Legit Parenting
Legit Parenting
My Mother's Final Wish: Love, Legacy, and Gooey Butter Cake
Craig shares the deeply personal story of his 98-year-old mother's final days and the powerful lessons her passing taught him about the true essence of parenting legacy. Through tender moments of feeding his mother her favorite St. Louis treats and witnessing what remained in her mind despite dementia, Craig reflects on how parents' love and values soak into children over decades.
Remember, just like Craig's mother would say: "Relax, you just have to be good enough. Life works out in the wash."
Welcome to Legit Parenting, where imperfect parents build resilient kids and families. A place to learn real solutions based in brain science to fit your unique parenting style. We show you how to tackle today's challenges for children and teens. Remember, when it comes to raising kids, you just have to be this side of good enough. Join us and we will show you how this side of good enough. Join us and we will show you how. I'm your host, craig Nippenberg. I've been a child and family therapist for nearly 40 years. I'm the business owner of one of Colorado's largest private practices, best-selling author and father of four. In my fathering world, I've been a birth dad, a single parent, a step-parent, an adoptive parent, a parent of exceptional students and a grandparent of two. By my side is Sydney Moreau, our production manager and mother of three ages preschool through 18. Together, we bring you a guilt-free parenting perspective with solutions that actually fit into your real life.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Legit Parenting. I'm your host, craig Nippenberg, along with my producer, sydney Moreau. Today's title is my Mother's Final Whiff, which I want to tell you about as background to that. She was 98 and a half years old and about two years ago, when I'd go visit her back in St Louis, she'd say to me I don't know why God keeps me here, I just want to be home with Dad and Jesus. And I would say to her Mom it's because you still radiate God's love and you make people happy and you radiate that to others and that's why you're still here. She got her wish and I'm going to tell you about my final journey with her.
Speaker 2:Now and I've said this before about my mother she could be incredibly gentle and loving and caring, but you didn't mess with her. She knew how to set boundaries, she demanded respect and she was more than happy to tell us when she was not happy with us. And she used to call it the evil eye and her nickname was the judge, because she had standards and wasn't afraid to let you know you weren't living up to standards. She wasn't a gentle parent, she wasn't a perfect parent, and you don't have to be either, because what I've learned, especially the last two weeks. It's about what soaks into your kids over decades. It's not what you do in this moment as a mom or as a dad, it's what sticks with your kids. That just it's like an infusion. It's like an infusion. Infusions often don't mean immediate results, but it takes time. But it's this infusion over decades of their love and support and their life lessons and what they really truly mean to you, and it doesn't matter what might happen one moment to the next, or you yelled at them or whatever. It's about a lifelong process. You yelled at him or whatever. It's about a lifelong process and I was so blessed to have my mother with me for 66 years of my life. That is just one of the greatest blessings. So I'm going to share her final wish and my journey with her.
Speaker 2:I had a planned trip to see her a little what two and a half weeks ago. I try to go back every three months and I had a trip planned and it coincided with my sister, who lives right next to my mom and has been her caretaker, and we all owe it all to our siblings, owe it to my sister, who really extended my mother's life by all her love and taking care of my mom while she was in her retirement community and she was in Florida on a vacation. So I timed the trip to be there with mom Day before I got a call from my sister that the unit had just called her to say that mom had influenza and had to be quarantined into her room. So I knew that going in and I arrived early on a Friday morning and went over there to see her and she was asleep at the time and my first thought was I think she's dead, like she wasn't moving. And the only thing that tipped me off and I learned to do this for the next two days you just look at their chest to see if they're breathing, because I couldn't hear anything, but I could see her chest moving, the cover moving up and down. And so I just sat with her for the longest time, my hand on her thigh, holding her hand and just being with her, and it was just so precious just to have that time by myself with her.
