Mother Superior is probably sitting there, thinking about a nastier, meaner Bonner County Rock Fight. And, she's probably met up with Imogene to lament how the local population explosion has added so many more families to genealogy roster.
She and Imogene Davis, the beloved business teacher, served as proud experts for years on local family lineage---so much so that they wished our faculty-room wall could be converted into a visual for showing just which students belonged to the Sagle Hawkins, the Dover Beckers, or the Hope Kiebert clan.
Mother Superior is free now, free from two years of debilitating misery, brought on by a series of nasty strokes. No doubt, she's found a book room to organize and a few of her old friends like Imo and her poodle Violet to carry on with the important details which occupied her so during her 76-year stay here on earth. Those details would include the ongoing quest for knowledge, whether it deals with the long line of English monarchs or who shot some bum outside a First Avenue bar back in 1905.
Speaking of bars and shootings, she did, for years, advocate an All Bonner County Rock Fight where folks could get out there on the walking bridge and just throw rocks at each other to settle all the scores that seem to permeate the fabric of this community. I remember so often listening as she used her meticulous research in old papers to point out that they were fighting over the Cedar Street Bridge clear back in 1904.
Mother Superior was a lady named Joy O'Donnell, who loved the nickname she earned as a faculty-room matriarch. She died yesterday, and she was one of my best friends for nearly 35 years. I think of her as the older, wiser sister who'd taken me under her wing when I joined the Sandpoint High School faculty in 1969. During our years as colleagues, Joy watched out for me whenever trouble was brewing. She always cared what happened to me in the best and worst of situations. Her loyalty to those she cared about was impeccable.
One of my favorite memories of Joy occurred on Baldy Mountain several years ago when our kids were little. She loved a good day of huckleberry picking and was rarin' to go any time. She accompanied Willie, Annie and me to the mountain where we found a good patch, a safe distance from Emma Lou Hook's domain. A few minutes after we all found our spots and started dumping berries into our buckets, a very young Annie broke the silence.
"O' McDonnell, where you are?" she asked.
Joy kept on picking and didn't skip a beat with her response.
"I are here, Annie," she announced. "Where you are?" The brief conversation between the two remains a classic Joy moment in my heart. She loved kids and knew how to talk their talk, in spite of the demands she placed on adults using the language.
At times, Joy scared the bejeebers out of me and a lot of others with her sharp, brutal manner, which often showed itself when her impatience toward what she deemed as stupidity took over. My friend Ann Gehring concurs on this point.
"I used to help her monitor SAT tests, "Ann told me this morning. "She scared the bejeebers out of me. I was ALWAYS afraid I/she/we would do something that would put both of us in jail for the rest of our lives!! Actually, this strong-willed soul, who could burn a hole through you with her glare, never met a person she couldn't intimidate, and she knew her powers, always using them at opportune moments.
In spite of that, Joy's friends and students also knew the blonde bespeckled lady, who smoked all those cigarettes, had one of the biggest, most generous hearts in town. She practiced her generosity quietly.
Throughout our friendship, I enjoyed comfort in her guidance, appreciation for her warm, sensitive, and caring nature and endless belly laughs from her clever humor. I probably talked to her almost daily for 30 years until 2003 when the strokes stole from her the ability to function on her own, then, ruthlessly, the ability to communicate the "right on" opinions that constantly traveled through her brilliant mind.
Joy spent much of the last two years sitting in a wheel chair or in a lying in a bed at the Life Care Center, hooked to a stomach feeding tube after a major stroke, among many, cut off her ability to swallow. I visited her often until one day when she simply stared out the window while fondling the stuffed animals next to her bed. I could not return. I made a personal decision, which I may or may not regret as selfishness on my part. I did not want to remember my longtime friend in this helpless, miserable state.
I actually found myself praying to see Joy's obituary in the Bonner County Daily Bee. It will probably appear in tomorrow's edition, and they'd better get it right for Joy's sake and their own. The Bee's the same local newspaper which she read and critiqued daily.
If they screwed up in the smallest way, Joy, the perfection-oriented, consummate English teacher, noticed and noted. During those last few years of her clarity, I could count on calls where she had assembled a list of the misspellings, gross grammar errors, the faulty sentence structure and inexcusable accuracy abominations. During the conversation, each point on Joy's list received more than adequate discussion and rebuke. We scratched our heads and grimaced often.
Joy was the local expert on the language, the guru on how to tackle research and the living example on how to diligently uncover every detail before arriving at any conclusions. That fetish for perfection made her a natural as a museum volunteer after she retired in 1992. I remember writing a story for the Spokesman-Review about how Joy had helped a man from California who was looking for family information. He was astounded at the lengths she'd gone to in his behalf, so astounded, he sent her flowers.
