Sermon preached by the Rev. Lillie Mae Henley 3 Sep 2006
A friend once told me a story about her and her mother. She said that when her mother could no longer care for herself, she moved her mother into her home. Now, Lynn had a family ritual of making a nice big breakfast for her family every Saturday morning. She continued to do that after her mother moved in. Her mother would sit in the kitchen and watch her make the breakfast, and every time Lynn would make scrambled eggs, her mother would say, “You ought to put water in them, not milk, they’ll be fluffier.”
Lynn would reply, “Mother, it’s my kitchen, my breakfast, and my eggs, I’ve been putting milk in my scrambled eggs since I got married. I’m doing it my way, it’s milk!” Of course, Lynn said, “I tried to be as nice as I could, but you know how it is with mothers.”
“You know how it is with mothers.”
Yes, I do, but tell me one thing Lynn, now that she’s gone, how do you scramble your eggs?
“I add water now, it really does make them fluffier!”
There is something about mother daughter relationships—or better yet—mother daughter conflict, that for most mothers and daughters, it is a challenge.
There are the exceptions; there are some mother daughter relationships there are wonderful from the start, and while they are not rare, they are in the minority.
It would take us quite some time to examine the breadth of the literature on the subject. In fact, there is a considerable school of study by sociologists and psychologists. Some researchers get a PhD in mother daughter conflict.
Which probably doesn’t surprise the women here today; in fact, some of us probably feel like we have a PhD already in mother daughter conflict!
It is, to say the least, a very complicated, complex dynamic that begins, usually, as puberty approaches, but as my best friend Mary told me, her daughter had “issues” with Mary when she came out of the womb!
Margueritte, as you know from the order of service was my mother. She was an ol’ country gal from East Texas. She barely got out of the eighth grade because of illness and the hard demands of the dairy farm on which she grew up. She was unsophisticated, unsure of herself, and an unworldly woman. Yet she had the wisdom of women throughout the ages, and she was a steel magnolia of immeasurable proportions.
Margueritte had three daughters, Blanche the eldest, Jean the youngest, and I was in the middle. There was a son James, he was between Blanche and me, but he died as an adult, and was not part of mother’s transition from living presence to loving memory.
As for the daughters, it seems Jean did not have any “observable” mother daughter conflict. Jean, as it turns out, is one of those very fortunate people who has a high capacity to differentiate herself from the negative behaviors of others. When mother tried to force her will on Jean, she just ignored mother. Blanche and I were the ones who had the most mother daughter conflict with mother. Blanche learned to deal with it over the years by being “too busy” to spend a lot of time with mother. Me…I saw mother as often as I could, and for the most part of my adult life, I just “struggled” with my relationship with mother. But then, one day, sometime in my late thirties, mother and I had a conversation. It was about her early life and her struggles. She seemed to need to tell me the truth about her growing up and early adult life.
Not only did I begin to see that there was some “reasoning” behind what she tried to teach us, but I saw that what drove her was not a desire to manipulate our lives, it was pain and fear.
She wanted us to have lives that held no fear, no pain.
Researchers tell us that daughters do not “break away” from their mothers like sons break away from them to identify with their fathers. We bond for life! So, we daughters are more a part of our mother’s emotional makeup than our brothers. Aren’t we lucky!
They also tell us that what drives mothers to be manipulative is their desire for their daughters to have a different, or better life than they had.
After that one conversation with mother, our relationship changed. Oh, mother didn’t change, she still tried to get her way—all the way—to the grave, but for me, it all made sense, and being around her wasn’t so difficult anymore.
Looking back, I dwell on her love and her desire for us to have a better life than she had. Somehow, her dying made the conflict all right, too.
When I was going through the divorce from my son’s father, and I was in considerable pain, I asked her, “Mother, how do I do it?”
She said, “Lillie Mae, you just keep on keeping on. Keep putting one foot in front of the other, and before you know, you’re through this rough patch.”
“Keep on keeping on.”
She taught me to “keep on keeping on.”
After my father died, she went down to the funeral home and planned her own funeral. She then said to us, “I know I’ve always said I wanted to be buried in a red dress. Well, I’ve changed my mind, one of those nice little prints in the closet will do just fine.”
