On November 2nd of this year my mother-in-law Bertha Elizabeth Brown, had she lived, would be turning 86 years old. I miss her. I’m sure my wife misses her even more.

We’ve heard them. The crass jokes about the mother-in-law. I don’t participate. While I didn’t always agree 100% with everything my mother-in-law did, I loved her like I would my own mother. That was easy, she treated me like her son. She is gone now, and at the time, I couldn’t see what appears to me now: the resemblance to her youngest daughter, my wife, Joyce.

Welcome to the family

I was just Joyce’s pen pal when I dropped in to meet her that first week in November 1973. I didn’t know it at the time but two days before I met Bertha she turned 44. She was born in the same year as my father. When I met her it was with a smile. Her and her husband liked me from the moment I met them. They liked the idea that I loved their youngest daughter and treated her with respect: we had been pen pals for two years.

In fact that next morning her husband and oldest son would invite me to help them butcher a hog, an event that would involve the whole family and end that second night in a family meal. Since that day, they treated me as if I were already part of the family.

Part of the Blackfoot tribe

If there is any American Indian in my mother-in-law it is remote. But she and my wife do share one trait: going barefoot winter and summer. My mother-in-law taught my wife to use her toes like fingers. Not only can she pick up marbles and coins. She can pinch hard enough with her toes to leave a bruise. They both wore callouses on their feet which seemed always black with usage. Not that they kept dirty feet, but going without shoes, you pick up dirt all day.

All of the photos I have of my wife as a child are without shoes, even when other children in the family wore shoes. The only photo I ever saw of my mother-in-law as a teen she was barefoot sitting on the hood of a truck. Since I came into her life when her daughter was a teen I have only seen her wear shoes (and some times these were flip flops) when she had to go to the doctor.

I’ll be alright

Another thing my mother-in-law, Bertha Brown, shared with my wife was her ability to be content in what ever state she found herself. That is not the same as saying she “settled” for whatever she got. She expected much. She just didn’t “fret or regret” if her expectations didn’t always meet her desires. In fact, I always thought she was too casual about some important things. A funny story I always tell is what would happen when she was sick. She went to the doctor frequently. Unless she was really sick. And if the effort to wash her feet and put on shoes seemed too much of an effort for her, she would say: “I’m too sick to go to the doctor.” Ironic. Yet, I have heard this a few times these past few years from her daughter. “I’ll be alright, she’d say. She wasn’t, but she would try to convince you she is.

The kids come first

If there was one area I strongly disagreed with Bertha, this was probably it. Maybe it’s a motherly thing. Maybe it’s a West Virginia thing as we tend to be clannish. In fact, I am a West Virginia resident because Joyce insisted that to marry her I would have to live close to her mom. These two women put the needs, desires and wants of their children over themselves (and their husbands). I might even observe that this goes down to grandchildren as well. Men have their place in the family; and an important one. But children, without the resources that their fathers have, need extra protection, attention and support that force mothers into the role of advocate. This can be hard when father’s expect discipline and mothers expect mercy. It is also hard when on birthdays and holidays, wives will accept no gifts of personal nature they can’t share equally among their children (or outright instantly re-gift to the children). These husbands must learn, giving generously to their children IS giving their wives what they desire most. This is a life-long, multi-generational commitment.

A funny thing happened on the way to eternity

Another thing I see in my wife came from her mother: her wit and her humor. Neither of them completed high school and all of their life labored under the illusion that they aren’t “smart” as others. Nothing could be further from the truth. Noting escapes their observation, and they were brutal with their wit, sometimes expressing itself as sarcasm, sometimes as irony or expressed as puns. This is not capable among morons or dim-wits but requires not only keen observation, mastery of language but creativity in its use. She was a very funny woman who brightened the life of those around her. She passed this on to her youngest daughter.

Graduate of the school of mountain engineering

Apparently Bertha came from a long-line of ‘make-doers’ that didn’t believe in honey-do lists. This too she passed on to her daughter who after her GED, graduated from the Bertha Brown school of mountain engineering. This is also why every West Virginia tool box contains duct tape, crazy glue, coat-hanger wire and ‘shootin’ wire.’ Other resources include cardboard, furring strips, wooden pallets, used nails, tacks and various pieces of plastic (black, clear) or blue tarp. With these resources, porches have been built and then converted to rooms and much, much more. Without the knowledge, consult or help of husbands who were away at work. They don’t just build rooms and furniture: they invent tools and completely new inventions that in a couple of years become indispensable constructs of convenience (sometimes needed by grown children who can’t live without them at their own places). Funny. If we were a family who wrote wills I could see some of these things contested by multiple multi-generation inheritors. I often wondered if this need to build is a ‘nesting’ instinct. And if it was, why the perpetual need to move furniture around? That would seem counter-effective and confusing among ‘nestlings.’ Unless it too is a perpetual need to either create or re-create. This too Joyce got from her mother.

From bread baker to bread winner

Bertha baked bread for every meal. Pan bread. No white sliced bread for this family. Not for family meals anyway. When she was young before marriage and children she had worked. Hard work without a high school education. She told a tale of getting her driver’s license using one of Bill Pearson’s log trucks. (Yes. She even parallel parked it). That was back when she was Bertha Bishop and one of the Bishop girls at Maysel. But she hadn’t worked since early in her marriage when her and her husband moved briefly to Buffalo, New York and worked the farming fields up there in the early 1960’s when the mines were closed. That was brief and they soon relocated back in Clay County, West Virginia where Jim took a job at the Wards coal mines at Elkhurst until they closed. He would spend nearly the next twenty years mining at Valley Camp Coal mines in Kanawha County as Bertha raised five children in their Blue Knob Road, Maysel, West Virginia home. But as her coal miner husband’s health began to decline, she began to take on more chores. In fact, his lung would collapse, and he would have surgery both on his lung and liver. He would never work in the mines again. While waiting on Black Lung Income that woukd take a long time to come, Bertha became breadwinner for the family. She took on a paper route for the state’s largest daily newspaper that would take her on a hundred mile daily round trip every day of the week. It was a family business. Her oldest son helped, my wife helped. Sometimes her other children helped as well.

After an auto accident left her mother with a broken leg, Joyce would take over the route for her for good until another accident several years later would force Joyce to give it up as well. Even as Bertha’s own health began to decline, she continued to head her household, even being full time mother to two of her own grandchildren and one of her great grandchildren. She always put the needs of others over her own.

The greatest thing a friend can do

If there was one quality that my mother-in-law exuded more than any other it was family loyalty. As I said, she taught my wife to put kids first. She would not eat the last bite or take the last portion of anything. Sometimes she would not eat till everyone else at the table left with their fill; just in case she might incidentally eat something someone else needed. She was absolutely loyal to all she loved. She kept everyone’s secrets, good or bad; even from each other. She loved all of her family all of the time. She took the good, the bad, the worse and hid it in her heart; all of it like precious jewels locked away as a treasure. Sometimes I wonder if that was what shortened her life. I think now that we all should have carried more of her burdens and let her carry less of ours. Her disabled husband out lived her. Jesus said the greatest thing a friend could do was to lay down their life for their friends. By that measure we were more than sons, daughters, husband or grandchildren. We were her friends.

I will see her again

She was a saved woman, and thanks in great part to the efforts of my oldest daughter, so was her husband before his death. So I know I will join them someday in Heaven with my own parents. But on this, what would have been Bertha Brown’s 86th birthday, I want to say that she is still alive and well in her youngest daughter, Joyce Stuber, who continues to be more like her mother every day. Happy Birthday Bertha.