good­bye, Mamoo

The world is a dimin­ished place now, as my beloved grand­mother, Bet­tye Planque Wedek­ing Hor­rall, died last week, aged 98 years and 51 weeks.  She was our “Mamoo,” the matri­arch of our very close fam­ily, the moral com­pass of all our dis­parate gen­er­a­tions.  She was also just plain tremen­dous fun, always laugh­ing from the begin­ning of her long life to the end.

She was my mother’s mother, and as I get older, I see more resem­blance among the four gen­er­a­tions of our family’s lit­tle girls.  There is some­thing in the twin­kle of our eyes, I think.  Here is my mother, aged six.

Although my father’s Scan­di­na­vian genes turned both me and my daugh­ter blonde, we share that twin­kle, I think.  Here is lit­tle me, in the ubiq­ui­tous playpen of the 1960s.

Of course I believe Avery to be the best dis­til­la­tion of all our family’s won­der­ful qual­i­ties.  How proud Mamoo was of her, her first great-grandchild, daugh­ter of her first granddaughter.

Mamoo’s fam­ily name began as the Ger­manic “Planck” but the 1930s brought about a change to the more Frenchy spelling of “Planque.”  She was the adored baby of the fam­ily, lit­tle Betty, adding the “e” to the end of her name as a teenager want­ing to be just a lit­tle dif­fer­ent.  It didn’t take an extra let­ter on her name to achieve that.

She mar­ried my grand­fa­ther, Loyd Wedek­ing, as a very young woman and pro­ceeded to pro­duce a beau­ti­ful fam­ily with first my mother, Suzanne, then her lit­tle sis­ter Linda Jane, and finally a lit­tle brother, my uncle Ken­neth, named for my grandfather’s brother.  Here they all are, in bril­liant 1975 garb, in the sprawl­ing gar­den of their mag­i­cal south­ern Indi­ana home, Five Green Acres.

I loved that house more than any place in my child­hood: there was a rid­ing lawn­mower, end­less Big Wheel cars for us to roar around on, a bird­bath to mon­i­tor, woods to explore, and a com­pletely mag­i­cal rope swing from which my brother fell twice, break­ing the same wrist each time.  I never had such bad luck.

While Mamoo was not a very enthu­si­as­tic cook, she was a superbly wel­com­ing host­ess.  We chil­dren longed for the week­ends spent with Mamoo and Grandpa, and my par­ents felt much the same, since my father’s par­ents were far away in Ari­zona and in any case he felt much closer to my mother’s fam­ily.  Mamoo wel­comed the arrival of every one of her eight grand­chil­dren with sen­si­ble, unsen­ti­men­tal rejoic­ing.  She was not a hug­ger or a kisser, as befit­ted her gen­er­a­tion.  But she adored us all.  Here she is with tiny me, just hours old in a Feb­ru­ary snowstorm.

So many, many times we motored down to Wash­ing­ton to be together.  I don’t think any extended fam­ily ever had more fun than we all did.  Here we are in 1967, at Christ­mas, com­plete with my Aunt Linda’s hus­band Uncle Dick, Uncle Kenny’s lovely wife Aunt Mary Wayne (the bee­hive! and I think Tramp, their dog), my big cousin Steve, my big brother Andy, and lit­tle me, in my mom’s arms.

What did Mamoo do to make our time together so much fun?  She was rather plump in all the right cozy places, with softly curl­ing brown hair and eyes always laugh­ing.  She pro­vided my mother’s and aunt’s beloved china dolls com­plete with all the gor­geous 1950s clothes she had made for them: dresses in silky blue-flowered mate­r­ial, starched net pet­ti­coats peep­ing out from under lit­tle flan­nel skirts, hats and stock­ings and lit­tle shoes of real leather.  She sat us — my lit­tle cousin Amy and I — in the big dra­matic bath­tub sur­rounded with black shiny mar­ble walls, and sat with us as we splashed together, wash­ing the walls indus­tri­ously with sham­poo.  We were the “Naked Baked Club,” my cousin and I, invented under Mamoo’s watch­ful, lov­ing eye.  As we got older, she pro­duced even more inter­est­ing activ­i­ties like going through the boxes of let­ters my mother had writ­ten to her from col­lege, and her diaries.

