It was a wonderful life

I woke this morning with this thought

“Daddy must have been so proud,” when the addition to our family home was completed, and he lain down in his new bedroom beside my mother for the first time. Expanding the modest two-bedroom, one-bath house by 100% ~just three blocks from the town square where he had his Chevrolet dealership and gas station~ for his growing family must have felt like a great achievement.

A year after I started Late Bloomer, 2013

We never had a fancy house 

As I see it, having a mother at home was a great advantage. She was very involved in our lives and the church was the center of that life. Mother sewed our clothes, enrolled us in beauty pageants, 4-H and sports, she was always busy. Softball leagues occupied the summer months. We both played! She made all of my costumes in school plays, filled the role of Boy Scouts mom and fundraised for a church camp by the river where the troop was established.

Building furniture out of cast out wood (she made a table out of an old wooden casket), and sculptures from scrap iron were two of her passions. The local welder, Bud Love, was fond of her and let her pick through his scraps. Three meals magically appeared on the table every day at 6, 12 and 6, (except Sunday dinner) and she had us all looking sharp for church three times a week. Discipline, respect, hard work and faith were ingrained in us.

They made a great team

Daddy scored three new industries to our small town and was awarded “Man of the Year” in the 1960’s, also serving for decades as deacon and elder in the church. Grandparents on farms were short drives away where many memorable summer vacations were spent with our cousins. The homegrown food and homemade meals were unforgettable.

One delicious dessert, Grandmother’s butter roll pie, would be baking in the oven and I can still smell the aroma. The platter of fresh sliced homegrown tomatoes in summer would be brimming with juice, and my aunt wasn’t too proud to drink it down! With the freedom to roam and play until we were tired, dirty and hungry, we returned at mealtime for a good homemade feast. Vacations were always spent in Daytona Beach over July 4th. Oh, it was a wonderful life.

Mother added the bubbles. After retirement, they had a blast.

The main reason I came back to Tennessee

After leaving California in 2020, I wanted to be no more than an hour from my mother. At 90, she was on hospice in a memory care unit on the west side of Nashville. Mother had fallen getting out of bed and incurred a stress fracture in her lower spine, lost a lot of weight, couldn’t keep food down and was in a lot of pain. The future looked bleak, but her mother had lived to 96, so who knew how long she would last? I desired a large property after living in noisy, cramped, congested cities for 40 years. And a big garden.

Last day at Late Bloomer Garden 1.0

Nashville was still booming in 2020

The boom started, I was told, by the TV series, “Nashville,” and hadn’t let up. I flew over from LA several times in 2020, and on one February weekend, a college sorority get-together coincided with the big Nashville tornado. Riding that storm out in a hotel room in Franklin, I had no idea how bad it was. Later, I learned if I found a contractor available, he likely wasn’t very good. A house needed to be move-in ready.

On a snowy morning December 1, 2020 (<click for my first Tennessee video), the closing of this 9+ acre place finalized after a month-long road trip across the country. My cat, Linden, then 15, rode side saddle and 25 plants salvaged from Late Bloomer Garden 1.0 were layered like cake in the back seat. (I filmed live videos over the trip, click to watch.) I’d given notice to be out of my temporary apartment in Santa Monica October 31, and took advantage of a full month of visiting friends.

Bobbie June, 1970’s

Mother decided to rally

As a result of a few improvements, she lived four more years. But I wouldn’t call it “living.” Every physical ability waned until her life was confined to her room. Since 2022, she had sitters 12 hours a day in addition to the technicians who worked the memory care unit of approximately 22 patients. The cost was astounding and often I regretted not having her here. Even though she was down to 100 pounds, I couldn’t lift her, so that settled it.

Always positive and cooperative, Mother never complained as her dementia worsened and body failed. When her teeth started falling out in July last year, a total of four in a month, it was the beginning of a slow end. I often pondered to my friend why she carried on and he replied,

“She never gave up on anything in her life. Why would she give up her life?”

A day and half before the end

My prayer was answered

As the end neared, I spent several nights leading up to the last on a lawn chair. Blind, unable to speak or move her body, other than her right hand, she blessed me with a final smile 20 hours before she passed. After falling dead asleep the last morning, the nurse woke me at 3am, and said it was show time.

She rustled up a cup of hot green tea and I came to attention by Mother’s side. A cappella hymns played on my phone the last hour, as had done over the weeks and months. She loved to sing! Her best memory growing up were the singings. Her father sang in a quartet and her mother played organ. “Life’s Evening Sun” was a favorite.

Quiet and profound

On November 30, 2024, at 4:24am, as “Amazing Grace, My Chains are Gone” repeated over my phone and I held her hand, the sound of her breathing changed. The last glottal stop brought a deafening silence, and an end to a truly remarkable life. And the beginning to an eternal one. Heartbreak, joy and gratitude filled me all at once. My rock star, my family’s rock, quietly took her exit.

