She Was My Mother

Miley Geelene Wallace Vail was born January 18, 1928. She was named after her grandmother who was named Miley decades before Miley Cirus was born! She was a lifelong learner. Her strong will served her well. She taught herself to cook, sew, crochet, freeze and can. After we all left home she ordered a mannequin and determined to learn how to be a ventriloquist. She loved to laugh and sing and play table games. She went to scrabble tournaments across the country after we became no competition for her. Because Daddy was in the Air Force, we traveled. Mother embraced every location we lived in or traveled through. She learned what was there and made sure we saw it. After Daddy died she traveled across the country with us to visit her grandchildren. There was always more she wanted to see. Mother loved her family and she loved her church. She served in almost every capacity. She taught Sunday School to adults and children. She served in the nursery. She sang in the choir. She was WMU director and VBS director.

On April 23, 2016, she gave in to the ever increasing effects of Alzheimer's Disease and went to be with Jesus.

I like to think about Mother before the ravages of Alzheimer’s took her. I see her busy doing all the things a wife and mother does for her family. I see her at the end of the day with a pen in one hand and a folded newspaper in the other. She is sitting in her chair doing that day’s crossword puzzle and Daddy is in the chair beside her. He is asking her to put the puzzle down as he reaches his big warm hand out to her. The empty chairs reflect their relationship. No matter how many times Mother exchanged places with the chairs, in a few days each chair’s cushion once again leaned toward the other.

I cannot tell Mother’s story without also telling Daddy’s. Daddy was raised in the church. Mother met Jesus at a Salvation Army tent revival. As I got older I was to learn that Mother’s upbringing was difficult and harsh. In retrospect it is easy to see how it was God Himself who brought Daddy and his unconditional love into Mother’s life. I’m sure God used Daddy to teach Mother about Himself and to fan the flame of the gifting He placed in her when He saved her.  

Mother was first and foremost a Bible teacher. It was her normal to be teaching Sunday School and when she was not, there was visible evidence of her longing to teach again. It was one of her first losses with the Alzheimer’s diagnosis, and she grieved it greatly. My first experience of teaching Bible was as a college student. Mother gave me some valuable insight before I taught that first time. I know it was valuable, not because I remember her words but because afterwards I was so very excited about going to teach. That excitement has never left me. Teaching God’s Word was a love we shared. 

As she slipped away, she became unable to find the book of Psalms in her Bible but could still quote Psalms 23. She wasn’t sure who I was but if she watched my lips closely, she could sing “How Great Thou Art” with me. She didn’t remember she was a mother but she loved her great grandchildren. She was going farther and farther away. So I held her hands, the prettiest hands I have ever seen. There were times when our hands were intertwined and she thought my hands were her own. At first that made her laugh, then it just confused her. Two days before she died she put her precious hand on the side of my face and I saw a glimmer of a smile. Maybe she knew me for those seconds and was telling me goodbye. I think so. Because even as the Alzheimer’s was taking more and more of her, she was still my mother. And it was the mother I knew who Jesus took home in the middle of that long night. No more pain, no more confusion, no more Alzheimer’s. Peace. Joy. Love complete.