Anyone who spent anytime at all with my mom knows that she was an avid storyteller. She loved to tell stories about her childhood, about her children and about her grandchildren. And she loved to tell those stories over and over and over again. A classic Jane Mack story always began with a healthy dose of hyperbole and grew more and more fantastic with every telling. This was especially true when she told stories about her family. She found it impossible to harness the pride she felt in her seven children, 14 grandchildren and two great grandchildren, so if she exaggerated details of their accomplishments a tiny bit, that was just a reflection of her love – who could fault a loving mom and grandma. It could be a little embarrassing, though. I remember my sister-in-law congratulating me on being elected student body president of my high school. “Thanks,” I said, “only, I wasn’t elected student body president, I was elected drama club president.” Mom was close, I guess. In drama club we liked to act like we were in charge of the school.
Anyway, the apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree, and it seems that all of us have inherited our mom’s love of the tale. I’ll apologize now if you’ve had to politely listen as one of us told a favorite story for the hundredth time. We can’t help it. It’s genetic. This past week, especially, we have been mentally sorting through our stories, each of us searching for the one or two that might capture the amazing mother, grandmother, sister, friend, neighbor and doctor that we all knew and loved. But there are so many. How can you possibly choose?
My brother Peter’s favorite story illustrates that classic Jane MD energy, drive and determination, especially when it came to the holidays. No one got more wrapped up in holiday celebrations than my mom. She made Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny look like slackers. On this particular occasion, a big group of us, grown children, small grandchildren and my mom and dad, went to pick out the family Xmas tree at a cut-your-own farm. There was a man greeting guests, giving them instructions and a saw before they proceeded with their hunt for the perfect tree. When we arrived at the farm, my mom was the first out of the car. She made a beeline up the hill towards the trees and streaked past the poor greeter before he could even part his lips to say hello. When we got to him he was still stunned by the little tornado that had just blown past him. He looked at us and said, “Now that lady is going to find herself a tree!”
I think my mom’s favorite story about herself was the time she went through a drive-thru car wash with her window open. By the time she realized that the window was open she had already been sprayed by the soap foam. She didn’t immediately share this story with anyone. The next day she was at the hairdresser, though, and the stylist washing her hair was having an unusually hard time washing the shampoo out of mom’s hair. “Wow, I just can’t seem to get these suds to rinse out.” She rinsed again, and again, still , “I just don’t get it, where are all these suds coming from?.” That’s when my mom broke down in laughter and told her the story. My favorite part of this story was the fact that my mom could not get through it without dissolving into laughter. Her eyes would water, her shoulders would shake, and everyone around her would be convulsed with laughter by the end.
I think every one of her children has a story about my mom helping with our newborn babies. One of our baby stories ends with a burned up pot of baby bottle nipples and a visit by the fire department. But while she didn’t always know how to handle our kitchen equipment, she did always know how to handle the babies. She had “the touch”. These days we’d refer to her as a baby whisperer. It was really something to see how quickly our babies would quiet and relax when she held them. She dropped everything else in her life to help us all with our babies when they were born. And her immediate devotion to them was returned in the devotion they have always felt for her, as you have just heard.
Woven into all of our stories are those indelible images that bring the stories to life for us: rolling out cookies at her kitchen table, wearing her favorite navy blue cardigan that was perpetually dusted in flour; or hanging out her curtains with a plastic bag on her head to protect her hair from the liquid starch; or dancing the jig in John and Joyce’s living room on St. Patrick’s Day; or drilling us for every detail about what we ate on a night out and then memorizing it so she could repeat it back to you later; or jumping up and down in front of the chimp cage imitating the chimps when she took her grandchildren to the zoo; or what she looked like from the back as she raced a cart through the grocery store while we struggled to keep up.
And then there are the stories being held by others, like the story one of my mom’s caretakers at Carolton recently told us. She said that she had first started going to my mom’s clinic when her family fell on hard times and she found herself alone trying to raise several small children and a new baby. She said for the next 15 years, my mom made sure that nothing stood in the way of her being able to get the medicines and medical care that her children needed. She told us my mom didn’t just take care of the kids; she took care of the mothers, too. Another caretaker told a similar story of her daughter making an emergency visit to the clinic with her baby, a second-generation Dr. Mack patient. My mom knew she was really worried, so she took her into her examining room right away, despite glares from the others who were waiting. As she headed into the room, the young mother turned to everybody and said, “It’s okay. We’re family.”
I think that’s a big part of what made my mom so special. She had a way of connecting with people on a deeply personal level. She welcomed you into her life. To know her was to feel cared for and appreciated, like part of her family.
And I realize that one of the ways she did that was through her stories. The stories she shared about herself, about the people and places she loved, illuminated who she was. They helped you know the person and the spirit.
I think that’s our job now. We need to keep telling the stories, using those stories to connect with each other and to new people and to inspire us to live a life as full and as rich and as meaningful as Jane’s. I would venture to guess that each of us here holds one or two, perhaps even a hundred, stories of Jane in our hearts. Each of those stories is a beautiful little strand of remembrance, but it’s not until we weave all those stories together that we begin to reflect the vibrant spirit that God created in Jane.
So that’s what we hope you will do: spin your tales, weave your stories with the stories of others, find comfort and give comfort with the rich fabric of memories that will never fade if we continue to care for it.
I do have one last story for you. My mother loved planning family gatherings, so it is not surprising that she would have wanted to have a hand in planning this gathering. She picked the venue, the celebrant, the music, and the people who would perform the music. She also specifically requested that someone who spoke say that whatever good she did while she was here was a divine gift. That is certainly true, because you, mom, were a divine gift – a gift for which we are eternally grateful.
Click here to read her obituary from the CT Post.
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