She then proceeded to give us, her three daughters, her good jewelry. Her good jewelry was the diamonds that daddy had given her in the last decade of their lives together. We asked, “What are you doing?”
She replied, “I could have another day, or I could have another 10 years, but this is about what I have to leave you, and I want to see you enjoy it before I die.”
I want to see you enjoy it before I die.
She taught me, not just then, but throughout my life, that “giving” was a good thing. She lived it and she taught it.
She was like most mothers, probably like your mother, she thought that the way she taught me to do things was the “right way,” and she expected it done that way, even after I was grown!
Once she and Clarence were visiting me in my home, and I cooked a rice and chicken casserole. It turned out a little mushy. She said, “You didn’t wash your rice did you?
“The package didn’t say, wash the rice, so I didn’t,” I told her.
“You always have to wash your rice, didn’t I teach you that, Lillie Mae?”
Well, I felt like Lynn, it was my house, my rice, and my meal!
Margueritte was a great cook. In what seemed like no time at all, she could throw together a big, ol’ family meal for whoever came over after church on Sunday afternoon. Fried chicken, homemade mashed potatoes and gravy (no lumps, mind you), fresh green beans, biscuits, and banana pudding.
After her heart bypass in her mid-fifties, she stopped cooking. Her doctors wanted her to quit cooking with salt, black pepper, Crisco shortening, butter, and various other spices. She said, “I’m through cooking if I can’t cook like I used to. You girls can cook now, it’s no fun anymore.”
Of course, she said we could cook, but I picture her in my mind’s eye, sitting at the dining table, watching every move we made, from measuring spices to making cornbread. And if we didn’t do it exactly as she wanted, she’d tell us.
Even after she developed macular degeneration in both eyes, she could still see every move we made, ever nuance of our nonverbal behavior; and if we made faces, or rolled our eyes at whatever she said, she would always let us know, she wasn’t blind!
One Saturday morning, we picked up a big batch of greens at the farmers’ market. We hadn’t had fresh greens in a long time. My sister Jean and I started to wash the greens, and mother said to wash them at least seven or eight times, as they were just probably dug up the day before and most like needed to be washed seven or eight times. Jean and I looked at each other, shook our heads, and pretended to wash them seven or eight times, but really just washed them about four times. Now we’re grown women, and we’re acting like we’re rebellious teenagers, but mothers will do that to you, no matter what your age!
Those greens cooked all day, the delicious aroma wafting through the house, stimulating our taste buds, and making us so very hungry for greens and cornbread. We finally sat down to eat at supper. And when we took our first bite we immediately spit it out. You couldn’t see the fine grains of country sand, but they were there.
Margueritte said, “You didn’t wash them seven or eight times did you?”
What could we say, we paid for our sin; we couldn’t eat those beautiful, delicious-looking greens that we cooked all day long.
Mother taught us many things. How to throw a great party. You could never have too much food. Parties were for having fun and being extravagant.
Mother taught us how to behave like a southern woman, always give the biggest steak to your husband.
Mother taught us how to dress like a southern woman, never wear white shoes before Easter or after Labor Day.
Mother taught us to respect our elders and always say yes ma’m and yes sir to anyone older than us.
Mother taught us that God was necessary. We could not live without him. We can find him anywhere, she’d say, and not just in church on Sunday.
And guilt, oh my mother taught us about guilt. She had a way of getting what she wanted, and I suppose, needed, by finding a way, somehow to make us feel guilty about whatever it was she wanted. Of course, over the years, as we became mature women, we began to respond to her in healthier ways. In fact, I remember the last time we thought she was up to her manipulative ways.
Jean and I were going to Dallas with her daughter’s dance troupe. We didn’t want mother to go, she was a lot of trouble, so we had her stay with Blanche. Halfway there, we called Blanche, and she said mother felt dizzy and fell. Jean and I laughed. We just knew mother was trying to make us feel bad that we didn’t take her with us to Dallas. That way, when we returned, she could get us to do something she wanted us to do!
When we returned though, mother wasn’t any better. I took her to the doctor, the doctor took some x-rays, and she said mother most likely had lung cancer. “We’ll have to do more tests,” she said, “but I’m pretty sure it’s lung cancer.”