She tied on half-aprons with ruf­fled edges and pro­duced large meals of sim­ple, deli­cious food around their big oval table, presided over by my large, laugh­ing grand­fa­ther.  There were copi­ous meat­loaves and mashed pota­toes with plenty of gravy, lit­tle glass and sil­ver dishes of olives and cel­ery sticks, big bowls of but­tery green beans and my grandfather’s tra­di­tional bas­ket of plain white bread, with­out which a meal was not a meal. My grand­fa­ther con­vinced all we chil­dren that the end­less sup­ply of lit­tle sweet pick­les on their table came from his hid­den “pickle bush.”  There was never a pair of fun­nier, sweeter grand­par­ents.  Strict, to be sure — we chil­dren behaved nicely.  But no won­der my mother and her sib­lings brought us there to Five Green Acres over and over for lov­ing week­ends, Christ­mases, Easters.

Under the giant ever­green tree in the back­ground of this photo, Mamoo hid end­less dozens of real Easter eggs, plus the plas­tic col­ored ones that broke in half to reveal foil-wrapped choco­late eggs, plus Easter bas­kets, lit­tle stuffed bun­nies, for we cousins to find.  I will never for­get the Easter morn­ing when, scram­bling under the tree for eggs, we came upon one of those stuffed bun­nies.  And then it hopped away.  Magic!

Through all our times together, Mamoo told sto­ries.  Some were from her child­hood with her adored older sis­ter, my Aunt Toot­sie, who had per­fect pitch and could play any song she’d heard, on the piano, first time per­fect.  All Mamoo’s fam­ily were the­atri­cal, dra­matic and musi­cal.  Mamoo her­self was the only per­son I ever heard who whis­tled with real vibrato.  She told us of Aunt Tootsie’s cat­a­clysmic elope­ment as a teenager, the death of their father when Mamoo was only 16, their strug­gles with the Depres­sion, the peren­nial lack of money.  Many of these tales fol­lowed the clas­sic lines.  “When we were chil­dren, if we got even ONE ORANGE in our Christ­mas stock­ings, we felt lucky indeed.  And that was to SHARE!”

She and Grandpa remem­bered every funny thing their chil­dren had said, and the sto­ries were aired with every fam­ily gath­er­ing.  One of her favorites was the Thanks­giv­ing when my Uncle Kenny sought out Grandpa, nap­ping after the mas­sive meal.  “He came up to your grand­fa­ther and tapped him on the shoul­der until he woke up.  Then he said, ‘Daddy, would you like a piece of turkey?’ “Sure,’ Grandpa said, just to get rid of him.  After he ate it, your Uncle Kenny said, “Daddy, could you chew that piece of turkey?  Because I tried to, and couldn’t.’”  Then Mamoo would shake with laughter.

She and Grandpa trav­eled the world, never neglect­ing to visit us, stag­ger­ing in the back door of my child­hood home, nearly hid­den behind enor­mous piles of Christ­mas presents.  When we first vis­ited them in their down­town hotel, I asked my mother, “What IS a hotel, any­way?”  She answered patiently, “It’s a big build­ing with lots of lit­tle rooms, where peo­ple stay when they are vis­it­ing.”  We trooped into the lobby, waited for the ele­va­tor (my first) and got in.  As the ele­va­tor wafted toward Mamoo’s floor, I said in a tiny voice, “This sure IS a lit­tle room!”

