A Favorite Relative

A Favorite Relative

As we age we begin to look back at past benchmarks in our lives and we begin to understand the real effort that people put into us to make us who we are today. When we come from a disconnected childhood of foster homes and so many unremembered memories that wired us in a peculiar way; then we really begin to see the special people of our lives.
Now many of us would pick a grandmother or their mom (this was an easy choice for me…not to pick her) I wonder how many people would pick my most favorite relative.
Before I identify this person let me say first that my exclusion of any other relative in my life should not be seen as a slight but rather that their inclusion into my life added so much to the fabric of who I am today and I can only be thankful for the opportunity to have known so many loving and kind people in my life.
Now back to my candidate that I have chosen and what made this person so special to me. I wasn’t raised by this person but they taught me a lot in the years that I knew them, I was never schooled in any particular subject yet I learned so much about life and to a great extent how it works. So what were the great defining aspects of our relationship that made me choose this person; that they were kind to me, didn’t meddle in my affairs, always met me with open arms fully extended and then fully closed to accept me into them, spoke kindly to me and of me, and most of all made me feel loved, loved every time I was blessed to be able to spend some time with them. They never asked more from me than I was able to give (and I am sure that I could have given more) but they always appreciated my best efforts and made me feel valued in the process.
Now this is an exceptional person not only in my life but in the life of my family and even today years after her passing we speak loving and kind words about this person and we miss her with an intensity that is as profound as the day we lost her, my mother-in-law, Martha Elizabeth Beal Gammon.
What makes this sixth grade educated, farm girl from a rural area of Oklahoma so memorable to me is exactly what was stated above, her kind and easy manner in looking at life and how best to live life in the process.
By worldly standards, Martha was not blessed with many skills that the outside world holds dear but when you really began to know her then you began to understand that life is not that complicated and that life is meant to be lived one day at a time. If she taught me anything it was to take stock of who I am and to live my life one day at a time. Basically, it is to simplify myself not only to myself but also to those around me.
She mastered this because she was a simple person and she never gave cause to be seen as anything else but who she was. Yet, she wasn’t acting in this manner for any other effect but being Martha. I have never heard anyone say that she was anyone but who she projected to the family at large. The mastery of being able to be who we truly are and to be comfortable in our own skin is a true rarity in our society today.
Her love is family lore today. My children’s memories of her are as crisp and precise as to the moment of what was said or done that after so many years there had to be an almost mesmerizing state of being when they were with her. Her play time with them is legendary whether it was working a kid’s puzzle at a table or sitting on the floor playing a game.
That inherent quality of time and how you give it is a remarkable trait and so many people live their entire life and never grasps it true intent. But time and time again I saw it in her as a normal facet of her everyday life.
She also had a great gift of being gracious and being thankful for what she had and people felt at ease around her. When you went to her house in her later years, it was an oasis from the outside world; kids played, the older girls went shopping and the guys stayed home with Martha and watched sports. Now she didn’t care for sports but being in her house with her was enough for her to enjoy our company. We were noisy and hungry and everything a bad guest might normally be but Martha was never frazzled by it all.
In closing, I will probably never have the opportunity to know anyone like Martha again in my life but how blessed I am to have had the opportunity to know even one Martha.
So when times are rough and days go bad; I will endeavor to try to regain some of the Martha factor in my life and slow down, take a deep breath, and live one day at a time and I just have a feeling that she will be there smiling at me and that is enough for me.