Here are my credentials as someone to tell you about Becky Mays Wilson. Becky and I went to Lee County High School in Kentucky, where we played in the same marching/concert band, she clarinet me tuba. We also went to the same college, sang in the same choir there, and married people we met at that college, Morehead State University in Morehead, Kentucky. She called us from San Francisco, where she was a summer missionary, the night of our wedding rehearsal dinner. A few months later I sang at her wedding held in our hometown of Beattyville.
Before our marriages, she rode with me to and from college a good deal and we attended a memorable concert together at Eastern Kentucky University, with Sly and the Family Stone and Bob Marley and the Wailers. I will not go into all the details of our days of running around together, but suffice it to say, I know her well enough to be writing this.
Becky’s mother was a woman of regal charm, calm spirit, humble dignity and keen mind. Her words were measured and carefully chosen. Becky’s father passed before I knew the family well, but Becky and her brothers Sam and Greg were endowed with those same traits. Sam has now passed, but Greg and Becky still exude their mother’s charm. Don’t imagine they are trying to sell you something, when you talk to them. They can’t help it. They are filled with the milk of human kindness. These qualities are showing up in another generation in her nephew Ivan. I saw Ivan as a toddler, so I have witnessed how such spirits grow up in the world.
Becky decided to retire long before she was old (I have to say that since she is almost exactly my age) and her retirement celebration was my only opportunity to interact with those with whom she had worked. The love and respect she commanded in the room that day, testified to both to the discernment of her coworkers and the magic of her personality.
It doesn’t hurt we each married someone the other loves. If ever there were candidates for communal living, we would be the ones, were it not for our upbringing in capitalism and Christian-sanctified Eastern Kentucky.
We now live over three-hundred miles apart, far enough to make the four-or-five-times a year we see one another that much more precious. Becky is a key reason so many of those of us who went to college together remain close. She acts like glue. She has lost father and mother, brother and nephew, and a host of other more distant relatives. But those who remain she watches like a shepherd does a flock.
Here is what I suspect Becky has learned: the quiet left by those we’ve lost makes sweeter the voices of those who remain.
Sometimes in the middle of my busy schedule, I remind myself to be grateful for those who need what I can do and just today I thought of my friends who have retired and I wondered if they miss being in the action. It will be theirs to figure out how to stay present in each moment and not lost in memories or worry for the future.
A few years ago when we went on vacation with Becky and Ed, her mom, Greg and some friends of theirs, I had my best chance to observe her mother. She was a lady who had figured out how to “do the later years”. I have a feeling Becky will figure it out too (when the time comes).
Becky, I hope your birthday is great. Tomorrow marks another beginning of the annual three-week period when you are older than me. Got any advice for a youngster?
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