Gary Hadsell – Memories
“She was a giver and not a taker”

My mother was a person who truly cared about others. Not the people who could do something for her; they didn’t matter to her. But others.

She was concerned about her sisters not having the opportunity to travel after their husbands died, and one of her great joys was when she went with my Aunt Lydia and later with my Aunt Alice to Hawaii.

My mother had been there before, but she wanted to make them happy and knew they would not go by themselves. She could have just showed them snapshots from her trip; she wasn’t that type of person.

She was concerned about me, my brother, my sisters, her grandchildren; why, she was so concerned about us, we hardly had time to ask her how SHE was feeling. When we did ask, her answer was always the same – fine. Whenever she felt those around her in need, she was there to help, not to criticize, not to instruct, not to second guess, but to give whatever was needed in love.

On her death bed she was concerned about the man across from her in intensive care who was experiencing pain.  She didn’t ask for him to be moved or for her self to be moved to another room, she was concerned about his pain.

I told her not to think about him but to think about herself and to get well, we have our own problems.  She got my sisters to pray with her about the man’s pain and that satisfied her.  My mother was a woman who never complained, not even when her illness finally showed, and when we finally realized that it was not just the strain of my Dad’s death (six weeks earlier), but that she was in pain.  She never complained about the things she didn’t have, and she wasn’t envious of those who had more – she wasn’t that type of person. She was a giver and not a taker.