Then one chill Decem­ber day shortly after our Thanks­giv­ing with Mamoo and Grandpa, I came home from school to find my mother in the door­way, ter­ri­ble and tall with her face red and blotched with unbe­liev­able tears.  My mother never, ever cried.  “Your Grandpa, my Daddy, has died.  I must go be with Mamoo.  Dad will take care of you guys.”  And she was gone.  I remem­ber sit­ting on the kitchen counter, watch­ing my father fold laun­dry with totally unac­cus­tomed awk­ward­ness, hear­ing him tell the awful tale.  “Grandpa went to the hos­pi­tal for his retire­ment phys­i­cal, the day before he was going to retire.  He was on the heart machine when it sud­denly went off like crazy.  He died of a heart attack right then and there.”

Mamoo told us the story from her per­spec­tive later.  “I was expect­ing your grand­fa­ther home for lunch as usual, and the time got on.  Just as I was start­ing to worry, there was a knock on the door.  It was the doc­tor, walked down the hill from the hos­pi­tal with the news.”  Later on, a wing of that hos­pi­tal, and the lit­tle road lead­ing to my grand­par­ents’ house, were named after my grand­fa­ther who had been the kind and lov­ing optometrist in that lit­tle town all his adult life.

It took Mamoo a long time to recover her twin­kle, after that.  Once when we were vis­it­ing her after the funeral, I saw a cal­en­dar on her kitchen wall.  Writ­ten on it for the day before, and sev­eral days before that, was, “Alone.  Again.”  They had been mar­ried just over 40 years.

She came, as always, to our plays and musi­cals, and we went often to see her, know­ing that noth­ing could com­fort her for her loss, but fear­ing to leave her alone.  The months crept by in a new sense of loss and change.  I was twelve years old.

Then, after a period of mourn­ing, Mamoo sat us all down to tell us an extra­or­di­nary tale.  “Your grandfather’s best friend, Lon Hor­rall, has come to me to say that he loves me, and would like to get mar­ried.  So we think we will.”  It was a love story that made their ages com­pletely irrel­e­vant.  Lon had sur­vived two wives, bravely sol­dier­ing on in their social cir­cle in that lit­tle Indi­ana town, secretly nurs­ing a pas­sion for my grand­mother, we all decided.  Then when tragedy struck, he was there to pick up the pieces.

Mamoo and Lon began a new life together, we gained a new grand­fa­ther — the only one the lit­tle cousins really ever remem­bered — and sev­eral step­cousins.  We grew up under Lon’s slightly stricter but equally lov­ing gaze, feel­ing pro­foundly grate­ful to him for sav­ing Mamoo from her wid­ow­hood, and offer­ing a sec­ond chance at happiness.

The sum­mer fam­ily reunions, a tra­di­tion since the grand­chil­dren first started arriv­ing, con­tin­ued.  Mamoo and Lon treated us all to a gala din­ner, the air ring­ing with many sto­ries being told all at once.

When I elected to go to grad­u­ate school in Penn­syl­va­nia, Mamoo and Lon stepped in imme­di­ately.  “I don’t know why you want to leave the good old Mid­west for some snooty East­ern town, but as long as you do, we might as well drive you and your things out there.”  And they did, all 900 miles of the jour­ney, and since there was not a hotel room to be found when we arrived, Lon slept in the car, and Mamoo on the mat­tress from my bed, on the floor.  “I didn’t sleep a wink,” she said proudly in the morn­ing.  “Oh yes, you did,” I rejoined silently to myself.  Mamoo had a fierce snore.

We got mar­ried, one by one, and Lon and Mamoo were there to cel­e­brate with us.  Here we are at my wed­ding, in the ecru dress Mamoo had made for Aunt Linda, which my mother had worn, and which was refit­ted for me.

My dear dad needed a lit­tle help with his bou­ton­niere, and Mamoo was there to help.

