Like George Washington

I am reading an autobiography of George Washington.  It is 3:26 a.m.  It made me think of my own mom.   She was a child during WWII, a teenager during the Korean War, a young mother during the Cuban missile crisis and the assassination of President Kennedy.  She was a small town Southern Baptist raising small children during the Vietnam War and civil rights movement that helped shape her and her Southern Baptist preacher husband into the social minister Methodists they became.  She raised four teenagers during the sexual revolution and drug culture of the late 60’s and 70’s.  In her middle years she took into her home her grandchildren and wayward children, her dying mother, and later her dying husband and in her greying years she took in her mother-in-law until she died three years ago.  Mom now lives in an Assisted Living facility with several hundred strangers each of her children tied to jobs, homes and families hours away from her.  I often wonder what she thinks about her life, how it was lived, how it turned out, what lies ahead.  She is now showing the signs of the aged, loss of memory, a parting with a lifetime of things, a reimagining herself again, alone at 83.  Above all else I think she lived the Christian I wonder if I’ll ever be.  She is one of the great people like…George Washington.

My mom, Mary Nell Benson, with her latest great grandchild,
my grandson, Ollie Robert Carbonell.