My mom was a remarkable woman. She was a college graduate from the school that became UNC-Greensboro though neither of her parents went to college. She became a widely sought after piano teacher, and taught at both Salem and Queens college as well as giving private lessons in her home and playing at churches. She instilled in me and my sister Laura a lifelong love of music— ranging from classical to hymns to rock and roll to jazz to country to bluegrass and more. Mom was a faithful Christian all her adult life, growing up in a Southern Baptist Church in Wilmington N.C. She once told me that as a young girl she heard ‘a hellfire sermon’ that scared her to death. As for me, being raised in the Methodist Church, I don’t remember ever hearing such a sermon.
My mom had an iron will and she ran a tight but loving and compassionate ship, earning her the nickname I gave her– the Velvet Sledgehammer.
When I was planning to go off to England to do my PhD in 1977, Mom was not entirely happy with that decision because: 1) I was broke, and 2) since I had been pursuing ministerial orders already, she was counting on her only son coming home and being a UM preacher in N.C. It was my grandfather, her dad, James Arthur West, who told her to hush because there was a call of God on her son’s life and he needed to do further study. You can hear more of this tale in the collection of Pop West’s Sunday school lessons I put together in a book entitled Twice on Sundays. Here he is…
Mom made it well into her 90s outliving her husband Ben, before dementia sadly struck. A late highlight was a surprise 90th birthday celebration with a bunch of relatives from both sides of the family at Wrightsville Beach. It was the only time I remember seeing her totally surprised, even shocked. A low light was the day my sister and I had to put Mom into a care facility, something she never wanted to have happen, but we could not manage her any more. I will always hear her last words to me spoken through tears when we got her to her final home, ‘please don’t leave me here’ and I had to explain to her that my sister Laura, whom by that point she didn’t even recognize sometimes, couldn’t look after her any more, and Mom had always said she didn’t want to be a burden to her children in the end.
Mercifully, the Lord took Mom shortly after I took her to the care facility. The major problem with the advances in modern medicine is that frequently it allows people to live longer than they really want to, it allows them to ‘out punt their coverage’, particularly their medical coverage. And for a Christian who firmly embraces the gift of everlasting life from Jesus, it is not necessary for one to extend one’s physical existence over and over again. Life is not too short, when its everlasting. The modern mantra ‘this life is all there is, try an extend it as long as one can’ may be a mantra of secular medicine, but its not one that comports with Christian faith.
Laura and I miss you a lot Mom, specially on days like today. I do wonder which heavenly piano Mom has talked St. Peter into allowing her to play the hymns on while awaiting the return of Christ, and the bodily resurrection which will be immune to the failings of this body, immune to suffering, sin, and sorrow, disease, decay, and death. It will indeed be a glorious day when the Christians are raised, and given a body like that of the risen Christ. It is a future devoutly to be wished.
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