They called her “Miss Mary.” She and my father, William A. Darden, came from an older, more formal generation, and people she had known all her life called her “Miss Mary” out of a deep-seated, traditional Southern respect. My mother grew up in an era of rigid propriety, a world of women who stayed at home and raised their children, had supper on the table when the husband came home, never told their age, and never considered divorce, no matter how fractured the marriage might become. She was a product of that world, for better and for worse.
The youngest of four children and the only daughter, she was the undisputed center of her parents’ and three older brothers’ devotion. She had a pony named Jack as a child, and her parents even let her ride him in the house. It was a farmhouse on the corner of Una Antioch Pike and Murfreesboro Road where Ransom Place now stands. She was Mary Ransom, and that was our family farm.
When she told her father she wanted to marry my dad, he offered her another pony as a bribe if she would only stay home. He was very serious. Though she was already an established schoolteacher, she was still living at home, and her father could not bear the thought of her leaving.
She married my father, a military man, and together they traveled the world. My brother and I were adopted late in life by our parents. They lived in Greece a year before I was born; then, when I was three and my brother two years old, we moved to India for three years. My mother loved to travel and was always ready for a road trip. The last one we took was in 1990 to a wedding in Iowa, barely a year before she died.
She was not without her flaws, and some of them were serious. However, during her ten-year battle with cancer, she was refined through the fire. She had always claimed to be a Christian, and while we went to church when I was a small child, for many years after my elementary school years, she neither attended nor spoke much about God. However, during her bout with cancer, her relationship with the Lord blossomed into a vibrant, tangible thing, and she developed a strength, compassion, and nobility I had never seen in her before. The hardness that had once defined her began to give way to something softer.
Through our many conversations about God, her curiosity and passion to learn were evident. She began to regret some things, and I began to forgive some things; for the first time, we had a relationship built upon a solid foundation. She died too soon for it to fully blossom, but the roots were there, and we both knew it and acknowledged it, especially during the last two or three years of her life. Our roles were fully reversed by then, as I became her primary caregiver.
Shortly before she died, her pastor came to call upon her in the hospital. He told her that she was now in a position none of the rest of us were in yet, but that we all would reach one day. He stated she was close to the “other side” and would see God soon, and he asked her what that was like—what she felt as she approached the end of her life here on earth. She looked at him with clear eyes and said that she didn’t know exactly what to expect; she had heard stories about heaven all her life, about streets of gold and other things, and thought it sounded like a good place. Then she added that while she didn’t quite know what to expect, there was one thing she did know: God was on the other side, and that was enough for her.
On Mother’s Day in 1991, instead of giving my mother flowers, I was sorrowfully arranging them on her casket for visitation time at the funeral home. The timing was a final, painful irony, a closing of a circle I wasn’t prepared to close.
I have a long list of “wishes” in regard to my mother—things I wish we had both done differently during the ordeal that defined the first two and a half decades of our life together. When I was a little girl, she commented to people more than once with some bemusement that I always forgave her when she was harsh with me. For a while she had that self awareness, and for a while I forgave her. Both ended during my teen years. But I am honored to have known the strong woman she became. She handled a deplorable disease with strength, dignity, and courage, and became a person I wish I could have known much, much longer. One thing I know is that you can never say “I love you” too often. You can never say “I forgive you” too soon.
From her, I learned the value of independence—how to stand on my own two feet, how to stand up for myself, and how to help those less fortunate. She taught me how to knit, how to do needlepoint, and how to braid my hair. She gave me a passion for flowers, plants, and gardening. She passed to me her love of fine art, classical music, and literature. Like her, I became a schoolteacher. She defined what it was to be “ladylike” and was always a lady in public. And although I have never had one in the house, I love ponies, too.
Some of my expressions and mannerisms are hers, and frequently when I say something to my brother, I hear my mother’s admonitions coming out of my mouth. I miss her. I wish I had known her better, known her longer. Like my mother, I know God is on the other side, and one day I’ll be there with Him, too, and I figure I’ll have all the time I need to get to know her then.
From our archives, May 6, 2011
Related:
- Honoring a Pioneer: Margaret Laura Ransom Brooks for Women’s History Month
- Col. Wm. A. Darden, A Veteran’s Legacy: Memorial Day Reflections
- William A. Darden: My Father Remembered
- World War II & Pearl Harbor: The 1938 – 1944 Diary of William A. Darden, Sr.
- Paul M. Darden Turns 95: A Nashville Life of Faith, Family, and Legacy
- The Edge of the Ridge: A Sundar Nagar Childhood
