Words I said at my mother's memorial service

On Friday, May 2, family, friends, and co-workers of my mother gathered at the Little & Sons Funeral Home in Beech Grove, Indiana, to reminisce and celebrate the memory of Ione Leigh Denoon. Everyone was invited to share their memories aloud with the assembled group, and many did. Here are the words I said:

The earliest memory anyone had of my mom was a story her parents told... and Mom's aunts Rubel and Hallie.  Mom’s love of travel started early, they would say.  When Mom was 3, Hallie came to visit Mom’s little family – who lived with her grandmother.  At breakfast the morning Hallie was supposed to leave, tiny Ione arrived at the table with a suitcase without comment.  “Where do you think you’re going?” asked her mother.  “With Hallie.”

And since that day, my mother’s preparedness to go on vacation never ended.

But there were limits.  My parents were frugal.  The only exception to the rule came when my parents purchased a VW camper in order to save money on long distance vacations as a family.  Mom’s reaction was that this seemed only a little like a vacation – you were in a different place, but because you were in the camper and cooking your own food and doing your own laundry and cleaning up your own places, it was basically just like being at home... only twice as hard.

So, sometimes, the two of us stayed with Hallie and Alton and Okra, while Mom and Dad went for a brief vacation themselves.  And I came to understand why at 3 Mom wanted to go on that first vacation.  These many years later, the privy notwithstanding, those summertimes with Hallie were a wonderful gift of childhood from my mother to me and Leigh Ann.

Many of you have been reading my weblogs about Mom, including essays that she wrote while in nursing school.  And much as she loved the land of her childhood, she was certain that she would have to leave it.  She recognized the signs of the times, how the tractor was making sharecropping unnecessary.

Mom was the first in her family to attend college, but she did not consider that this fact set her apart from anyone who hadn’t gone.  She loved being with her people.  All of you who know her must have a sense of her loyalty, because when she and Dad divorced, she seized the first opportunity she could find – which also was professionally and financially prudent – to move back to Indianapolis.  And when she did, and the opportunity presented itself, she bought the house next door to her mom and dad, then sold it to her brother and his wife, and moved to Beech Grove, which not only was near work but also near another sister.

Every chance she recognized to be of help or of service to others, she seized... but especially when it came to family.

She was a strong woman, not only career-minded, but the career-mindedness certainly helped.  

She was activist in her attitudes, local and practical in her activism. She believed that radical equality ought to be applied to all - women, minorities of any kind.

She recalled to me how, one time, she lived out both career and activism (although maybe a little too locally and practically) when she took a fellow nursing student who was also a Baptist to worship with her, one Sunday morning.  Mom told me this, as if the thought of scandal or confrontation had never occurred to her.  But the year was 1958 and the place was a Baptist church full of expatriate Kentuckians in Indianapolis, and the other nursing student happened to be a black man.

I don’t think she ever tried anything like that again.  Or she never told me about it, if she did.


Mom was loyal and faithful, without exception.  These qualities never flagged in her.  There was never a relative unhoused or even uncomfortable if she had anything to do with it.  And whatever gene there may have been in her makeup to foster such dedication and devotion my sister got in spades.  Leigh Ann’s care for Mom has been dauntless, assuring that Mom could live as happily and well as possible as her dementia progressed.

But Mom’s care for us was... amazing.  Ione Leigh Hightower Denoon was a terrific mother: patient and tolerant, but insisting that I act and grow as strongly as I could intellectually and professionally.  She insisted that I attend a college prep school so that I could develop better study skills before going to college.  She made no bones about her hope that  I would become a doctor or a lawyer, but she never missed a performance I was in in theater, and she accepted not just graciously but with genuine pride my announcement that I would pursue pastoral ministry. Of course, when I announced that I was going into the ministry, she suggested chaplaincy – partly because of her admiration for the chaplains on staff at the hospitals where she had worked and partly because the hours would likely be gentler on my family than the on-call service required of a pastor.

She encouraged my sister in her own professional pursuits, blessing her on her way to Saginaw back in ’84 and welcoming her back (with rejoicing) when Leigh Ann landed back here.

From the time of Mom and Dad’s divorce until late 2006, if I wasn’t staying with her, I received a call from my mother every Saturday morning without fail... often as early as 6am... on a Saturday.  This was in the days before Indianapolis observed Daylight Time. So, for six months out of the year, Mom was phoning me at 7am.  But in November, she would be calling at 6, and I’d have to remind her to wait... please... wait.

Those Saturday morning phone calls always included a litany of the struggles and joys other family members were going through, and of the achievements of the little ones my cousins were rearing.  I sometimes had difficulty remembering who belonged to whom, but I never lacked for news.  Mom didn’t want me out of touch, even though I was far away.  Those calls are perhaps the thing I miss about her the most and their absence began my Mom’s and my long goodbye.

During seminary, when I smashed my right index finger while riding a bicycle in traffic (and a person who had just parallel parked opened her door into me), Mom did not wait to be asked but went to a friend who worked in the office of a hand surgeon and sped up to Chicago with a box full of finger splints.  Mind you, I was already wearing a splint that the surgeon at Saint Francis Hospital in Evanston had placed on my finger very ably.  But Mom wanted the RIGHT splint to be on my finger.

