Elaine Hancock: My Perfect Godmother Died Last Night

Elaine Hancock, my beautiful, sweet, and loving godmother, died last night. She was a gentle and kind lady who always went out of her way to believe the best about other people. She honestly prayed for people to accomplish great things and to overcome great obstacles. If she had her way, everyone would win and everyone would care about other people. She was an ally to those who needed someone to care. 

Her life was not problem free, but she never allowed her problems to change how she felt about love, her family, or God. She was as steadfast in her love for her family and friends as she was devoted to God. She loved Christian fellowship whether it was a gathering for a special event or being the church mom at Loren's church in Larchmont. She never condemned people for having problems. She didn't talk bad about people. She shed tears and prayed for them.

Remembering Mom: Meeting Loren Hancock

Mom was quite active in the PTA when we were in school. She served several years as the president of the PTA at Fawcett elementary school. They would hold their regular meetings at the school, and she was often down at Central school attending school board meetings. However, for special events, planning committees would form and meet at the home of one of the members. It was probably 1968 that the Halloween party planning committee met at the home of Elaine Hancock. 

When Mom got home from the meeting, it was not the plans for the party she wanted to tell Dad about. What shocked her, and probably all the other mothers in attendance, was what Elaine's crazy husband, Loren, said. Mom told Dad that the meeting had pretty much ended, and the group had begun talking about costumes they were going to wear. Loren walked in on that discussion. 

"You'll never believe what he said," she told him. "He said you can all shove sticks up your asses and go as popsicles." 

Remembering Mom: Her First Mother's Day in Heaven

David was born in December of 1964 and died in March of 1965 at three-and-a-half months old. I cannot imagine how much pain Mom must have felt that first Mother's Day without him. She never lost the grief of losing him. Some of my most vivid memories of Mom are walking with her over the uneven ground in Lullaby Land so she could place flowers on his grave. 

At first, she would go on the anniversaries of his birth and death, plus Memorial Day, which is really close to her birthday. Dad honored and adopted the tradition until his death in 1992. 

Lying, Sabotaging, and Communicating Passively Aggressively, or How the Family Came Unglued

A memory from four years ago that popped up on Facebook today was a post I made in response to my younger sister's passive aggressive message that had been sent that morning.

To put it into perspective, Mom had moved in with her in March of that year. In addition to her realizing that I had been telling the truth that taking care of Mom was more of a job than it was a joy, she was also dealing with the "unforeseeable emergency" that everything that wasn't dealt with at Mom's house when it might have been, had to be dealt with then when there were other things that needed to also be dealt with, like taking care of Mom. 

Starting a Tradition of Self Care

Though I love the spirit of Dickens, I say bah, humbug to most holidays. It isn't because of an admiration for Scrooge that I utter the words he is famous for saying. In fact, I relate to Bob Cratchit more than I relate to Scrooge. Cratchit wasn't happy to be at home with his family because it was Christmas. He was always happy to be at home with his family even though his family had its problems. The family's biggest problem was a child with an incurable disease that would shorten his life.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving. It was the first one that I remember that I did what I wanted to do, which was to stay home, do some daily living, and watch football. I talked to both of my daughters on the phone to wish them happiness for the day, but I didn't go to the family function they both try to attend. Instead, I did what I wanted to do. It is part of what I must do to deal with my own healing, and it will be my new tradition for holidays.

Remembering Mom: She was Always 29

Mom wasn't vain or pretentious about her appearance or her apparel. She was a modest person who put more emphasis on getting ready quickly than she did on fashion. She was never unkempt. She liked her hair short, she wore no makeup, and she dressed modestly. Despite that, when it came to her age, she was always 29 years old. 

She wasn't vain about her age. She just needed to be younger than her mother, Dobie, who always claimed to be 39 years old.

My Deal with Elliana

Elliana made a comment about wishing she had packed differently in case she went to inpatient treatment. I spent as much time as I could letting her know that I love that change in her attitude. As we talked more about it, she feels that she has nothing but clothes that are hers. She also said that she knows that when she completes treatment, she will just be handed around to anybody who will take her until she is old enough to dump on the streets.

That is some tremendous weight to carry. However, it is a weight that she carries because of her behavior.

How Elliana and I Got Where We Are Through OUR Bad Decisions

Most of her things had already been packed when she awoke yesterday. Unlike the days leading up to yesterday, we would be packing Elliana's everyday items on her final day with me. She had a place to go, but I felt there was little chance that it would work out for long. The last time she tried to be with her grandmother, it lasted four days and ended up with Elliana moving in with me as a last resort.

Bryan had been so much more than fair when he allowed me to take care of her despite there really being no room for her at home. 

