Barnetta Davis Lange,  1916-2012

Good afternoon. I’m Jon Lange, Barnetta’s second son, but as I must sometimes remind my brothers, second in birth order only.

To begin, I’d like to tell you something one of my closest friends recently told me.  Dan was a nursing home administrator and currently owns two assisted living.  He knows something about the elderly, and their passing.  He sympathetically conveyed that one of the three greatest stressors in an adult’s life is losing their second—and last--parent.  I thought about that and quickly determined that this kind of stress is probably nothing compared to the long-term stress of raising the three boys Barnetta somehow managed to get to adulthood.  Now that’s stressful!

In any event, you’ve now heard a lot about my Mother [from previous speakers], particularly about her many accomplishments.  I’m going to share a few things about how she was to me, as a parent, and more broadly, who she was, as a human being.

It’s true that in many ways, my Mother was strait-laced, proper, and reserved.  You’ve heard about her beliefs regarding grammatically correct speech.  And as I have been thinking about my time with her as a child, I remembered that my friends and I were disallowed from playing in the living room, in order that it may stay clean from greasy hands and dirty feet.  It was the classic un-living room.  In addition, my friends were not permitted to call me between six and seven in the evening, for that is when we were eating dinner…which was not to be interrupted. 

But these kinds of things stood alongside another part of her--the part that insisted on owning a convertible for example.  She loved driving in a convertible, no matter the consequences to some recent trip to a hair salon, or as it was called then, the beauty parlor.

So when I reached the magical age of 16, one of our two cars was this 1960 large-finned Impala convertible.  The steering wheel was HUGE!  I drove that, when my parents didn’t anyway, until after a very short time, that clunker had to be replaced.   I went with Dad and Mom to some used car lot.  It was night-time, and dark outside, but the lights of the lot were sufficient to light a small stadium.  And one of the cars on the lot, was a 1966, fire engine red, bucket seat, Pontiac Lemans convertible.  It had a black top, all black seats and it was HOT!  I begged, cajoled and pleaded, and my Mom looked down at me, and sure enough, we brought that car home.  On the ensuing days that I was allowed to drive that car to high school, I felt….well…very cool.  My Mom could be very cool too.

And while my Mother learned the art of mothering from someone who was challenged by the prospect of parenting—some of you will remember my grandmother Florence—she, Barnetta that is, could indeed be nurturing.

I have memories from when I was small, if ever I was sick, I got to spend the day in my Mom’s bed, while she tended to me.  Given my Mother’s cooking prowess, I should be glad she didn’t make me chicken soup!

I tell my nutrition-conscious friends— having a dinner salad at our house meant a wedge of iceberg lettuce, covered in what my Mother called Russian dressing—a glop of half Heinz ketchup and half Helmann’s mayonnaise that she would frantically mix together. 

Nonetheless, she had a meal on our table every night—almost always some meat, fish or fowl, with some kind of starch—like rice or potatoes, and a vegetable.  OK, so the vegetable came from a can, but the larger point is, we ate together every night.  And while my Mother did most of the work getting the food to the table, she barely got a word in edgewise as the three boisterous boys were allowed to dominate the talk.  She remained graceful through it all, something none of us could ever have done.

Moving forward 50 years, living in the Northwest these past 40 prevented me from sharing very many meals with my Mom.  It was only during visits.  But we spoke on the phone often, usually for a half hour at a time.  We talked about various subjects, usually more than once.  It was about a month ago, when I thought to ask her, “Mom, how did you and Dad meet.”  She didn’t hesitate, saying, “Well, he dunked me in a swimming pool.”  I was surprised, and then she explained that they met at a swimming pool and he threw her in. 

I was reflecting on that a couple days ago, and I thought, “Isn’t life like that sometimes!”  So often, we’re just grabbed…and thrown into the water!

Well, Barnetta proved to be a strong swimmer, capable of setting a direction, changing course when needed or at opportune times, managing to stay afloat through turbulence, and arriving at some pretty darn great destinations along the way.

And now we have arrived at the close of this memorial.  Yet as you consider those who have spoken before you today, I know you know it isn’t the close of Barnetta Davis Lange.  She lives on in so many hearts, particularly in her offspring and in theirs. 

So let us leave here today with a sense of celebration of my Mom’s life.  It was a dandy.

Thank you.