2nd Opinion: Mother—a special woman of quiet resilience

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In a time of reflection—which happens a lot lately—his mind combs back to his first memory of the two. It’s not easy, because like all mothers and sons, they both were there at the beginning.

john mark beilue115Jon Mark BeilueThere was a time when he was just a burr-headed little boy, sitting in the front seat while she drove through Mackenzie Park in Lubbock. She was in her mid-20s, a single mother whose husband died of cancer when her son was just 18 months old.

They eased past a group of guys, and one let out a long wolf whistle. Embarrassed, he ducked into the seat. She grabbed him by the back of his shirt and pulled him up.

“Get up!” she said. “I want them to see I have children.”

That, she reasoned, would scare off anyone. A year or so later, surprisingly, it did not. She married a second time, and her son was a clueless 5-year-old ringbearer at the small wedding.

Her new husband soon returned north to the family farm, taking the young boy’s mother and new baby sister with him. She settled into a lengthy role as cultured small-town high school English teacher and dutiful farmer’s wife.

She taught the great works of literature and how to diagram sentences to country kids for nearly four decades. She spent late hours on the yearbook, school newspaper and University Interscholastic League literary events, where 47 students went to the state meet, and nine won championships.

She could be found near the front rows of plays in Amarillo, on her knees in the backyard flower and vegetable gardens, in the bleachers at football games and at the front of the church as its longtime pianist.

She could be found near the front rows of plays in Amarillo, on her knees in the backyard flower and vegetable gardens, in the bleachers at football games and at the front of the church as its longtime pianist.

His mother would take meals to the field at harvest and, in a pinch, would grind the gears on a grain truck. He remembers no better summertime sight than seeing her stirring up dust on a hot afternoon, driving her Pontiac to bring refreshments to a 14-year-old on the tractor and then hauling him back into town for a baseball game.


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Only a mother would insist her son wear her feminine glasses when he broke his in a baseball game. Only a son would reluctantly do it, and get two hits as a result.

Oh, they would at times clash, as teen sons and moms do. In episodes of exasperation, she would call him a “horse’s butt,” a well-deserved description to a mouthy son and a disservice to horses’ hind ends everywhere. In lighter times, he and his sister were simply called a “dumb frog.”

As an adult, he would see her for something far deeper. It was a faithful resilience, a quiet strength from God that belied her petite frame. Her second husband died after 37 years of marriage, he too from cancer.

She persevered, still teaching part-time after retirement age and marrying a third time to a former high school classmate who had lost his wife. The sixth year into their marriage, on a trip of a lifetime to South Africa, he died.

She was alone for three weeks in a faraway country, there for 10 days after his death before she could return, a spent and weary woman walking through Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport.

But this lady still had much love to give. In 2010, she married Marshall, who had lost his wife of 56 years. They met, of all places, on eHarmony.

She told her son once she didn’t want to outlive Marshall because she didn’t know if she could bear the heartbreak of losing another husband.

And she did not. This woman born in the Great Depression and Dust Bowl died eight days ago with her family singing some of her favorite hymns around her hospice bed.

As he sat day after day next to her ICU bed or in the waiting room over the last month, the son had ample time to prepare and reflect. Like so many sons and mothers, they had an unspoken, unbroken bond. His mother was like so many other moms, so typical in so many ways.

Like your mother, she saw the good in her children when few may have. She encouraged and believed, was often proud and sometimes protective. She set standards and expectations. Her life was one the son long ago knew he would never match, but at least he had been shown the way.

His mother was a reflection of yours and yours and yours, their worth then and now impossible to measure.

But Janetta Shelton, this mother, was mine. For all these years she was, I am grateful.

–Jon Mark Beilue is a columnist for the Amarillo Globe-News. He wrote this essay after his mother died earlier this year. His blog appears on amarillo.com. Follow him on Twitter @jonmarkbeilue. Reprinted with permission.

 


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