From poverty to fulfillment

I held her hand until her last breath

“I got everything I ever wanted,” a childhood friend said before she passed. Our mother felt that way, I know.

Be careful what you ask for

Afterwards, as I sat by her gasping corpse waiting for the hearse, one brother arrived at 6am. He told me I should write down the experience of her passing. It’s been nearly three months. This is my first attempt, published here on a dusty blog all but forgotten in the blur of the last four years of hard work and heartbreak.

“Father, let me be with her” when she passes, I fervently prayed, as she had been with my father 24 years earlier. Often, I reminded her of that last moment he waved goodbye ~a military salute~ before he passed. Many times over the last years I told her she had had a very successful life. Not remembering, she would respond incredulously, “I did?” Mother’s mind and body were gone before her heart stopped beating. But she left this theatre of life knowing how much she was loved and appreciated. That I am quite sure of.

Daddy, three weeks before death, the last photo, photographed with 1953 Rolleiflex camera

I’m still adjusting

Until that weekend, I had thrown myself into developing this property, shaping and reshaping, never stopping to fully unpack, but always with her proximity in mind. And those Sunday trips to Bellevue, the coffee house for breakfast, Sprouts Market for my organic food, then quiet hours spent with her. Now, it’s different.

Amazing Grace My Chains are Gone

She left an indelible mark

Afterwards, I drove home alone, and when I pulled into my driveway it hit me. She was never able to see what I have accomplished here on this place. It broke me. I consoled myself that, “She can see it now.”

When each of us siblings left home for college, Mother instructed us to save everything! And I did! Until about 2009. Every ticket stub, program, ribbon, everything, and she would compile scrapbooks for us. She made over 100 altogether. I have several, including her first one made when she was in high school. It was one of few things she left home with in her small cardboard suitcase (only to be married three months later!) plus her school annual which included the school poem she wrote for her graduating class.

Family after packing up her room, nephew, niece, brother and wife

She would have been very pleased with the funeral

At some point, Mother decided she wanted to leave her story for her grandchildren. While Daddy was convalescing from his stroke, she composed two memoirs, “The Trip” and “Journey Onward,” and made copies for family members only. She also wrote a detailed plan for her funeral 10 years before she died, which she updated frequently. Her favorite Rose of Sharon quilt and pink rose pall were to be placed just so on the casket, and she listed which of her favorite hymns were to be played and who would perform each role.

Quilting the rose of Sharon quilt

Without reservation, my brothers reaching Eagle Scout was the pinnacle of her life. She worked tirelessly as scout mom and requested her Boy Scout ribbon be pinned to her negligee in her casket. Daddy bought her a gorgeous dusty rose silk peignoir set for their wedding night and she kept it for 76 years so that she could be buried in it. And she was. I wore her 1960’s red wool coat, the only garment I possess out of literally thousands she must have made. My sister died suddenly in 2022, so it’s just the three of us now.

There were six. Now there are three.

A lot to live up to

In conclusion, Mother could do it all and on a budget. She was a poet, scrapbook queen, quilter, seamstress extraordinaire, Boy Scout mom, church volunteer, party planner, mother, wife, tennis fan, loved all her grandchildren equally, though she saw some more than others. She was proud her children completed college and all got along. That was very important to her.

With flag after Daddy’s funeral, 2000

While writing this blog, I thought of other topics I’d like to touch on, like how we live to please our mothers. Or fathers. Let me know if this is something you would like to read about. Since it’s been a long lapse, it will be interesting to see the response from this post. I suspect everyone has lost a loved one. Feel free to leave a comment.

Spring has arrived and I’m on autopilot

Gardeners and farmers are hard-wired to get out and get to the work of preparing for planting. Weather is a huge factor. The garden is muddy after a big rain yesterday, so I took the opportunity to publish this blog. My website is being updated, so you will see a new, simpler design soon. Please consider supporting this website and channel at my links below.

Above all, I want to continue inspiring anyone to grow their own food, in whatever space they have available, make their own plant medicine, and live their best life. God bless. ~ Kaye Kittrell

Kaye Kittrell by Buck Henry

PS ~ I nearly forgot!

One of my mother’s greatest achievements, at 70 years old, was to build a bus garage to house the church buses in honor of my father, who always had a garage at his dealership. First, the fundraising, then, on the job every day, supervising every detail. She cut ribbon to the building one year after his death and was awarded “Volunteer of the Year” by the church in 2021. The following year, she developed the parking lot and landscaping, including a memory garden, which she continued to tend until she wasn’t able.

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Tags: aging, family, loss

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