As indeed, Mamoo always was there to help.  As strong and rather old-fashioned as Mamoo was about her opin­ions of right and wrong, noth­ing was stronger than her love for her fam­ily.  That was never clearer than just before our wed­ding, when we bought some old, sweet fur­ni­ture at the sum­mer reunion in Wash­ing­ton.  “Now, how are you kids going to get that fur­ni­ture out to New Jer­sey?” she asked sternly.  “I guess we’ll hire a van,” I said.  “Non­sense.  What a waste of money.  Lon and I will drive out, and deliver it to you.”  And they did, those two nearly-80-year-olds, stay­ing under our unmar­ried roof with per­fect, if slightly dis­ap­prov­ing aplomb.  And I can assure you that each piece of fur­ni­ture went in the spot where Mamoo thought it would look best.

Mamoo grew softer as she grew older, and there were hugs, with her soft and powder-fragrant cheek against mine.  And noth­ing could keep her from dot­ing on her first great-grandchild, my daugh­ter Avery, com­plet­ing four gen­er­a­tions of our family.

Sev­eral  years later, it was my lit­tle sis­ter Jill’s turn for a beau­ti­ful wedding.

Mamoo and Lon lived out their twi­light years with great, quiet hap­pi­ness.  We moved to New York, and then to Lon­don, and my vis­its with them became fewer and fewer.  I lis­tened with great nos­tal­gia to my mother telling me about Thanks­giv­ing din­ners I was miss­ing, fam­ily reunions I was miss­ing.  Avery never really knew Mamoo and Lon very well, but I have no doubt she feels she did, because I just might have inher­ited my grandmother’s pen­chant for telling a story, over and over.

Four years ago, Lon had a heart attack from which it was obvi­ous he would not recover.  They were sep­a­rated.  His fam­ily stepped in to pro­vide a nurs­ing home for him, and my fam­ily set­tled Mamoo into a nurs­ing home of her own, staffed by lov­ing ladies and gen­tle­man who never tired of telling us what a won­der­ful guest she was, regal­ing every­one in the mid­dle of the night at the nurses’ sta­tion with tale after tale of her fam­ily life.  When Lon died, my fam­ily went to tell her.  “Oh, what a shame,” she said, shak­ing her head.  “He was a lovely man.  So hard-working.”  We think she had retreated into a place where she was still mar­ried to my grand­fa­ther, remem­ber­ing his best friend with fond­ness, rather than the sec­ond hus­band to whom she had been mar­ried for 30 years.

I last saw Mamoo a year and a half ago in her nurs­ing home.  Her mem­ory was fail­ing then, but only for the present-day.  The past still made per­fect sense.  “Well, look who’s here!” she exclaimed.  “Now, honey, did you bring John and Avery with you?”  We talked about Lon­don and her vis­its there with Grandpa in the 1950s and 60s, and Avery’s school adven­tures and our new home, of which I had brought pic­tures.  She wanted to dis­cuss, as always, the place­ment of each piece of fur­ni­ture, the arrange­ment I had made of books on shelves, what sort of neigh­bor­hood it was.  She was her­self, indomitably curi­ous and sharp.

But noth­ing can last for­ever, as we found last week.  We all talked about her con­di­tion in the days lead­ing to her death.  “She is peace­ful,” my mother assured me, and we knew we were for­tu­nate.  She had had a long, impos­si­bly happy, gen­er­ous, funny life, leav­ing behind three chil­dren, eight grand­chil­dren, eleven great-grandchildren and another on the way, due any day.  She died on Feb­ru­ary 1, just six days before her 99th birthday.

Intan­gi­bly, what Mamoo left behind more than any­thing else were her love of life in all its com­pli­ca­tions, her love of the past, her deter­mi­na­tion to keep it alive, and her love of her fam­ily.  Her death is, really, a loss with­out any need for grief.  Noth­ing was left undone or unsaid.  She died as she had lived, full of appre­ci­a­tion for what­ever life had to offer.  Yes­ter­day my band of bell­ringers rang for Sun­day ser­vices in her honor, my beloved teacher read­ing out her name.  Every­one gath­ered around and asked me lovely ques­tions about her life.  And for once, in my ring­ing I made no mis­takes.  How touched and amazed she would have been to know.

Good­bye, Mamoo, and thank you.