Speaker 2:And then she finally woke up and immediately she said Craig, and I'm like, oh, I'm so thankful she recognized me because she's been struggling with dementia, but it was happy for that and she had at that point 104 fever and was really struggling with it. So we spent a little time together and I said, mom, I'm going to go check in the hotel and I'm going to bring back your favorite dinner because she hadn't eaten that couple of days. And I came back, the nurses, who were lovely, they took such great care of her and her hospice nurse and they had her dressed and sitting in a wheelchair next to the lazy boy chair. So I sat across from her and I brought her favorite meal of toasted ravioli, which is a St Louis dish. It was invented in St Louis and they are delicious. It's basically a cooked ravioli that then you roll it in breadcrumbs and you deep fry it. It's pure heaven of a ravioli. And I had spaghetti for her and she loved your bread and butter and a little piece of chocolate.
Speaker 2:And what struck me? A couple of things that struck me as they wheeled her towards me get closer. She had a nightgown on and the bottom button wasn't buttoned. She really couldn't talk at all and she could barely move her arms much, but she kept trying to get her hands down. The last button was a button and she kept trying to get her hands down there for modesty. And so I caught on and I buttoned it for her and then she relaxed.
Speaker 2:And what was so interesting? So, if you think about when your child's born, every day as they get older they learn something new and you're always like when did they learn that? Where'd they pick that up? And they're like just soaking up all this new stuff and creating new things that they can learn and do and remember. It's just magical. With aging, it's the reverse process. It's losing things and losing the ability to find words and losing some of your memories, and it's all about the brain losing stuff.
Speaker 2:But what was fascinating to me is what it held on to for her, one of which was modesty that was ingrained in her and that was still there. And the other one was I was holding up a glass of Sprite for her with a little straw in it, and I held it up for her to her lips so she could drink, and one time I gave her some. And then I set the glass down on her table stand next to the chair I was in, and her hand reached over or just there in the middle, just pointed at the glass, and she was staring at the glass and I knew exactly what she meant Coaster, put a coaster down. I'm ruining her table, I'm like. Of all things that are stuck in her mind was modesty and use a coaster. So I put a coaster down and she smiled and she settled down again.
Speaker 2:But then I started feeding her by hand, and it was this amazing experience of life's full circle, of here's this mother who fed me by hand, of here's this mother who fed me by hand. Some of them have a lot of tears today hopefully not too many and now I'm feeding her by hand and taking care of her the way she took care of me and my siblings. She was still talking a little bit, not much at all and that night after dinner I was gonna head to the hotel and I said I love you, mom, and she looked at me and so purposefully said I love you two. And that's the last words I heard from my mother and it was just such a blessing. So the next morning, keeping with her love of food, my mother was a very petite woman. She would always talk about how she weighed 104 pounds in her wedding dress and she was quite petite all her life and she loved food. She just loved food. And so the morning I went to her favorite bakery and got her another St Louis specials.
Speaker 2:My mom was born and raised in St Louis, lived there her entire life and I got gooey butter cake. If you've never heard of it or had it, look it up online. You can find the recipe. I will tell you. If you make in colorado, because the altitude is not quite the same as it is in st louis, but it is just imagine melted butter and powdered sugar, gooey, like it was falling off the fork, it just rips if you take it out of the middle, which I did for my mother, and I hand fed her the gooey butter cake and she just was smiling and you know, and I kept feeding it to her, she ended up eating a half a pan, which I can't even imagine how many calories that has in it. But every now and then I would take a bite for myself and she would frown and shake her head like I was stealing food from her. It was so cute. And then I'm like it's okay, mom, I got another piece for you and fed her that delicious treat and we sat for about another hour and it turned out that was her final meal. So I had to go back and check out of the hotel and we just sat in silence and said, mom, I'll be back and I'll bring you lunch.
Speaker 2:And I went back, checked in and when I came back she had gone unconscious and was slumped over in the wheelchair. The nurses were working on her and got her to bed, but that was the last time that she had some full consciousness. She did have a couple times when my brother came in and my sister, where she said their names, but that was pretty much it, and so the rest of my time I decided to stay another night, change the flights, all that stuff, because I was the only sibling there at that time. I spent the night in her room and just sat with her and holding her and talking to her. I read Psalm 23 to her and I had a talk with her about you can let go, it's time to let go and get your wish. Your wish is waiting for you.