When Gwen was born she moved to Burlington, Wisconsin, to be closer to her new granddaughter (Coco and I aren’t fooling ourselves about that one).  By that time, her dementia had started – aphasia that was preventing her from completing sentences, and she was too easily distracted to drive safely anymore.  It was good to have her nearby, but she wasn’t a fit babysitter, and that had certainly been her fondest wish... and at 70 it doesn’t seem unreasonable to think that she should have been able to realize it.  If there is one point of anger that I experience in my relationship with God, it’s here.  I wish that Mom’s golden years could have had a good deal more shine on them.

But no matter.  I think that, despite the hardship of the last decade or so, Mom’s attitude was of happiness despite the odds or the evidence... satisfaction with who we are and how we are.  That Leigh Ann and I have come into the loves of our lives, after some initial foibles and missteps, was endlessly pleasing to her.  I have loved to watch her eyes brighten when our spouses have walked into her presence.  And the sheer delight she took in Gwen was radiant.

Letter from the Dean of Bethel College (Hopkinsville, KY) to Miss Leigh Hightower

On May 19, 1960, three short weeks after my parents were married, the Dean-Registrar of Bethel College in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, composed Mom a letter. She had been at Bethel College for her first year of study before continuing on to Marion County General Hospital Nursing School in Indianapolis (to which her family of origin moved in 1957) - making her the first member of her family to attend college.

On a pilgrimage of her past, much like the ones I myself have caused my wife to endure, Mom took Dad on a tour of places and people significant to her childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. Bethel was one of those places, and Dean Burton and his wife were some of those people. An image of the letter follows.

Enjoy.

Address to the Soroptimist Club of Indianapolis, by Miss Leigh Hightower

Before reading this essay and seeing the accompanying photograph from the Indianapolis Star, I had never heard of the Soroptimists ("sister Optimists"). I have since learned that the Soroptimist Club of Indianapolis provided a scholarship paying largely for my mother's training as a nurse, 1957-1960.

Here is the text of an address she gave before the Club as part of her acknowledgment of their generosity. I have no information about when the speech was delivered:


Just as vividly as every small boy visualizes himself clinging to the rear of a racing, clanging firetruck, donned helmet and hatchet in hand; most little girls see themselves as nurses..... angels of mercy with light brisk steps and perpetual smiles. This dream had a part in my imaginative child-play too, but it wasn't until I was a high-school senior that a tiny baby helped me decide to become a nurse.

As I sat, night after night, beside the hospital crib of this baby, watching the nurses come and go, as guardians of the night, it seemed as if God said to me, "Leigh, you too will become a nurse." From that moment, my childhood dream began to form again. It remained with me for the next three years..... at times growing very dim, often fading almost completely from view. However, in the back of my mind there remained the memory of my promise to God, made at the bedside of my baby sister.

Upon entering nursing school, I began to fulfill that promise, and my dream has grown. I have found three words that are to me symbolic of a good nurse. They were first spoken by St. Paul, when he said, "And now abideth faith, hope, love; these three, but the greatest of these is love."

What relation do these words have for the nurse: This faith of which I speak is a complete confidence. It is faith in the medical profession.... that those who work beside you are giving their best through their knowledge to every patient. Faith in your hospital.... that inside its quiet walls new life is being created, broken bodies are being mended, and tortured minds assuaged. Faith in yourself.... that when first you felt the lightness of the cap upon your head, held high your hand, and repeated the words of the Nightingale Pledge, you did so with a heart that was sincere, hands that were capable, and a mind emotionally mature. Most important of all is faith in God..... faith that, as you walk on your ward, HE WALKS BESIDE YOU; as you speak, He speaks through you; and as you lift a glass of water to thirsty lips, you realize the meaning of "As ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto Me."

Secondly, there is hope... a belief obtainable. Keeping a clear mind when all about you confusion reigns; teaching the amputee that he can walk again; blinking back tears to whisper, "Rest in Peace," as you close eyes that no longer see. Then, too, it is smiling into the pink dawn of a new day after a busy night of duty.

In the last analysis, above everything else, a nurse must have a love for people, for in nursing she fulfills Christ's command, "Love ye one another." Love is evident in the whole life of a good nurse for love influences her whole manner of living. This love is not easily possessed. It cannot be taught in a classroom or demonstrated in a laboratory. It cannot be imitated, for imitation is a copy and love is genuine and honest..... recognizing the needs of the whole person, and not merely those of a broken body. It means giving more than is demanded... an extra smile of assurance or pat on a wrinkled hand; melting to the pleading eyes of an ailing child, keeping vigil while he is sinking, and crying yourself to sleep when he is taken away. Faith, Hope, and Love are to me the very heart of nursing.

In my limited experience thus far, I have no regret about the choice that I made, and if I were to choose again, without a doubt I would still select nursing because it is here that I may always keep my fingertips on the pulse of humanity.