A Tribute To My Mother

[Vespasiano Jilg]

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She told me about milking the cows and churning butter by hand, and the 100 baby chicks her grandmother would buy every spring. The hens would eventually serve both as a source of income by selling eggs, and Sunday dinner entrees. Two unwitting victims each Sunday would get their necks wrung and then plunged into boiling water to be plucked.

My mother also spoke of going to a segregated one room school. There was one teacher for the first through eighth grade. The school also had no electricity, no running water and the bathroom was an outhouse about a half a block away. When she would walk to school with her sisters, white children would throw things at them as they rode the school bus to the large fancy school reserved for whites only.

Overall, it was a generally happy life that was completely disrupted when her mother died of a stroke, and her father grieving the love of his life, followed soon after. My mother and her siblings were left without parents.

She was only in her teens when she went on to Minneapolis to live with an uncle and is wife. My mom did not speak much of this time, but pictures bely a beautiful, self-assured young woman, always in a fabulous dress that she probably made herself.

I share these stories because these are all things that could make the average person angry or bitter. Substandard segregated schools, the death of your parents early in life, continual messages that the color of your skin somehow makes you less-than, stunted dreams, and slights from in-laws. But for my mom, her purposeful acceptance and faith always kept her unphased and continually moving forward.

One of my fondest memories as a kid was coming home from school to the fresh-baked bread my mother would make nearly every week. The mesmerizing smell would pervade the hallways of our condo and I would beg my mother to slice me a piece before the loaves even had enough time to cool. My impatience would win me a deformed but delicious buttery slice of heaven.

Around this time I had moved back home to San Francisco from the East Coast. Even though I was in my mid-30s, I often joked that my 70 + year-old mother had a way more robust social life than I did, even if it did include dinner with her girls at 4:30pm.

They were great years we had together. When her 80th birthday was approaching she mentioned that she had never had her own birthday party. She had orchestrated so many fabulous ones for me as a child so it was the least I could do.

So she had her first birthday party-- a surprise party at her house at 80. Surrounded by her friends and family, she gleefully sat on her living room couch, wearing a birthday tiara and opening presents. It was a small gift for someone who had given so much to everyone else. She finally had her own moment in the sun.

A few years later, I did get married and I was proud to have my mom walk me down the aisle in a champagne-colored suit and of course one of her trademark fabulous hats. Unlike my dad, my mother had never harassed me about when I was going to get married or have children. It was just not her way.

Our major first warning sign that things were changing happened over one Christmas. We planned a family trip to Hawaii, but my mother announced that she was not traveling anymore so did not come with us. When we returned, I made my required call to let her know that we were back safely.

She was diagnosed with dementia in 2016. Of course I would not find out until years later when the symptoms became even more obvious as and her mind and body started to crumble at about the same time.

Arthritis left her in a lot of pain. She would lament her aches, but never let them turn her into the grouchy curmudgeon as is so common with age. In her nineties she was still pleasant and joyful. Even when she was a bit confused.

When it initially became clear she needed more help, of course she did not want it. It was a struggle to get her to let someone in to help her. At first it was just help with her laundry and a walking companion. Later, it would become full support from sun up to sun down.

One morning very early I got an automated text that my mother had pressed her medic alert button. I immediately called her upstairs neighbor to please check on her and hopped in the car to race across the bridge from Oakland to San Francisco. By the time I reached the Bay Bridge toll, I reconnected with our wonderful neighbor Tom who had been a life-saver so many times before.

I worried when she transitioned to an assisted living facility she would be unhappy and continually want to go back home. But in true Dorothy fashion she just rolled with it. In the welcome meeting on the first day, she met all the staff. She surprised me by stopping towards the end of the presentation and saying,

My mother came to faith, or at least, found the assurance of it, shortly before I was born, and so I had the privilege of growing up at the feet of a brand new Christian for whom everything was new, who was just full of wonder and excitement about Jesus.

This amazing mother passed suddenly and peacefully into Heaven almost nine years ago, but some things that she instilled in me are etched indelibly on my mind and heart. They are woven into the warp and woof of my being.

She modeled and instilled in me a love for good music. I was still quite young when my paternal grandfather died, and when my father received a small inheritance, he and Mom agreed to buy what was then a state-of-the-art stereo system. Mom kept record albums of good music playing on that stereo constantly. I knew more about George Beverly Shea and Gene Payne than I did about Elvis Presley and John Lennon! I listened to the arrangements of their music until I could duplicate them on the piano.

If younger mothers feeling discouraged or overwhelmed with the daily grind of domestic duty were to ask my mother today for encouragement and support in their faith, I think I know the essence of what she would tell them:

My mother told me shortly before she died that she and Dad had prayed that one of their sons would be a preacher of the Gospel. How indebted I am to a godly mother whose prayers continue to follow me!

Last Sunday Americans across the country honored their mothers. When I think about my role in Congress, I think about how it all started with my Mom and the lessons she taught me as a boy that I have carried with me throughout my life.

Helen Cole, my late mother, was a selfless, loving, strong and wise woman who was as proud of the state of Oklahoma as she was of her Chickasaw heritage. Although many knew her through her political activities and her volunteer work, I knew her first and foremost as my Mom. She taught me and my brother the importance of treating everyone respectfully, and in return, she taught us to expect the same from others. She expected my brother and me to be a credit to our family and our heritage, and to live up to the potential that each of us possessed. She always said to me, "If you do the wrong thing in life, it won't be because you weren't taught the right thing." And that was true in our household. We knew the difference between right and wrong, and when we did wrong, we knew the stern judgment of our mother would hold us accountable.

My mother was not a privileged woman. She was a young Indian girl growing up with a single mother in Oklahoma during the Great Depression. She wasn't offered too many opportunities, and she never graduated from college. But she was a firm believer in taking control of her own fate, and I never heard her once complain about what she didn't have growing up. She was the type of woman who gave selflessly to her family, her community and her people. She put every dime she made into helping me through college because she believed that it was a way for me to better myself and our family. She was always doing that, sincerely giving everything she had to help others.

My Mom loved politics and she was a superb politician. She was the type of person who made the people around her better because she expected the best from herself and from other people. But she also expected to be treated with that same respect and she wouldn't let anyone get away with treating her with any less. She embodied the John Wayne attitude, "I won't be wronged. I won't be insulted. I won't be laid a-hand on. I don't do these things to other people, and I require the same from them." Because of this egalitarian attitude and her kindness, people were drawn to my mother and they loved her for the person she was, so when the time came to run a tough race, there were volunteers lined up from all walks of life to help her claim victory. I always say that her funeral was a true testament of her character. There were 2000 people, from governors to gardeners, who came to pay their respects the day we buried her.

My Mom was not only an inspiration to me, but she also left behind an impression on the people she knew and met during her lifetime. She was incredibly proud of her Native American heritage and the Chickasaw Tribe to whom she belonged. She taught us that our heritage was something to be lived, valued and celebrated. She loved the military. As the step daughter, sister, wife and mother of men who served in the armed forces, she knew first-hand what the life of a military family is like. She honored the service of my father and brother, and although I was never in the military myself, she taught me the same appreciation and patriotism that she held for our country and our men and women in uniform.

James Baldwin once said that, "Children have never been good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them." The impression that my mother made on me as well as all who knew her will never fade, and I hope that everyday that passes I am one step closer to being like her. She was a true patriot who gave selflessly to serve her country and her state in every capacity. As we remember our mothers during this special time, let us be thankful for the examples they have set, the love they have shown, and the legacies they have left behind.

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