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Charles Jaco has written opinion and commentary pieces for dozens of magazines and newspapers. Each week, read and comment on a fresh on-line version. The discussion page enables you to share your view points world wide. If you would like to make a comment go to the " Join the discussion" link below. If you would like to view past editorials visit the Editorial Archive.
Editorial: 5/21/99 Note---My mother, Virgie Jaco, died on Sunday May 16th. I want to thank everyone who has sent their condolences. What follows is the eulogy I delivered for her in Poplar Bluff, Missouri on May 19th. I shall miss her very much.--Charles Jaco All of you here knew my Mom. To some she was Virgie. To others, Ruth. To a few, Genny. To a few others, Sis. And to those who crossed her, or respected her, or both, she was always, most emphatically, Mrs. Jaco. Mom loved two things unconditionally--her cats, and me. Sometimes in that order. But once you earned her love and her trust, she was as loyal, and as fierce, as a mother lion. As she lay dying, the doctor said she wouldn;t last the night. I wondered if he was really thinking of betting against Virgie, She lasted 28 hours, and the kind strangers at the hospital were amazed. But everyone who knew her said, yeah, that's Virgie. If fighting adversity was a team sport, my mother would have been the New York Yankees. She survived poverty, although no one called it that when she was growing up. It was just the way life was. She survived a sometimes violent marriage, several failed businesses, bill collectors, and her own health. She was blind in one eye. She had several broken ribs. She was diabetic, and survived three heart attacks. She had surgery for colon cancer, and again for peritonitis. Her blood pressure was astronomical. Her heart had a bad valve and three clogged arteries. She had two hip operations, and survived a type of stroke that usually kills 90 per-cent of its victims. We often joked that she'd never die, she'd just run out of parts. Mom was firm in her opinions. She rooted for the underdog. She was pro-union. She collected stray cats and stray people with the same generosity of spirit. But she drew the line at Republicans. She did, though, actually vote for a Republican a few years back. Since she idolized FDR and JFK, I asked why. Two reasons, she said. She just couldn't stand his Democratic opponent. And she wanted to make sure that, after 60 years, the Democratic Party didn't take her for granted. Mom graduated from high school at a time when most Ozark girls just made it through grade school. And she read, my God she read, catalogs, magazines, newspapers, and books, books on all topics, books of every size, shape, and description. She passed that on to me, firm in her conviction that there's no difference between someone who can't read and someone who won't read. Even though Mom was always on the side of the poor, she had no patience with anyone who used poverty as an excuse. She'd say you're never too poor to have a clean house, or clean clothes, and that people who blamed being poor for all their troubles were probably just too lazy to work. Mom knew things. She could walk in the woods and spot picoon and May apples and know they were used for medicine. She could shoot the eye out of a squirrled at 30 paces. She knew how to make soap from animal fat and lye, boiled together. She knew how to can jellies and jams, okra and beets, pickles and relishes. She knew how to make quilts---sunburst lone star quilts from hundreds of diamond-shaped pieces of cloth, state quilts with a map of a state, its official bird, and its state flower on each square, patchwork, tufted quilts. Mom knew a lot. She knew that, sometimes, those with the least give the most. So she would cook and deliver meals to the needy on Christmas morning. Whether it was the March of Dimes or the Cancer Society, she would stuff envelopes and knock on doors to raise money. She knew young people are the future. So Mom, who had two miscarriages and ended up with only one child, made dozens her children. Once some of us were arrested for underage drinking. In court, the sheriff asked the judge to order us to cut our long hair. Mom acidly remarked that she'd never seen a picture of Jesus with a crew cut. The charges were reduced. A friend of mine came back from Vietnam in bad shape mentally. She called him, counselled him, got him a job, got his life back on track. Repeat stories like those hundreds of times, and yeah, that's Virgie. Youngsters who were no blood kin at all called her Grandma Virgie, or Aunt Virgie, or Ma Jaco. Maybe it was the food. My mother swore eternal opposition to diets and lean cuisine. Coming to Mom's, even for a short visit, meant lemon pie and chocolate cake, mountains of potato salad, piles of ham and turkey and beef, oceans of lemonade and iced tea. And God help you if you were watching your weight and dropped by around a holiday. Christmas saw her home turned into something out of Charles Dickens. A huge tree, food everywhere you turned, decorations and garland and tinsel on every surface. I've had friends joke to me--or maybe they weren't joking--that they had no need to travel to Memphis or St. Louis to see the department store window displays. They could come to Virgie's. I was proud of Mom. She was proud of me. My job often involved war zones. But Mom was only really upset once. In 1988, General manuel Noriega's security forces beat me up in Panama, and I needed surgery. The next year, I went back to Panama and Noriega declared me an Enemy of the State and I had to go into hiding. Mom was so angry, she said if the U.S. didn't get Noriega, she'd get a gun, fly to Panama, and shoot the s.o.b. herself. The U.S. invaded Panama two months later. Co-incidence? The Pentagon claimed it wasn't. I'm not so sure. Mom once told me she wanted people to say after she was gone that she was a good housekeeper, a good homemaker. She was. A very good one. The morning after Mom died, the peonies we transplanted from her yard to ours burst into bloom for the first time. Her beloved elephant's ear plant poked through the soil for the first time this year. And an old climbing rose along our back fence that had never produced one single flower was now actually in bloom and covered with buds. Co-incidence? Maybe. Or maybe God got himself a good housekeeper. |
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