Dorothy Maxwell

I sit and try to figure out how to start telling about something no loved one is ready to see end. How to I write about the passing of my mother? It turns out she gave me the answer months ago. During her declining health this year she sent me on a search for a poem she had been thinking about. She said it was a poem “for a funeral” and was written by the Poet Laureate when President Kennedy was sworn into office. I think she was surprised I knew that was of course Robert Frost. I however had no idea what poem she was thinking about. What she remembered of it didn’t help too much. It was one of those searches for something somehow lost in her memory, a search for a not fully formed memory with just the fringe of an outline, a shadow, a fleeting glimpse to act as a guide. It was however something important to her. I soon discovered that Robert Frost has a rather large collection of work I had never read and I went about reading anything that seemed “funeral-like.” Most of what I found just didn’t seem to fit what she was looking for but I printed out what I considered the best candidates. I also printed out the one I was most familiar with, “The Road Not Taken.” I think it was used in just about every English class I took in school. Of course, after I looked for all the less obvious poems she pointed to the famous one and said it was the one she wanted.

I never really looked at it as a poem for a funeral. My memory of the poem was that of a teenager reading it. I had only related to the first part of the poem as a person heading out on my journey in life and making the choice of the of the road to travel. She was reflecting on the last part remembering her life and the choices made. I have reread this many times over now and it has become far more meaningful to me in doing so. I promised my mother I would include it in whatever I wrote after her passing. Just as she saw it as part of her story, I find it helps me find a way to tell her story.

 

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

 

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

 

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

 

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

 

He journey started in 1923 in Madison, Florida. At that time Florida was still a lightly populated State and the Panhandle was mostly rural. Her family had been in Madison before Florida was even a State. She however only spent a short period on time in this rural setting. Soon one of those “roads traveled” was about to change her future. The family packed up their belongings and headed to Miami during one of the cities many early land booms. She and her older sister grew up as did the city around them. They rode out the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 having the house they were in fall apart during the storm as well as the house they escaped to in the 140 MPH winds. They lived out the depression after the family sold their land in Madison, Florida and put the money in the bank just in time for the banks to fail. She campaigned for her Grandfather, Van E. Blanton, handing out flyers as he gave speeches in city parks while running for school board. Today there is a Van E. Blanton Elementary School in Miami named after him. In high school she became interested in journalism and was the school newspaper editor and co-editor of the school yearbook, performed in plays, and in general enjoyed life growing up in South Florida. She thought of a career in journalism but that was not a road she would get to travel.As she was nearing graduation the world was heading for war. She talked of going to the beach and finding items that had been on ships sunk in the Gulf Stream the night before by German U-Boats. The December after she graduated from Andrew Jackson High School the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the Nation went to war. The next summer German U-Boats sank two tankers within the sight those standing on the beach in Miami. As the war years moved on, she fell in love with another native Floridian, Jack Edwards. Jack’s family were early settlers of the Treasure Coast of Florida were we all now live. All too soon the call to arms would separate them. In 1944 she married Jack and soon after that he joined the Army. She got to see him off as he boarded a troop ship heading for England. After training in England his unit moved out to Belgium as the Battle of the Bulge was being fought. Pvt. Jack Edwards is never to return from Europe and he’s buried with others like him in the Luxembourg American Cemetery. It was another fork in the road for my mother, now a Gold Star Spouse. Her mother in-law and sister-in-law never really stopped acting in the role of a family member and friend. They introduced her to the man that would become my father and for the rest of their life they were best friends to my mother and for me a wonderful extra “grandmother” and “aunt.” When I hear the term “The Greatest Generation” I think beyond those that fought the war and include all of those that held together and supported each other after such loss. Soon after this she will start down the road that she’d follow the rest of her life.

 

After getting married to my father soon comes their first boy. As my father learns the trade of working in a dental lab that will become his career, he also develops a love of boating that will also be a part of our life. Another pregnancy and another boy, and another boy, and another boy. At four my mother said she gave up on the idea of ever having a daughter. I would like to say the four of us made it easy for her but that would be a lie. You can’t raise four boys and ever call the process “easy.” Two of us as teenagers crashed a motorcycle and ended up in the emergency room. While one did it the standard way while on the road the other did it while racing the motorcycle “in the yard around the house” only to crash and require pins to put the shoulder back together. You might ask “why race around the yard on a motorcycle?” I’m sure she had to have asked that and I’m just as sure we had no logical answer. Then we had one that came home from work with “cavity embalming fluid” in a 7-Up bottle.  A sane person would think it would be hard to drink that stuff because of the smell “but it was in a soda bottle” so one of us managed to get it past the nose and swallow it. Another trip to the emergency room and this time with an unknown poison being consumed. Can you imagine being the parent with your child in the hospital when another one of your darling children comes in and announces to all the mystery fluid was embalming fluid?  The looks my poor mother must have received. I’m really not sure why she didn’t just quit right there. Then one of us got that hospital trip for a cracked open head from using a bed for a trampoline and discovering the baseboard of the bed makes an extremely poor place to bang the back of the head. Lots of blood and stitches. Add to this multiple times getting a hook snagged deep into/through fingers, crashed bikes, flipped boats, snakes (to include rattlesnakes), owls, baby mockingbirds, and whatever else we could get into trouble with over the years. We dragged up an old WWII practice bomb (lucky for us it was a practice bomb) we found in the Indian River because who could find something like that and not bring it home to show their mother?  I must wonder just how many times she had to think about the path she had taken and though about that other road.

 

We all however found our way into adulthood but of course the cares and fears of a parent don’t end here. While I spent 22 years in the military, it was mostly during peacetime. My oldest brother joined the Army and was sent to Vietnam. My mother never showed her fear, but it had to be there as we received recordings from my brother with the sound of war in the background. She knew already the cost of war and here it was all over again. Until I became a parent it never really hit me the incredible strength it had to take to be a Gold Star Spouse and watch your own child go off to war. 

 

She never stopped being the caring and supporting mother. I now look at the road she took and understand she was holding our hands along the journey. She saw each of us take our own roads in life but in many ways never left our side. She showed us even in her death how to accept the path the road takes you.

 

I believe the one thing that never dies is love. Love that is shared becomes a part of the person it’s given and is passed on to all he or she loves. I know a part of our mother’s love is forever a part of me and my brothers, it’s also a part of the love in our daughters and sons, it’s a part of the love in our grandchildren. The road my mother started back in 1923 did not end in her passing. Her love is forever a part me and my brothers. Her love is forever a part of our world and because of that the world is a better place.