Speaker 2:My brother came in and my sister came in and I headed back to Denver and we went through this six-day waiting period. The hospice nurse was like she'll probably go tonight. Next morning, hospice nurse, maybe today, next day, maybe today. Hospice nurse finally said to my sister she has a really strong heart. She's not going fast and she didn't. Indeed, it was another six days and then we finally got the news and that was a really when you go through this process you know they're going to die but you're waiting for the actual moment because you can't book trips or make plans until it happens. She did.
Speaker 2:It was on a Thursday and so then we were able to start planning for traveling back and my children. They all came and lots of relatives and cousins and grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and the first thing when we got back I took a gift over to the nursing home to the nurses flowers and a whole bunch of these delicious cookies and a card that I wrote them and thanking them for how they've taken care of them. My mother lived in the retirement community for 25 years, so it was over a quarter of her life was spent there, between a house they had and then unassisted living and then assisted living and then hospice care, and the nurses were so excited and happy, and the one nurse because they left over gooey butter cake. That morning the week before I took the rest of the nurses and gave it to them and they loved it, and the one nurse said I think it was the gooey butter cake that did your mom in, because when she ate it she realized there's nothing better in this world I can consume. It's time to go. You couldn't top the gooey butter cake and I just laughed.
Speaker 2:And the service was beautiful. It was very traditional Lutheran service. My parents were Lutherans all their life and it was at my sister's church where she attends. But my mother had planned the whole thing, prepaid for everything, and she even wrote most of the sermon notes that the minister read and he said your mother told me what to say. So here it is and she preached her own words and it was just beautiful.
Speaker 2:One thing that really struck me was lots of family and lots of our friends. Some of my old buddies that I grew up with in the neighborhood since I was a kid, showed up, some dear old friends I hadn't seen in years and getting to connect with them. But what was lacking was compared to my father's funeral 15 years ago or 18 years ago when he passed. All their friends were there. The bridge group was there. That generation of parents they were called the greatest generations and one of the things they valued their marriage, having time together, going on dates, going on trips. They also valued their friends. They spent a lot of time with their friends and us kids would get drug along and we'd play with the other family's kids and always loved it. I knew all of them in their bridge groups and all sorts of activities, social activities With my father. All these people were there With my mother.
Speaker 2:She was like one of the last ones. There was one left but she's in nursing care and couldn't come. But it's one of the hard things of living that old as you live out your peers and, as my grandfather said to me, the problem is there's no one left to hold your memories. And I had told my mom back in the fall that I'm holding on memories even though she's losing them. But then after the burial at the cemetery she buried next to my dad we went back to the church for a good old-fashioned church luncheon. All the food's made by the church women. That's the tradition. And we went up and I looked at the buffet. I've never seen so many casseroles in my life. I'm like I'm going to have a hard time finding things to eat because most of that stuff I don't touch. But it was just lovely.
Speaker 2:And all of us kids then at Lutheran funerals they really focus on Jesus, the love of God, your salvation, and they don't really talk about the person. So you're not allowed to give up, get up and say things about your loved one. It's very strict that way. But at the luncheon all of my siblings and I got to stand up and talk. My oldest sister was really just tear-jerking. She lost her son at age 22 to cancer her oldest son and she talked about how much my mom helped her through that whole process and that was really meaningful. And she talked about how much my mom helped her through that whole process and that was really meaningful.
Speaker 2:And my brother, my younger brother, who spent lots of years he's five years younger than me, so once I went off to college he was there with my parents and then stayed in St Louis for years with his wife and saw all the time and talked about my mom's faith and his love all the time. And talked about my mom's faith and his love. And my sister younger sister who's the one that lives there. She's like the family archivist. She had all the pictures and mom's stuff. So after the funeral we spent hours going through mom's stuff and all of us siblings could take the things we wanted or the grandkids.
