Rita Ladue
July 27, 1916, Saranac Lake, New York
April 9, 2010, Plattsburgh, New York
Strawberries and Joy
My mother’s name was Anna Rita Boyer Ladue. Anna Rita. Apparently, there were lots of Anna's around in 1916 which is why her parents decided to use her middle name. I learned that about her two weeks before she died. Wouldn’t you think I’d have known that after all these years?
Amazing, isn’t it, the things we continue to learn about people we’ve known all our lives.
Anna Rita was almost 94 years old. In fact, to be more precise, she lived 34,234 days. How, then, does one measure a life lived as long as Rita’s? No single eulogy could do justice to this much time lived.
Instead, let me bring you back to a single, well-lived day—a day that encapsulated, at least to me, the essence of my mother--Anna Rita Boyer Ladue.
Come back with me less than two years ago to the first full day of summer, 2008. Mom was on the cusp of 92 and had been living at Lake Forest for a year a half. Her days were quietly content. She was losing her sight, and her hearing, always bad, was failing her further. But these things, which could frequently cause enormous frustration, never brought her down. Within her, there was an optimism which often surprised me.
June 21, 2008 was a perfect, first day of northern summer--a day punctuated by soft, pale blue skies and high cumulus clouds. It was neither hot nor cold. Field daisies were in full bloom, Black-eyed Susan’s just opening up.
At breakfast, I’d seen an ad in the paper announcing that the year’s first crop of strawberries was ready. I called to ask her if she like to go to Rolf’s to pick. Now, for those of you who’ve known my mother for many years, you’ll understand that this was no idle invitation. In fact, it was sort of a “Dah” type of question. I knew she’d drop whatever it was that was on her calendar and seize the moment. If there was one single thing that could fuel her passion it was berry picking.
I picked her up and we headed down the Lake Shore Road. The lake was calm and blue; the Green Mountains lined the eastern horizon. It was a gorgeous day.
We were early at Rolf’s. We were assigned a line of berries and started picking. There was no need to talk. This was a shared moment we both enjoyed. Periodically, I’d check her pail and cull out berries that weren't quite ripe.
In time, we filled our buckets, anted up and left. Ten minutes later we were back on the Lake Shore Road. At the southern end of it, I pulled the car off the highway and turned off the ignition. I could see a place for us to sit. Together we just looked at the lake, the mountains, the blue sky, the clouds. She’d always told me we lived in “God’s Country” and on this particular day I had to agree. We didn’t speak much. There was no need to. I, at least, was aware that the day was special. In Mom that day I saw joy. I saw contentment. I saw happiness.
An hour or so later we left, drove north, and stopped at Stewart’s for an ice cream. But the day wasn’t quite done. Just past Stewart’s is an empty field where I knew there’d be wide patches of daisies for picking. She was thrilled. Strawberries, then daisies…all in the same day, with ice cream in the middle. Life didn’t get much better than this. We picked our way through the field, gathering huge bunches of daisies. “Pick a lot,” she told me. “I’ve got lots of arrangements to make.” So we picked, both of us. Every now and then I’d bring over smaller bunches of Black-Eyed Susans. In the end we had a car full of strawberries, bunches of wild flowers, full bellies of ice cream…… and a huge pile of joy!
Joy. Joy is a word we toss around. “Joy to the World.” Peace and Joy. But what exactly is joy? It’s a hard word to pin down, because what’s joyful to you is not necessarily joyful to me. But I’d seen joy that day; I’d been witness to an exhilaration of passion that brought forth great happiness. I knew the real thing when I saw it. In spite of all my mother’s limitations at the start of that summer, a simple, quiet day picking strawberries and wildflowers ignited within her a flame that burned to joy, and I loved watching it unfold.
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That was almost two years ago. Time passed. She failed, lost her vision. She fell, broke her back and then had a stroke.
Mom’s death was not pretty. The act of dying is often grim and frightening. I was deeply appreciative of hospice telling us that it would be harder for us to watch then for her to endure. At 1:15 on a lovely April Friday afternoon, my mom’s strong heart finally gave out. Three of us were with her, surrounding her with our love, trusting hospice that hearing was the last to go.
