I know why I was put on this Earth.
How many people here have heard my mother use that phrase? I know why I was put on this Earth
: to help people. She had a strong but non-sectarian religious faith, and she saw it as her God-given mission to help people. It began with her own mother. Her father died when she was 14, leaving her mother, my grandmother, adrift; and from that day onward, for 31 years, my mother assumed responsibility for my grandmother’s welfare. When my father married her, he married my grandmother as well, and we boys grew up with my grandmother as part of the household, in a quaint old-world style of family.
As the three boys came along, we became her focus and her devotion. Other kids used to talk about coming home after school to an empty house, and in my naive silliness I would sometimes think Oh, that’s cool, those kids can do what they want.
Whereas when I came home, there was always someone there — someone to ask how my day went; someone to give me a hug if, in my teenage sullenness, I would accept one; someone to fill the house with the smells of cooking or the sounds of the piano; someone who, no matter how busy she was, always had time to read us a story, teach us a card game, or put a band-aid on a scraped elbow.
By the late 1970s my grandmother had passed away, the three sons had left the nest, and my father was at the peak of his career: chairman of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, president of the World Congress of Cardiology, and then president of the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. And my mother was always there at his side, for every social gathering, every meeting with the big-wigs, every invited lecture in Sweden or Japan or Mexico or wherever. In his declining years she was always there for him, unfailingly, uncomplainingly; she would not hear of putting him into a home. Caring for him was what she was meant to do.
Now I’ve been painting my mother as a very traditional stay-at-home mom, the self-effacing woman behind the great man; but that’s not the whole story. If she was a devoted homemaker, it wasn’t because tradition channeled her into it; it was because that’s what she wanted to do, that’s what she was good at, it’s what she sparkled at. In many ways she was the power behind the throne, and my father was the first to recognize this. She had a better social sense than he had. He used to say, People always like me better after they’ve met Gleaves.
She was a much sharper judge of character, and my father relied on that. She could sense the mood of a roomful of people, and could signal to him when he was getting through to them, and when he was just wasting his time.
I also don’t want to portray her devotion to family as something exclusive, preventing her from being of service to other people as well. Or animals — she was a docent at the Birmingham Zoo for over a decade, and the animals, being excellent judges of character themselves, all recognized one of their own. Or schoolchildren — teaching Sunday school was one of the great joys of her life. Or old buildings — while in Galveston, she directed both the fundraising and the execution of three restoration projects of historic buildings that the university owned. She was on charity boards, community committees, church groups; she kept as busy as my father was, and even though he got most of the headlines, her service to people of all kinds was guided by her faith in what she was put on this Earth to do.
Those of you who know my wife Marine might well hear her voice in the following words:
Meeting Gleaves in 1982 was for me the discovery of another country, inside the USA: the South.
To begin with, we didn’t understand each other very well because of our specific accents (one Dixie and the other French), and the food she served was so different from what I had eaten so far in the States — it was delicious! But what really gave me a jolt was the discovery of our similar cultural background; we were sharing a French/Louisiana culture, which at the time she grew up around New Orleans was still very strong. She was the first American who knew exactly what I meant when talking about some rituals... food, meals, parties, celebrations......
It was the start of a life-long connivance.
Last June, my mother had a health issue that put her in the hospital for two weeks, and for a while it was uncertain whether she would make it out of there. Several times afterwards, she described an experience she had there, and it was so moving that one time I took notes. These are close to her exact words:
I had a near-death experience while I was in the hospital.
The doctors said it was just a lack of oxygen in my brain, and I suppose they know what they are talking about, but to me it was much more than that. This is what happened.
I was in a bad state, and for several days it could have gone either way. One night I was lying there worrying, when I felt a calm come over me, and then words. I didn’t hear voices, the way some people say they do; instead, I kind of felt the words in my soul. And the words said:
What do you want?My son Mark, who lives in New Zealand, was on his way, and I said,
I want to see Mark.Also, my 90th birthday was coming up in a couple of weeks, and my family was planning a big party, so I said,I’d like to attend my birthday party. But,I added,Thy will be done.Again, I never heard an answer. I just felt a kind of warmth fill my soul, and I knew I was loved. The only way I can describe it is that this must be how a baby feels when its mother picks it up and holds it and hugs it, all warm and protected and loved. And I knew I would see Mark, and I knew that I would live to see my 90th birthday.
Well, of course, she did live to see her 90th birthday, and she lived for more than six months after that. And this puzzled her a bit: The Lord had granted her what she had asked for, so what was she still doing here? It was hard for her to accept that the good Lord had left her on this Earth, when she was in no condition to be of service to people. We tried telling her that maybe it was finally her turn to be cared for by other people, but she still felt that somehow she was letting God down, after he had so kindly granted her her prayers.
Mama, there is no way you let the Lord down, and we have witnesses to prove it. It’s not just every member of your extended family who will sing your praises. There are thousands of Sunday school children from five decades who loved you for the charm in your Bible stories. Thousands more medical students, interns and residents, intimidated by my father’s no-nonsense demeanor, were calmed by your grace. Every elephant and every hippopotamus in the Birmingham Zoo thrilled to your approach. All will testify that you did what you were put on this Earth to do. And it isn’t only the elephants who will never forget.