Speaker 2:My daughter loved a bunch of my mom's jewelry and she was wearing it at the funeral and some of my mom's clothes, and she just my sister filled us in on details that I didn't even know about and that my mom, when she was younger, was quite a writer. She had beautiful penmanship but she loved to write and journal and did poetry and one of her biggest desires was to be a missionary overseas, and then she realized that she would be a missionary at home and let others know about her faith, which was a very simple faith, and I have the same one, which is just trust in God and trust in others and everything works out and that is deeply ingrained in me. And my sister shared some of her hardships when she lost her fiancé in World War II and when she found her mother who died by suicide when she was seven, eight months pregnant with her first child, and just stories that I had never even heard or even imagined. It was just wonderful. And then it was my turn time to talk and the first thing I talked about is I said let's have a toast. Mom and Dad are together again. She got her wish and they had a beautiful love story. They went through all sorts of things together, through great times, through very hard times, and they just had a very beautiful love story.
Speaker 2:And then I just talked about my mom, about what a gamer she was. She was always up for anything. She would take on any challenges, including going whitewater rafting at age 85, going on hikes, family poker games at family reunions, where she bluffed and won, because none of us thought my mother could bluff. She was so honest. We thought she can't be bluffing, she must have a good hand. And at the end she took off her dark sunglasses that she wore at the poker table and she laughed and she said I was bluffing the whole time. Oh my God, we got swindled out of our money by my mother and she was very. We always had little competitions and we're always playing jokes on each other and having fun. One of our competitions was whose eyes are blue, or mine or hers. And the last time I was there in the fall, we asked two of the nurses what they thought and they said I did. And she was like, oh. So one of the last things I said to her I said, mom, I finally reached the conclusion You're right, your eyes are bluer. And so, mom, you went on that one.
Speaker 2:But the main thing I talked about was her kindness, her love, her simple trust, her incredible spirit. And I read, I shared an email that I got from a dear friend of mine, a text message from my friend, philippe, who had met my mom several times, and he wrote this and I was like whoa. He said I see and feel the radiance. It shines through you. No doubt about that. Since I first met you, it was obvious. I'm grateful for your time with her. On we go onward. May she rest in peace with you, dad, with Dad and Jesus. And it just dawned on me that, yes, her radiance shines through me and I share how it shines through all of her children and her grandchildren and her great-grandchildren, that she lives on through that. And then I got a sweet email from my editor, my book editor, who's done both of my books, and she said I feel like I know her from your two books, her spirit lives on through your books. And I was like, oh, that is so touching. And then at the end I shared my favorite meditation, which I'll share with you at the end I actually had my wife read it because she has a much more distinct voice and she's much louder than I am and, being dyslexic, I don't read well out of a book.
Speaker 2:My second book's coming out on audio soon and I was supposed to read it and I'm like there's no way it would take me thousands of hours because I'd butcher it. I just don't read out loud from a book, but I'll share that in a minute. And so that was the celebration. I went back to my sister's, looked through all the photographs and it was so meaningful for our daughter, our youngest, who's adopted, and she said I feel like I have a family history now as we looked at pictures of grandparents and great-grandparents and the ones that just struck me so much. My sister's very organized and she had one glad bag gallon-sized bag of photos from when my mom was a young woman and I'm looking at those and I was like my mom was hot, which is a really bizarre feeling because as a child you only know your mother from when you're born. You have no concept. The children basically think that mom and dad are on this planet to take care of them and they didn't really have any life before them. That's when their life started, was when they had you and I was looking at him like she had a pair of legs and there was one picture of her. And if you've seen old World War II pictures and movies, the men would decorate their fighter planes with pictures of women and the classic pose was a woman in a pair of shorts, one leg stretched out, the other one knee bent upward, with the arms there painted on the side of a B-52 bomber. And my mother had a picture of her just like that and I was like she had a pair of legs. I never even thought about that. It was like, oh my gosh, this is just fabulous.
Speaker 2:So then on Sunday my wife and I went over and picked up some flowers and took them over to the gravesite. There was lots of flowers from the funeral there, of course, but that was the first time we got to see her body had been lowered in grass and there she was on the head. She had already carved in the headstone next to my dad and we put the flowers in a vase for my dad and I took two of them and I crossed them over each other and put it right in the center and I just thought about how she got her wish. She was with my dad again. So I just talked about how beautiful that was, that they were together again and couldn't have been a more beautiful thing. And people will ask me how are you feeling? And I'm like it's a mix. It's hard to wrap your head around. I'll never be able to talk to her again on Sundays.
