Honey McMackin

June 18, 1917 – September 24, 2006

On an ordinary Sunday afternoon six years ago today an extraordinary woman slipped from this earthly life to the one for which she had lived most of her years. My mother, Honey Brigance McMackin, was a woman of unfading beauty with a quiet and gentle spirit. Even so, she had a zest for life uncommon for one her age. Her keen mind and youthful spirit were an inspiration to all who knew her, and persisted until her last day. There is always an extra ache in my heart on this date.

Mother greeted each day with a sense of wonder as to what delights the following hours would hold. It was she and my dad who instilled the optimistic outlook in my brothers and me ~ and it has served us well throughout our lives. She wanted to never stop learning, and she was interested in everything. She worked the daily crossword puzzle even when in ICU; and was insulted when she had to work it in pencil because pens wouldn’t work while she was lying on her back! When sorting through her personal effects I found clippings and articles on every topic imaginable tucked into the many books she had read. At age 85, she discovered email, and that opened a new world of delights to her.

My parents traveled widely and hosted guests from all over the world in their home. Mother loved communicating with her great assortment of friends, and I am almost certain that she saved every letter that was ever written to her. I have enjoyed immensely getting to know her better as a young woman from reading the diary she kept as a teen, and the letters from her dear friends of that era.

Possibly the greatest adventures of Mother’s life came when Daddy was in the Navy during WWII. They had so many tales to tell of those years. One of our favorites was of Mother and another Navy wife driving from Tennessee to California in order to be with their husbands for just one night before the guys shipped out of San Diego to fly bombers off of an aircraft carrier in the Pacific. As the two brave women drove down the coast of California the weather was so dark and foggy that Mother had to stand out on the car’s running board and try to navigate for the driver who couldn’t see anything. They, and other such women, were surely part of the Greatest Generation.

There is so much I could share about my mother ~ her love for family, for her students, for proper grammar, for four-leaf clovers, for cooking and entertaining, for laughter, for flowers,……… and the list has no end. Above all, she loved her God, and the grief I (and all) experience with the loss of my mother is assuaged only by knowing that she is with Him, and we will all be gathered home once again some grand day.