My Baby is Out of Time

Even though my love for each of my children and grandchildren is equal, my devotion to Elliana over her seventeen years has exceeded what I have done for the others. We had an instant connection. When she got her shots as a baby, I got a call from her dad saying she wouldn't quit crying. He had checked her diaper and tried to give her a bottle. I told him I'd be right over. I took her and just held her. For a couple of hours, I just held her so that she would sleep peacefully while her dad and I talked about trying to sense her needs rather than trying to guess what is wrong. In this case, just holding her worked.

I was her favorite person in the world when she was a baby. People had already started gathering at her first birthday party by the time I arrived. Once Elliana saw me, she put her arms out to let me know that it was time to hold her. If someone else wanted to hold her after that, she would let them for a minute or two before letting me know that she wanted to be with me again. As I said, there was a connection between us that I never felt with anyone else. 

Giving Up My Favorite Prejudice Ever

Sometimes the most difficult thing about accepting truth is that it comes at the expense of some of our favorite prejudices. A prejudice I once held was that anything that was broken could be fixed. Though I still believe that broken things can be fixed, the truth is that some things that are broken are not worth fixing. I have written about my mom holding onto a broken coffee maker just in case someone in the family would rather fix a ten-year-old coffee machine than spend $20 for a new one. It became garbage on the day it quit working, and it was thrown away after mom held onto it for fifteen years.

The more we value something, the more broken it must be for us to get rid of it. The truth is that some things that are broken are not worth fixing. The coffee maker isn't worth fixing if it quits working. The line for a car or a house goes far beyond the line for the coffee maker, and the line for a house we own goes beyond the line for the car. All of them offer the greatest value assets can have for a coffee drinking, daily commuting homeowner, which is utility value. However, the coffee maker is more easily replaced than the car, which, in turn, is more easily replaced than the house. 

Jezebel (2013-2022)

I have never had a pet who loved me as much as Jezebel loved me. We saw her at the Humane Society when we were there looking for Mr. Grumpy, who had disappeared a week earlier. She was about a year old and had a deformed bottom jaw. She was an unlikely candidate for adoption because of her jaw, but she was obviously sweet and affectionate. 

We brought her home the day before Mr. Grumpy showed up from his week-long hiatus. Along with Prancer, we then had three cats. They got along well with Prancer recognized as the elder and Jezebel acting as a benevolent guardian, a role fitted to her because of how large she was. Grumpy never challenged either of them, accepting his role as the clumsy little brother.

Charlie Cakes (2013-2022)

I didn't know Charlie for the first couple years of his life. He was found in Hawaii by my daughter who was stationed there. She found him along with three of his siblings after their feral mom had been hit by a car. She got three of the four to the point they could eat on their own. She gave away one of the survivors.

She originally planned on also giving Charlie away and keeping only Zeppelin. However, he endeared himself so much to her that she changed plans, and I ended up with my two oldest grandkittens.

Remembering Mom: Finding Her on the Floor

I don't remember the weather or the date, but I will never forget the feeling I had that morning in April of 2008 when I opened the door to Mom's house and heard her calling for help from the back hallway. When I rushed back there, Mom was on the floor where she had lain soiled since she got up in the middle of the night for a drink of water and to go to the bathroom.

I wanted to call 911 on the spot, but she convinced me to call Maureen to help instead. She assured me that she had laid there for several hours, so another little bit wouldn't hurt more. She did not want the medics coming in to deal with her soiled and dirty. I called Maureen, told her we had an emergency, and went to help Mom a bit in the five minutes or so that it took Maureen to arrive. 

Remembering Mom: If Her Services Had Been About Her

Mom was entombed yesterday. Her service was a lovely sermon that she would likely have despised. It isn't that the minister wasn't eloquent. It was that he talked too much about religion and got too many things about her incorrect.

To be fair, the job of speaking at her service was offered to me before the minister was hired. I declined. I had the experience speaking at Dad's service. Besides not having practiced public speaking for almost two decades, Mom never asked me to do her service. Dad did. There were points during his service that, if I had broken down, I probably could not have recovered. I was practiced in those days. To that end, it is as much my fault as anyone else's that Mom's services turned into a sermon like at a church service.

Yvonne Koecke (1935-2020): Third Eerie Premonition About Death Came True

Mom told me that she didn't fear death; she feared the mode of death. When she explained the difference, it didn't have anything to do with her cause of death. It had to do with the third of her three eerie premonitions that came true. I'll get back to that.

Mom was born on May 31st, 1935, in Leith, North Dakota. Her parents, Roy "Clair" and Dorothy Kamrath packed everything up that July and moved to Oregon with their oldest child. 

She told us tales about growing up in the logging camps, and various homes and farms, as her father moved the family seeking regular work during the Great Depression. The family would grow with Clarence, Bill, and Eileen added to the pack. Pa, as we used to call him, found regular employment with Oregon State College in Corvallis, and the family settled into its permanent home.