Speaker 2:I used to call every Sunday but at the same time, the blessings I had for 66 years and all the things I was able to share with her and knowing that her spirit still radiates through me and through others and people everywhere, and that is truly a great blessing. So that was my mom's final adventure and I just wanted to share that today and to remind all you parents out there who you are. Soaks into your kids and we know in the research the one thing you can pass on is kindness. If you're a kind parent, your children will be kind as well, and almost all of my siblings or their spouses are in helping professions. That's what we do and it was very special.
Speaker 2:My son. We originally thought my mother was going to pass the weekend before he was on call at the hospital for surgery duty and he got switched around so he could be off the whole weekend. Then she didn't die. So then he was on call the weekend of the wedding and was having a funeral, having a hard time getting it rescheduled, but he was able to fly out Saturday morning and be a pallbearer and then I took him back to the airport Saturday afternoon. So he was just a quick in and out that he got to be there. Very special.
Speaker 2:So with things of beauty, make me cry. I'm going to share two. The first is a week before the funeral on Monday night we did our monthly program for mental health consumers at my church. I've talked about it numerous times. It's been going on for 40 years and my mother loved those people. She loved them. Anytime they came into town she would come, and my dad when he was still alive and in honor of her, every Christmas she'd send $5 bills. So we have to get a bill and a handwritten Christmas card and a couple of Mondays ago I bought $55 bills for everybody, passed them on in memory of my mom and the reaction of our guests. They were so tender and caring for me and appreciative of my mother and expressed their love and concern and it was just beautiful and I remember thinking these people have been with me through the hardest times in my life. After Columbine High School they were all there. After I almost died from meningitis, they were all there. They've been consistent in my life.
Speaker 2:And one of our guests, michael, who's been coming for all these years, he said he calls me Papa Craig and he said I'm sorry for your loss. And then he took my two hands and he kissed my palms and I'm like, wow, that was incredible. And the other one I'll never forget one of our guests is an Eritrean and if you don't know geography, eritrea is a part of Ethiopia, it's a slice of Ethiopia and it unfortunately suffers a lot of oppression from Ethiopians. But he moved here several years ago. It's hard to understand most of his English, but he said to me my mom is like the sun, she just shines everywhere. And I'm like that was my mom too, so we both had moms. I asked him how to say it in Eritrean, but I can't repeat it because it was too complicated to understand or make sense of. But it just touched me that both of our mothers shine like the sun.
Speaker 2:So in closing I'll read you my favorite meditation. This is the one my wife read and it really speaks to what my mother did with having five kids and what she planted inside of all of us, and that's so many times. As a parent, you're planting seeds and some of them won't bloom and blossom and grow for years later. You never know when they're all going to come out, but his prayer speaks to that. I'm going to have to just quickly wipe my eyes before I start. And this was written in the Presbyterian Outlook by Emmond McDonald.
Speaker 2:When God wants an important thing done in this world, or a rung it, he goes about it in a very singular way. He doesn't release thunderbolts or stir up earthquakes. God simply has a tiny baby, born perhaps of a very humble home, perhaps of a very humble mother, and God puts the idea or purpose into the mother's heart and she puts it in the baby's mind, and then God waits. The great events of this world are not battles and elections and earthquakes and thunderbolts the great events of babies. For each child comes with a message that God is not yet discouraged with humanity, message that God is not yet discouraged with humanity but is still expecting goodwill to become incarnate in each human life.
Speaker 2:My mother planted a lot of seeds and brought that into the world. So I love you, mom. I'll always miss you. You'll always be with me and part of me. Thank you very much for listening to the show today. I hope it was meaningful to you. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. And remember, just like my mother, relax, just have to be good enough. Life works out in the wash is what she would always say. Life always works out. Thank you very much.