Tribute to Mom 2017
Gayle Boles
My dear, sweet, strong-willed mother, Beth Marie Boles, died on June 7th 2017. She left this earth peacefully in the nursing home at King’s Manor in Hereford Texas. The past 6 months have been pretty hard on us, but I’m very grateful for every moment we had with this extraordinary woman.
Mom had a minor stroke in December 2016, which put some limitations on her ability to live independently. She had lived by herself in a duplex, in the independent living section of King’s Manor since 2009.
This is a picture of her in that apartment in 2009
She loved it there because Becky and John lived in the same city and she made friends at the manor that she ate lunch and played 42 (dominoes) with after lunch daily. She was a card and game player her whole life and passed that on to us kids. Becky would take her to her hair appointment and out for lunch on Fridays and she went with Becky and John to church and out for lunch each Sunday. But after the stroke she was forgetting to take her medicine and was having a hard time walking the distance (about a block) outside to the lunch room and activity center even though she was using a walker. We all agreed that it wasn’t safe for her to live independently anymore. She finally, reluctantly agreed to move into the assisted living section of King’s Manor.
I’m so glad that I got to spend some quality time with Mom in April 2017. Becky and John went on a cruise so I drove the 500 miles to Hereford so she wouldn’t be there by herself. I stayed in a motel because they were having some remodeling done in their house. I got there on Sunday the 9th and drove back home on the 13th. I spent each day with Mom; she slept a lot but we had some meaningful conversations about her life and the family. We would eat lunch and played 42 with her friends a couple of times.
I drove back to Hereford on May 30th because John had called and said if I wanted to see her alive again I’d better hurry. My son Demian and his wife Nok and my cousin Kay arrived on May 31st. She was in the hospital then. Demian was so sweet to her; he would help her get out of bed and sit on the potty chair and she would get embarrassed about him pulling her pants down and he would tease her about seeing his bare butt many times. Kay was also a blessing; she would sit on the bed with her after raising the head of the bed up and brush her hair, which Mom loved. Mom was moved to Westgate, the nursing home section of King’s Manor, on June 1st. After she was moved in I sat there on the bed with her and she said, “I’m scared Gayle”, which broke my heart, but I think all of the changes scared her. John spent the night with her, he is such a good man.
Demian, Nok and Kay left around 2:00 on June 2nd. On the 3rd I drove to Westgate to tell Mom goodbye. On the way there it hit me that it was probably going to be the last time I saw her alive. Becky followed me there and as I was walking in she came up behind me. I stopped and turned toward her and said,”I don’t think I can do this” and started crying. Becky grabbed me and we both cried for a while then went on in.
I’d call Becky everyday after I got home, but there wasn’t any improvement. At 2:45 AM on June 7th Becky called to tell me Mom had died. They had a memorial service at King’s Manor on the 10th, I didn’t go to that. We had a family memorial service in Waurika OK on the 17th. It was a beautiful service and quite a few family members were there. She was buried next to Dad.
The following is part of what Becky & John wrote up for her service and some of my own memories. I’m attaching a collage of pictures that Becky put together, I love the 2 black and white pictures, but I can’t seem to separate them. One is of Dad’s graduation from Medical School, the other is Mom at around 7. Just click on a picture and it will become bigger.
Mom was born on February 25th, 1925 in Tulia, Texas, to Clarence and Mary Hartwick and named Beth Marie Hartwick. She was the 3rd of 4 children and early on she found herself the favorite of some of her relatives because she looked so much like her aunt Grace, with blond hair and hazel eyes. Her father was a baker at the time of her birth but the depression created hard times for the bakery and it closed, so they moved closer to family in southwestern Oklahoma, where her Dad took a job running a farm. Mom graduated from high school in Hastings OK. (The only member of her family to do so) She told us about the school closing down when the cotton was ready to be harvested because the kids would be paid to pick the cotton, dragging large bags of cotton behind them. She also talked about the house where she lived having dirt floors and how they would put wet cloths over the windows to filter the blowing dirt in a dust storm.
She attended nursing school at Parkland Hospital in Dallas TX through a military program designed to train nurses needed for the war effort in World War II. She began her working career at Parkland but after a time, a classmate convinced her to move to Duncan OK and there she began working for the health department, which she loved.
