One Measure

by JIM BEERS

She was born before the First World War. Her father abandoned her mother
when She was a toddler. A married aunt raised her into almost her early
teens in a small Illinois town on the vast prairie landscape. She then was
taken to Chicago to Her mother's new home, complete with a loving stepfather
and new half-brother and half-sister.

 

It was the Roaring Twenties and Capone ruled Chicago with the Mayor and the
Police. Killings, corruption, and payoffs were routine matters as She grew
into a young woman working without benefit of ever completing high school.

 

Gangland Chicago morphed seamlessly into the Depression but She always
worked and Her aptitude with figures and Her easy manner with workmen
(thanks in large part to Her printer stepfather) not only kept Her working,
it even accounted for advancements.

 

She married in January of 1941 and exactly nine months later gave birth to a
baby that grew into the author of this account. Seven weeks after my birth,
the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the next day my father left with his
Illinois National Guard Unit. He served in Europe and didn't return until
1945. During that time She had to work both to replace Dad's salary and to
give my grandparents some money to care for me. While She worked, I grew
strong under my grandfather's tutelage and my grandmother's accounts of her
youth and her families immigration from Ireland via Ohio to an Illinois
farm.

 

Soon after the Japanese surrender and my father's return, twins were born.
She was doing accounting work and managing glaziers for a large glass
company while Dad returned to International Harvester and the tool and die
work he knew well.

 

In short order She moved the family way out west of the city to north of
what was then a small town on the Fox River, Saint Charles, Illinois. For
years She and Dad made the long commute past cornfields and Holsteins to
maintain the rural lifestyle She knew as a child.

 

After my departure, She and Dad divorced. Looking back, Her early life and
traumas; added to a new family in a city rampant with crime and corruption,
a Depression, four years of separation from Her new husband, and years of
work while trying to raise three kids; took their toll in more ways than I
could ever know. I often think of that when the problems of my life seem
big.

 

She moved to Northern Minnesota and spent the final decades of Her life
living in an old but snug home on a hill overlooking a lake. As She had
done in Illinois, She raised dogs and made friends everywhere. She got an
Associate college degree. She fought corrupt and lazy bureaucrats. She
helped people keep their property from the clutches of callous local doctors
and lawyers that were enriching themselves beyond belief by preying on old
and deceased persons and their estates. In short, She worked for and loved
those who were least able to help themselves.

 

She passed away a few years ago. Since She had donated her body to the Mayo
Clinic because of their kindnesses to her over the years, I notified them
after She died, while I was at Her side, and they came and took away her
body.

 

One year later they called me and said they had used Her body and cremated
the remains and would bury Her if I wanted. I asked them to send Her ashes
to the small Catholic Church near where she died. The priest from that
Church had given Her last rites and heard Her confession shortly before her
death and he agreed to keep the ashes until I could get there for a funeral
Mass before burial in the small cemetery.

 

The funeral Mass was a simple affair with a few local parish ladies that did
not know Her. I dug Her grave, interred Her ashes in the ground and
arranged for a headstone to be placed on the grave by a nearby stonemason.
That evening I took the priest to dinner and we talked for hours about his
home in India, the travels through India by Saint Thomas the Apostle, and my
Mother. He had visited Her numerous times to bring Her communion at her
home and, as we were doing, he had enjoyed many hours of pleasant
conversation with Her on a wide range of topics.

 

Before the funeral service I had written an obituary that the Duluth
newspaper (read over a large area of Northern Minnesota) kindly agreed to
publish. Several weeks after the burial I received a phone call from a lady
that knew my Mother. She said, "Mr. Beers, I don't mean to be nosy, but
didn't your Mother ask for her ashes to be spread over a spot in the woods
where many of her dogs had been buried?" I responded that yes it was true.
I told her that after my Mother had asked that, I had mentioned it to a
priest in my home parish in Virginia. He told me that it was definitely not
proper to spread ashes over your favorite duck blind or a golf course where
you had made a hole in one. Ashes should be interred in blessed ground in a
reverent acknowledgement of the immortal soul that had once inhabited them.
I explained to the lady that I had thought long and hard about this and
decided to let it remain unmentioned and to bury her in blessed ground if it
came up. I apologized to the lady if this offended her but it was my
decision and I did what I believed to be the right thing. The lady was
gracious and thanked me for explaining it, and hung up.

 

It was almost a year and a half before the stonemason told me by mail that
the gravestone had been carved and placed on the grave. Three times over
the next three years, I started out to visit the grave in the tiny cemetery
and three times serious storms made the trip all but impossible.

 

Recently, my wife and I spent a week with her family on a Minnesota lake.
One day the weather was rainy so my wife and I drove several hours North to
visit the gravesite by the tiny Church.

 

It was raining as we parked on the shoulder of the sandy road alongside the
cemetery. Through the blurry windshield I smiled to see that the gravestone
I had ordered was as I had ordered and placed just above where I had buried
Her. I put on a hat and jacket and walked through the rain over to the
grave.

 

As I reached the grave, a surprise brought a second smile to my face. Lo
and behold, flat in the ground and about two feet from the headstone I had
purchased was a second gravestone!

 

The headstone I had erected read "Beloved Mother" (dates) and "Mary E.
Beers" with a Cross carved on the stone. The flat headstone, flush with
the ground read, "In Loving Memory", "Mary N. Beers", "From Her Friends"
with a drawing of a doe and fawn amidst some trees and hills.

 

As I stood there in the rain it occurred to me that what finer memory was
there from those of us that knew Her than one headstone from Her son and one
from Her friends. What happens after death is a radically individual matter
between each of us and God. What the living do after others die about their
memories or about their deeds can be a help to others, in their daily lives.
A Lady that receives two headstones is one that is remembered fondly by both
Her son and Her friends, a worthy goal for each of us. There are many
measures of one's life but if one looks for one final measure, somehow
receiving two headstones seems to be something that reflects a life well
spent.

 

Oh yes. The reason for the different middle initials on the headstones is
worth mentioning. Her Birth Certificate read, "Mary Nowata Baker". Her
Baptismal Certificate read, "Mary Ellen Baker". She told me that you could
not be baptized with a name that was not one of a saint in those days, hence
the "Ellen". All her life She went by "Mary E." although everyone that knew
Her more than just in passing, eventually knew of the Indian name She
received at birth. She would be happy to confirm that both headstones, like
her devotion to Her family and many friends, are correct.

 

So, if you are ever in a small Northern Minnesota cemetery and come upon a
grave with two "different but the same" headstones: you will know the story
of the one Lady, both a "Beloved Mother" and good "Friend" with different
middle names that they commemorate.

 

Jim Beers

8 July 2008

- If you found this worthwhile, please share it with others.  Thanks.

http://jimbeers.blogster.com (Jim Beers Common Sense)

- Jim Beers is available for consulting or to speak. Contact: jimbeers7@verizon.net

- Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist, Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow. He was stationed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York City, and Washington DC. He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western Pacific and on Adak, Alaska in the Aleutian Islands. He has worked for the Utah Fish & Game, Minneapolis Police Department, and as a Security Supervisor in Washington, DC. He testified three times before Congress; twice regarding the theft by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60 Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to expanding Federal Invasive Species authority. He resides in Centreville, Virginia with his wife of many decades.

Good Neighbor Committee
P.O. Box 155 - La Salle, CO  80645
info@goodneighborlaw.com

| Good Neighbor Law© 2006 |