The funeral home put together a Ken Burns styled video of some photographs I provided. Our entire family was very moved. That video appears below. Underneath the video are some random remembrances I jotted down for Mom's pastor.
I was adopted at 3 1/2 months. Mom and Dad had to drive to Montgomery to take care of the last step in the long process of a state adoption. The court proceedings went smoothly. A social worker placed me in Mom’s arms with a bag of diapers and a couple bottles of formula. There was a note tucked in the bag as well. It didn’t say anything special—just feeding instructions. As the social worker walked away, they were parents. They were nearly giddy. They walked out of the courtroom and down the steps. They took pictures of each other holding me. Then they stopped a stranger and asked him to snap a picture of the new family.
Mom read to me frequently. My favorite book was Where the Wild Things Are. The evidence of her reading to me is displayed all over her house in the dozens of books that my kids now read when they visit. Unfortunately, at some point in elementary school, I decided I hated reading. Then, in sixth or seventh grade, the power was knocked out one cold winter day. I was bored. No music to listen to, no television to watch, and bored of my toys, Mom gave me a copy of The Yearling. I grabbed a few pillows and leaned against the wall next to the sliding glass door. The winter light illuminated the pages. I read the book in one sitting.
Leslie O’Brien and I shared the same birthday and lived in the same neighborhood. Our moms thought it was appropriate that we were guests at each other birthday parties when we turned ten. I was the only boy at her’s; she was the only girl at mine. I didn’t want to go to her party. Going felt like a Nazi at a bat mitzvah. Mom bought the gift—jewelry! What was she thinking?
There was a girl named Libby at my school. Libby was quite overweight and most of the boys sang the Libby canned foods’ jingle whenever she walked by. She always shrank back trying to blend into the walls or disappear in the lunchroom. She became very ill and missed several weeks of school. Mom heard the news and offered to take a meal to her family. She was probably the first. Mom made me go along. Again, what is it with her dragging a little boy to give something to a girl? Was she trained in torture by the Mossad? We walked up to the door. Mom carried the casserole. I carried—egads—the flowers. We didn’t go inside the house. Libby’s mother was tired and embarrassed by our presence. Our family moved from Decatur to Stone Mountain about a year later. About ten years following our meal delivery, I heard my name being shouted. I was walking across campus at the University of Georgia, and turned to see who wanted my attention. A tall young lady bounded up and said, “Are you Mark Whitlock?” It was Libby. She had a smile bigger than a New York neon display. We talked for a few minutes about old friends, our old elementary school, and how our lives had progressed. Libby had become a Christ-follower. Before we went to our next classes, she told me thank you for bringing her flowers all those years before. I told her, “It wasn’t me. It was my mom.”
Mom must have made dozens of costumes for the musicals and plays I was in.
My house was one of several hangouts for my friends. Mom always protested when they showed up, but welcomed them in anyway with an offer for a drink or snack.
My parents were committed to being at all of my sporting events and performances. I ran Cross Country and Track throughout high school. Mom and Dad came to all of our meets. One blustery fall day during Mom’s chemotherapy, my friend John sat with my parents on the cold aluminum bleachers. The course closed with a steep hill, a 90-degree turn, and a 200-meter straightaway to the finish line. I was charging up the hill in a tight finish. The stands came to their feet at the same time a gust of wind blew into their faces. The wind got under Mom’s wig and launched it like a Frisbee. Mom shrieked and my friend John jumped down from the stands and chased it like a cowboy after a tumbleweed. He snagged the wig and climbed back up in the stands. And in the way that only John could, he plopped the wig back on my Mom’s head. Of course, I didn’t know any of this until later that night when Dad told the story while Mom tried to keep him from telling it. What was one of her most embarrassing moments has turned into an oft repeated story.
Mom and I always had one shopping excursion before Christmas. We would go to the mall together to buy Dad’s gift. There were always a few more, too. We would eat at Chick-fil-A and talk long after the sandwiches were gone. It became a Christmas tradition. One year, I drove from Stone Mountain into Atlanta to shop at Lenox Square. The road was very narrow and there were some construction cones squeezing the street further. She became so nervous that she grabbed the steering wheel.
Mom sewed on all of my Boy Scout merit badges. I eventually achieved the Eagle rank. There were a lot of them.
When I taught conversational English for a summer in Korea (1988), Mom joked that she didn’t sleep for eight weeks.
Two weeks before I proposed to Kaye, Mom met me halfway between Stone Mountain and Athens. I wanted her to see the ring.
Mom got to be at the birth of her first three grandchildren. We’re grateful for the help she offered in the early days following each birth.
Mom loved Dad with an uncommon fervor. During the last days of his illness, after more than 51 years of marriage, Mom confided in one of her friends, “I just want to know that I loved Bill well . . . that I did everything I possibly could for him.”
We invited Mom to travel with us to China to adopt Meileah. She did, in a way, by watching everyday on the internet.