That same dedication to truth, accuracy and doing the job right drove her every day in her English classroom. Students respected Mrs. O'Donnell and loved Mrs. O'Donnell. She was demanding, at times difficult, but funny. Her stern manner often gave way to rollicking spontaneity with her students. I'll never forget the yearbook photo of Joy in the hip boots a student had brought to school for dress-up day.
Speaking of dressing up, there was also the day she donned a cap-and-gown and with stick in hand went about the school exorcising the spirit of an individual who'd just been deposed as our principal. Joy's ecstasy at learning his demise inspired this showing of her ever-present dramatic flair.
As of yesterday, Joy's friends are free once more, just as she is, with her passing. No longer do we lament her pathetic condition of residing in that care center in that helpless, sad state. Now, we can return to the grand memories of our friend who was so dear to us. We can remember the happy, hilarious and even the scary times we experienced with this dynamic, passion-rich lady who left such an indelible mark in our hearts.
We can rejoice that Mother Superior has now found eternal peace, and we say, "Ah, Joy."
2 comments:
Indeed, one of my favorite teachers and friends--she offered to let me stay with her when my family moved right before my senior year. Great memeories and great learning. And then there were the Bibliophile meetings . . .
I did a google search for Joy's obit and came across your blog. It really captured the Joy we all knew and loved.
Joy was so much more than a teacher or color commentator on local history. She was a very special woman who became a member of our family. I have always called her Auntie Joy or A.J. She couldn’t have been more a more important part of my life if she had been a blood relative. This amazing woman had a great deal of influence over so many people’s lives, including mine.
Not a day goes by where Joy’s influence isn’t present. Two lithographs I remember from the ranch and later from her home in town hang in my office. They were purchased from her estate sale (to pay for long-term care) along with the chrome parrot ashtray with the broken beak that sat next to her chair and cradled her smoldering, bright lipstick stained, cigarettes for as long as I can remember. These mementos are bitter sweet possessions as the estate sale was the most unfitting and cruel way to dispose of her treasured possessions. Anyone who knew anything about Joy knew how important her family and the treasures passed down to her were. Some of the most precious memories of time spent with Joy involve navigating the steep stairs into the dank basement filled with trunks and boxes—each holding stories of lives past and well-lived. The thought of her precious treasures trading hands without knowledge of their true meaning and the reason they were preserved in the first place makes me physically ill more than 2 years after the wretched event.
I’ve pretty much always made my living creating and writing. When I’ve written myself into a corner and/or managed to create the world’s most unnecessary and complex sentence, I can hear Joy’s voice and chuckle in my head. Her guidance was always sage, cleaver and dead on. She was never mean or belittling.
Joy’s image can be found in the majority of our family photos that captured life’s most precious events—holiday celebrations, first communions, graduations, weddings and more.
When my husband graduated from law school, I don’t know who was more proud of him. Joy sent him a note written on a white ice cream bag as she believed he’d be eating all his lunches out of his brief case for the rest of his career and white ice cream bags are the most practical. He still has that lunch bag. Joy loved to hear about John’s cases—from the heinous criminal cases to the stranger than fiction civil ones.
A few years ago I took up quilting. I just had to call and let Joy know that I had mastered the fine art of threading the machine, sewing seams that actually had seam allowances and had not, as of yet, sewed myself to my project. I can still see poor Joy and I huddled in her kitchen as she tried to teach me how to sew on this eggplant purple, shiny, slick fabric I had picked out to make the perfect 70’s jumpsuit. I also remember her explaining to me why I couldn’t cut off the notches as I cut the pattern out and why I couldn’t put the pedal to the metal and sew at mach speed. We never finished that project and I’m amazed to this day that she allowed me to live to see adulthood. I can’t tell you how many of those over-the-glasses looks she shot me that day. To her credit, she never raised her voice, although I did learn how to conjugate some new verbs that day.
Whenever I visited Joy, I was always amazed at the great number of former students she kept in touch with. They spanned a wide spectrum of years as well as careers. I always felt so lucky to have been able to enjoy her as a teacher as well as family.
John and I visited her at the care center a couple of times. Mom and dad no longer live in Sandpoint, so it’s not easy for us to make the trip. The last time we visited, we took her out in a wheel chair for a stroll around the grounds. She was so frail. She slipped down and John held her up while I ran to get help. She was so frustrated but she looked impishly up at John while this 6’4” 250 lb former college lineman tried as best he could to hold her up without hurting her. It scared the crap out of all of us. We all had a good laugh when we were back at the room and I said, “I don’t know about you Joy, but I think I soiled myself.”
Even though we were never sure if she got our cards and letters or if anyone took the time to read them to her, we never stopped writing and letting her know how much we loved her and that we were always thinking of her.
I hope she’s sitting on the porch of her old ranch house on a summer day enjoying the gardens with a cigarette in one hand and a full glass of wine—fresh out of the box—in the other, laughing and joking with all those that have gone before her while her beloved pets play at her feet.
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