Since mother smoked, she pretty much knew the truth of what the doctor said, and she said, “No, we’re not doing any more tests or anything else.”
“Take me home Lillie Mae, I’ll live ‘till I die.”
I’ll live ‘till I die.
And that’s exactly what she did. She went home and she lived in her own home until she died three months later.
The dizziness was the beginning of the effects of her cancer. She soon began to have mini-strokes, pain in several parts of her body, she lost her voice, and eventually she could only swallow baby food.
We took care of her. We did everything for her. Hospice came, they were a comfort to us, but they didn’t have to do anything for mother, because we did it all.
She didn’t ever, not once, ask us to.
She had taught us to honor those who came before.
And that is what we did for her. We took care of her because we honored her, and it was an honor for us to be able to make her transition from loving, sometimes challenging, sometimes even a pain in the you-know-what, living presence to loving memory.
About a month before she died, we began to buy fresh roses and put them by her bed, and when they wilted, we’d buy fresh ones. We made rose water out of the wilted roses.
The weekend she died, hospice told us it would probably be that weekend, all of us: her three daughters, her three granddaughters, and her three great granddaughters were all with her. And we sang old hymns, and old songs, and played music for her, and told her how much we loved her and how much we would miss her.
And when she died, each of us, in turn, washed her with rose water. We dressed her in a new gown, and took the fresh roses from beside her bed, and placed them all around her. We stayed around the bed for a long time, praying, and laughing, and crying, and comforting each other. Then, after we had that time with her, we called the funeral home and they came and got her.
Now, not a tear begun,
we sit here in your kitchen,
spent, you see, already you are swollen till you strain
this house and the whole sky.
You, whom we so often succeeded in ignoring!
You are puffed up in death…
You breathe upon us now
through solid assertions
of yourself; teaspoons, goblets, …
and all this universe
dares us to lay a finger
anywhere, save exactly
as you would wish it done.
Without saying a word, we walked in the kitchen, her kitchen, and began to cook. I made rice, washing it ever so carefully, and Jean made chicken gumbo. Blanche cooked some vegetables and made corn bread. One granddaughter made potato salad, another sweet tea and another dessert.
We did it exactly how mother would have us do it.
Margueritte taught us so very much; she taught us how to live.
She taught us how to live well.
And she taught us how to die.
The woman who brought us into the world, showed us how to leave it. What more could anyone want?
While our deaths will be different from Margueritte’s and different from anyone else’s, death, we can take a lesson from that ol’ country woman, we can “live ‘till we die” and then we show ‘em how it’s done!
Blessed be and amen.
Readings
Psalm 45:1-2,6-9
Refrain: Your throne, O God, endures forever and ever.
My heart overflows with a goodly
theme; I address my verses to the king;
my tongue is like the pen of a ready
scribe.
You are the most handsome of men;
grace is poured upon your lips;
therefore God has blessed you forever.
Your throne, O God, endures forever and ever.
Your royal scepter is a scepter of equity;
you love righteousness and hate wickedness.
Therefore God, your God, has
anointed you with the oil of
gladness beyond your companions;
your robes are all fragrant with myrrh
and aloes and cassia.
From ivory palaces stringed
instruments make you glad;
daughters of kings are among those
who serve you,
at your right hand stands the queen
of gold of Ophir.
A Woman Mourned by Her Daughters By Adrienne Rich
Posted by Sue Mosher at September 3, 2006 04:23 PMNow, not a tear begun,
We sit here in your kitchen,
Spent, you see, already.
You are swollen till you strain
This house and the whole sky.
You, whom we so often succeeded in ignoring!
You are puffed up in death
Like a corpse pulled form the sea;
We groan beneath your weight.
And yet you were a leaf,
A straw blown on the bed,
You had long since become crisp as a dead insect.
What is it, if not you,
That settles on us now
Like satin you pulled down over our bridal heads?
What rises in our throats
Like food you prodded in?
Nothing could be enough.
You breathe upon us now
Through solid assertions
Of yourself; teaspoons, goblets,
Seas of carpet, a forest
Of old plants to be watered,
An old man in an adjoining
Room to be touched and fed.
And all this universe
Dares us to lay a finger
Anywhere, save exactly
As you would wish it done.