While in Duncan she rented a room from my father’s sister, Ernestine, which led to meeting my father, Robert Dale Boles. They married on July 10, 1948 and she worked to help put dad through medical school at Oklahoma University while she raised 2 kids (Gayle and David). After he graduated in 1953, they moved to Hot Springs Arkansas, where Dad interned at the Army-Navy Hospital. Becky was born there. Dad completed his internship in Denver CO before they moved to Dodge City KS. They raised four children in Dodge City, her last born there to another mother and adopted into our family, rounding it out to 2 girls and 2 boys: Billye Gayle, Robert David, Rebecca Sue and Jeffrey Hartwick.
She would often sit with patients, friends, children of friends at the hospital, even if it was 150 miles away. As her children got older she began helping a friend (Goldie Carmichael) working with handicapped children; then seeing a need in Dodge City, she started a day-care in our home with another friend where they taught the children their numbers, letters, simple math and to read. When my aunt Jean (Dad’s sister) had breast cancer, Mom drove to OK to stay with her and drive her to Lawton for chemo therapy. She sat with both of her sisters when they were sick and dyeing, holding their hands, talking to them and loving on them.
This little woman could also be opinionated, she would tell you what she thought, with kindness if possible, but she would make sure her opinion was known. She loved to play games and passed that on to us kids; at a family get together we’d play wahoo, rook and other games.
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Mom and dad loved to travel, taking us on family vacations through out the US, including the World’s Fair held in Seattle, Washington in 1962, Disneyland, national parks etc. She continued to travel internationally with Becky and I until 2009. In 2006, we took her on a Mediterranean cruise for her 80th birthday, we originally started the cruise in 2005 but it was cut short when we got the call, while we were in Venice Italy, that our brother David had been killed in a car accident. In 2007 Becky and I took her on a lovely cruise starting in Boston and going up to Halifax, Canada. She went with me on a cruise down the Danube River in Eastern Europe in 2008. Then she joined Becky and I on a Caribbean cruise with the Red Hat Society in 2012. Pictures of each are below and in the articles I wrote about them.
Mom & Becky by the Sagrada Familia Cathedral in Barcelona, Spain
Mom, Becky and I on a New England, Canadian cruise in 2007
Mom and I on our Danube River cruise in 2008
Mom & I on a Caribbean cruise with the Red Hat Society in 2012
Mom and dad moved to Oklahoma when he retired from the Dodge City Medical Center in 1987. They had bought some land and built a house on land next to her sister, not far from Lake Waurika near Comanche OK. After Dad died in 2001, she bought a small house in Waurika OK and lived independently, close to her niece, Ann Scott until 2009. After falling in her garage and giving herself a concussion she decided it would be best for her to move into a duplex at King’s Manor, a senior living complex in Hereford TX, where Becky and John lived.
Mom could also inadvertently stir up controversy. On one of her trips, with Becky, to visit her niece Kay in the Dallas area, she was stopped by the TSA at Love Airport, when she was trying to fly back to Amarillo. The TSA wanted to examine the cane she was using, which Dad had gotten in China years before. The TSA agent unscrewed the dragon head handle and found a 6”-8” long spear inside the tube of the cane, which Mom was completely unaware of. The airport was shut down because of this discovery and the Dallas PD was brought in. They discussed “taking her downtown” but after a lot of crying by Mom and talking with Becky and Kay the officers came to their senses and simply broke the spear off and returned the cane to my 84 year old Mom and allowed her to get on the plane home. She laughed about that later, but reported at the time that she thought she was going to be arrested.
She loved her duplex and the friends she made at King’s Manor and it was a blessing to live in the same town as Becky. She love the fact that her room in the assisted living section was next to the lunch room, where they also played 42.
Being a little reserved her entire life, she found her voice at King’s Manor, loving to play dominoes and bingo, occasionally going to exercise and other activities. She never seemed to feel sorry for herself, but had gotten to where she would ask for help as her body let her down.
She has been an amazing example for me and untold others who crossed her path. I am so grateful to have had her as my Mom. My prayer is that all who have known her are filled with blessed memories that help them remember the gift she truly was.