Farewell, Hilda

 

Hilda Norine Campbell Dow

October 22, 1930—April 25, 2021

Hilda on her 90th birthday last October

“I’m not going to put up a Christmas tree this year,” my mother announced in November. “It’s too much work.”

“Of course you are having a Christmas tree,” I said. “I’ll help you decorate.”

When we found out Hilda had a large malignant tumor on her colon in early December, she changed her mind. “Since this will be my last Christmas, I suppose I’ll have to have a tree.”

Once the tree was up, Hilda told me several times a day how much she enjoyed the cheerful colored lights. A week after her colonoscopy, she fell in the coop and cracked her collar bone. She had to sleep in a chair in the living room, and we kept the tree lights on all night. They made a good night light when she had to go to the bathroom.

We had to take the tree down before she came home from the hospital on January 5. The doctor had not been able to remove the tumor because it had already invaded her liver and pancreas. He re-routed her colon around the tumor. She was discharged to my care with Hospice support. We put the hospice bed where the Christmas tree had been, in the living room by the west windows overlooking the field, the apple orchard, and the fifth oak. I hung a string of colored lights in the window. She liked that.

She got better as she recovered from surgery and then worse as the cancer sapped her strength and energy. Doug and Pam brought her flowers and a balloon for Valentine’s Day. She loved that balloon. She marveled at how perfectly round it was, the result of it being made of four panels. She wouldn’t let me get rid of it even as it started to deflate. She kept it by the bed where she could play with the ribbon, pulling the balloon down and letting it rise up again. Throughout her life, she retained child-like joy in small things like balloons and Christmas lights. I admired that. The Hospice booklet said that as death approaches, the patient will often start talking about travel. Hilda wasn’t sure where she was going, but she asked me if she could take her balloon with her.

“Absolutely,” I said. When the time came, I did a ritual sacrifice of the balloon, sending its remaining helium to be with her. I couldn’t just set the balloon free. Mylar is very bad for the environment.

Hilda's view from the hospice bed--back yard, Christmas lights, Valentine's balloon and dragonfly suncatcher

It is difficult for me to write an obituary for my mother. We have a 62-year history, after all. So many memories.

It is amazing to think of how much changed during the course of Hilda’s life. She was born at the beginning of the Depression. Her father left school after 6^th grade. Her mother made it to 8^th. In spite of their own lack of formal schooling, they valued education and encouraged their first two children to go to college. Carl went on to get a Ph.D. Hilda got a Masters. Dick, the youngest, finished high school, went into the army, and then returned to work the farm with his parents.

Hilda grew up without indoor plumbing, central heat, vaccinations, and antibiotics. They had a goose who hated everyone except my grandma. Hilda had to take a stick with her to the outhouse to fend off goose attacks.

She got her first ball point pen as a gift when she graduated from high school. Her teaching career began in 1952. She taught every elementary grade before settling on fourth grade as her favorite. She always said that she could tell the difference in students before and after televisions became common. Attention spans got much shorter. It was a good thing she retired before cell phones were invented. I wasn’t that lucky.

Hilda touched hundreds of lives over her 30-year career. It’s hard to see any accomplishment as a teacher. You do your best with every student, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing, but hardly every really knowing how anyone turns out. It’s like standing at the edge of a lake chucking in pebbles. The waves ripple out, interacting with other ripples, disappearing from sight. You just have to believe that it mattered somehow.

She did get to see how Doug and I turned out, and she was proud of us. She was always game to try something new. For example, she endured and even participated in my interest in wild foods when Euell Gibbons published Stalking the Wild Asparagus. We helped her in the kitchen and garden from the time we could stand. We couldn’t have been much help and probably made more work for her, but she understood that letting us help when we were young enough to want to would set a precedent for doing our part to run the household when we were surly teenagers. Most importantly, we always knew we could count on her unconditional love. She was a great mom.

Hilda was a big fan of my writing. There is an entire file drawer in her bedroom filled with the letters I’ve written over the years. I knew she was in decline when I couldn’t get her interested in reading my blog posts any more. She had always dropped whatever she was doing to run to her computer after I told her I’d posted an update. She would read it and say, “I LOVE your blog!”

These last seven years living with Hilda were a great gift. It was a privilege and an honor to care for her in her final months. My goal was to keep her at home until she died and know that I’d done as much as I could. I can put a big check mark by that one.

All Hilda ever wanted from death was eternal rest. As exhausting as the cancer was, I’m sure eternal rest was more welcome than ever. Sleep well, my dearest Hilda. I will love you forever.