We sat with her for awhile, and then Marita and I left while Vicki stayed with Meadowbrook staff to prepare Mom’s body for transport to the funeral home.
“Blank,” said Marita, as we sat together. “I’m just blank.”
“Blank.” Yeah! That was the word I was looking for.
By Saturday afternoon, when I’d turned off all phones and slipped off to Montreal for a few days, the blank and flat had become the Big Blank and the Big Flat. I hadn’t cried. I was unable to express any emotion. I kept waiting for something to happen—some sort of emotional meltdown. But it never came.
Saturday flowed to Sunday then Monday.
But on Tuesday, four days after Mom died, an amazing transformation took place. I was taking a walk through a pleasant spring afternoon, when I became aware of her presence. And, like my mother, it wasn’t subtle.
I felt an intense, spectacular swirl of spiritual energy surrounding me. My mother’s presence totally enveloped me in its power and its love. I was so totally aware, and so totally stunned, by this dazzle of energy that it literally stopped me. It was powerful—a gorgeously layered spin and tumble of proof that Mom was not just ok, but better than OK. It shouted: “Hallelujah, Dan. I’m alive! I’m whole, complete and fully in the presence of my Creator.”
WOW!
I was never actually aware of the shift, but the Big Blank and the Big Flat had given way to joy—an exuberant joy that flung off the blankness and flatness…. and which has not left me yet.
Joyful! I’d become joyful on that city street on that fine April spring afternoon.
Joyful! If you’d said to me twenty years ago: “Pick the emotion that will best suit your mood four days after your mother died,” I’d hardly have picked joyful. And because it was unexpected, because it was so highly unimaginable, and because I’d been surprised by joy, I just knew that it was authentic and true. There was absolutely no way that I could have manufactured that feeling and kept it sustained since then.
What a gift!
I called Vicki, who was in Nashville, and shared with her what was happening. Why was I not surprised that she, too, was experiencing something similar. We had, after all, walked the same privileged final journey with her, so it made sense that she’d let both of us know that she was thriving.
What an extraordinary, spectacular beam of Godlight filled our souls that day, and the days after.
I later realized that joy had come full circle, that the joy she showed me on that splendid midsummer’s day two years ago had been returned to me. I knew with every fiber in my body that she was with God. I am convinced that my frail, 94 year old, deaf and blind mother, who’d broken her back and then had a stroke, was now complete, whole and in eternal grace.
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It was somehow fitting that Mom would leave us in the spring. It was a time of year that exhilarated her spirit—a return to her gardens, a return to the soil she loved to work, and a return to the young plants she’d nurture through summer into fall.
At first I resented the early crocus and forsythia I saw blooming as I traveled to and from Meadowbrook. Initially, they were a reminder of her impending death, and I thought that they’d forever be linked to her dying time.
But as the days turned to weeks, I was able to shift the imagery. Mom was so spiritually ready to go to glory and bliss, that by the time she did die, those flowery blooms no longer reminded me of her death, but, rather, of her rebirth.
In the weeks since her death I have thought often of that summer’s day two years ago, and a myriad other days just like it—a cold walk with her on a winter’s day, a day picking blueberries in August, or a day gathering greens in November. I knew the depth of her spirituality, and her belief in a living God who walks with us daily, and I’ve returned to the 8th Psalm many times. “How majestic is your name in all the earth,” the Psalmist says.
It was a prayer my mother could have recited in her daily acts of pleasure in nature, her acts of kindness to others, and in her positive attitude as she faced her final challenges. “How majestic is your name in all the earth.”
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If Anna Rita Boyer Ladue were standing next to me right now, I know this is what she’d want me to tell you: “Stop the crying. Dry up those tears. Get over it!” “I’m alive,” she’d tell us. “I’m alive and gloriously happy. I’m not gone….just gone ahead to the very kingdom God has planned for each and every one of you.”
“Hallelujah!” I say. “Hallelujah.”
Stawberries, ice cream, daisies and joy. I’ve got to ask: “Does a well-lived life get any better than that?
Dan Ladue
May 3, 2010
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