Light snow was falling. Driving conditions were becoming dangerous more than 9,000 feet high in the Rockies. She’d been on the road for more than sixteen hours. Her lifelong friend sat quietly in the passenger seat as she drove from Show Low, Arizona to Bellvue, Colorado. Her cello would sing with its deep, dark, haunting voice soon enough when they finally arrived at the Pingree Park Campus of Colorado State University where they attended a weeklong music camp every year. What eighty-one year old woman would drive nearly 1,700 miles round trip with her cello to play music? My mother was the only one I know tough enough to tackle such an unlikely challenge when many her age believed rocking in a chair was an adventure. No one could match her determination and drive. When she set her mind to it, no task was outside her reach. Those that had the pleasure and joy of knowing her know that she was one of the toughest women on earth. She was a quiet, diminutive, soft-spoken, “Katie-bar-the-door”, alpha-female. She never quit. She never gave up. She may have suffered a setback from time-to-time, but it only increased her determination.
She suffered a setback on February 14th. She died. I have no doubt she’ll regroup and pursue new challenges for a long time to come. This time, however, she’ll reach new heights through her sons and her many friends who look to her memory for strength and inspiration. As we go through life, we meet a select few people with an indomitable spirit that through their example help guide us through difficult and challenging times. My mother was one of those rare individuals.
Jean “Elizabeth” Schenk was the third of four daughters born to William Clarence and Tella Jane Radcliffe. When she arrived on July 25, 1924, the family had recently moved to Detroit, Michigan from Cleveland, Tennessee where work was hard to find in the aftermath of World War I. It was in Detroit she went to grade school and high school. It was there also that she met her first and only true love, her cello. Her older sisters played other instruments. Her father had played clarinet with John Philip Sousa’s famous military band. Her mother was the pianist and vocalist in the family band. They needed a cello to fill in the bottom and her courtship with music began. One of her proudest memories was of playing with the renowned Detroit Symphony Orchestra. She played her cello until well into her eighties when her fingers became too weak to manage the strings. The world’s most famous cellist, Yo Yo Ma had smiled when he instructed me to make certain I stopped by my mother’s house regularly to tune her cello after it had become difficult for her. And of course I did it lest I incur the wrath of both my mother and her “sweetheart”, Yo Yo Ma. A picture of my mother in the arms of Yo Yo Ma hung by her door until the day she died.
She was truly one of the toughest women I’ve ever known. She hadn’t a hint of “quit” in her character. On three occasions, I have been called to her bedside by doctors who told me, “There is little hope for survival.” Once in the mid-1970’s, I received a late night phone call from a doctor at a hospital in Detroit. My mother had been hit head-on by a drunken motorcyclist doing approximately 100 mile per hour. “It is unlikely she’ll survive until morning,” he said. I quickly dressed and drove from East Lansing to Detroit. Somehow, the tenacious lady miraculously pulled through.
On another occasion, she began to experience an organ failure as a result of an incurable disease she’d unknowingly contracted from the blood transfusions given in the previous incident. She lapsed into a coma and laid unresponsive for seven days in the Mayo Clinic Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona. My brother and I got the word late on Thanksgiving Day 2006. Brian immediately caught a flight from Detroit and I left San Diego for Phoenix. We met at the airport and drove together to Mayo. For seven days, we sat vigil as hope of my mother’s survival diminished. The doctors said that if there was any significant chance of recovery, her coma would end in three days or less. By the seventh day, we knew hope was gone. I was to meet with the doctors on the morning of the eighth day to discuss letting her finally die. That evening, Brian went alone to my mother’s room and said his painful, tearful and final goodbye to the woman who had brought him into the world. He then flew home to deal with another urgent matter in Michigan.
The next morning, Liz and I walked out the door for our last trip to the hospital. For some inexplicable reason, I picked up my mandolin, an instrument tuned just like a cello. I snuck it into the hospital room and quietly played music at my mother’s bedside. I wistfully played some of her cello favorites for more than an hour before the team of doctors arrived for our meeting. I doubted my mother could hear, let alone process, the music, but something spurred me on. We met with the doctors and listened to their rather grim outline of the state of affairs. “There is no reasonable hope for her recovery,” one said. “It’s probably time to honor her wishes, remove her from all support systems and let her die peaceably.”
I agreed, but said I’d like to call my brother and let him know before I gave them the go ahead. Liz and I went to lunch and I called Brian. He was in sad agreement and I returned to the hospital to give my consent. We rounded the corner and walked into her room. She was sitting upright, eyes wide open. She greeted us. “Hi! How are you?” she said. “Would you keep playing?” I played on until my fingers bled. She had again defied nature and done the impossible. She was super-human.
As the ravages of time waged war on all of us, she was given no quarter. In August, she fell and broke a hip. She underwent major surgery and those of us close by worried about her ability to defeat such adversity at eighty-six years of age. But again, like the tide, she came back. She worked, she struggled and she fought her way back. Although she kept her house in San Diego, she took an apartment in Scottsdale. One evening after a dinner at a local restaurant, she came home. When she started to fall backward, she instantly thought of avoiding injury to her tender hip. She landed on her other hip and broke it. The following day, she again underwent major surgery. The battle back from this setback proved to be too great even for this magnificent fighter. She died a month after her oldest and only remaining sister had died.
A couple of hours before she died, she asked for a taste of ice cream. She had her sense of humor right up to the end. She then laid back and asked me to play the mandolin again. This time she knew it was only for comfort. The last song I played for her was the first song she ever played for me on her cello – Ashokan Farewell. Some will know this as the theme music from the series on the Civil War, but to me it will always be Mom’s Song.
For eighty-six years, she made it a habit of doing things that couldn’t be done. She sailed her boat on the Great Lakes. She even defied gravity as she piloted her planes high above the clouds. She traveled the world. She met people easily and loved learning about them. She was a tom-boy, a lady, a tough guy, a soft embrace, a gentle song. In the years past when I used to travel the world climbing the big mountains, it was my mother that by her example had shown me that the summit was an attainable goal. It was her hand that led me up the icy walls. It was in her arms and with her proud gaze upon me that I arrived at the mountain top. From this time forward, whenever I look up toward the lofty peaks, I will see her standing there smiling. I will hear her beautiful music. I will feel her gentle touch.
She leaves three sons, seven grandchildren, four great-grandchildren, a cat and a long list of friends around the globe.
Filed under: h. Alton Jones, The Human Animal | Tagged: Jean Elizabeth Radcliffe, Jean Elizabeth Schenk | 12 Comments »
all across the island remind Cubans of their communist and socialist heritage and strength.
