than any other home but my own. Debra and I loved to play dress up and traipse all over the house pretending to be fairies, carrying “wands” made of drinking straws with paper stars taped to the ends. We played the grand piano in the living room. We played games. One afternoon when we were teenagers and Gwendolyn was gone we made a cake and ate most of it ourselves. [photo below, me and Debra in our best 1970's fashions]
One of my favorite memories is a weekend when Mom and Dad and I met Gwendolyn and Debra in Atlanta for the weekend. We stayed at the new and impressive Omni Hotel, in the summer of 1977. (My brother wasn’t with us – he was in boot camp that summer.)
The hotel was in the same building as a mall with an ice-skating rink in the center. (It’s now the CNN Center) Debra and I were young teens and Mom and Gwendolyn let us walk all over the mall without parental supervision. We all had dinner at a French restaurant there in the building, and Debra and I were allowed to sit at a separate table from the grownups while we ate. I felt so mature. Debra ordered French Onion Soup, which I tasted and ended up ordering. (At that point I never ate onions so it was the first step in my developing a more mature palate.) It became one of my all-time favorite foods.
When I got to college, there were times when I really missed my mother and I couldn’t find her at home, (this was years before anyone had a cell phone) so I would call Gwendolyn. She would always patiently listen to my tales of angst and give me wise counsel. She also encouraged me as a writer.
Gwendolyn went to Northwestern and majored in Writing for the Radio. There was no television then, and radio was considered high-tech.
Gwendolyn was a schoolteacher and a scholar. She knew more about the bible than anyone I’ve ever known. Over the years I would sometimes call her to discuss something I’d learned in Sunday School and get her take on it. Gwendolyn approached the bible as a scholar, with great respect for its historical and cultural underpinnings. She taught Sunday School at First Baptist in Augusta for more than fifty years. After Gwendolyn’s husband passed away and she moved to assisted living she stopped teaching, but the popular class was named after her and still exists.
She didn’t just study the bible though. Gwendolyn lived it. I visited Gwendolyn in Augusta once after Debra had grown up and moved away with her husband. I watched, fascinated, as Gwendolyn made and professionally decorated a multi-tiered wedding cake for a young couple in her church who couldn’t afford to buy such a beautiful cake.
Gwendolyn was much more than simply a friend to Mom. She was like a sister. Debra was (and still is) like a sister to me. There are so many happy memories that involve Mom, Gwen and Debra. So much laughter.
When I heard Gwendolyn had passed away yesterday, I burst into tears, even though I was happy that she is free from pain, and undoubtedly with Jesus. It was a good death. Debra and her daughter were holding Gendolyn’s hands. She was with us for 95 years.
I believe when we die, our untethered souls enter a place of great wisdom and peace. We encounter all those we’ve loved, who are there to welcome us home. In the midst of my tears, there is one comforting thought today. Gwendolyn and my mother are reunited in heaven now. If I concentrate, I can hear them both laughing.
