Sometimes It Isn’t About Writing — It’s Just About Living… and Dying

My mother, Virginia Allyne Johnson Worley, passed peacefully two weeks ago. She was ninety-six, and the last six years were not easy. Her body and mind were in slow, steady decline, but her spirit never wavered.

A Life Well Lived

Mom was born in 1929, just as the Great Depression of her era was gathering steam. She grew up, excelled in school, and graduated valedictorian from Brenau Academy in Gainesville, Georgia, at age sixteen. She graduated summa cum laude from Barry University in Miami with a major in music.

She once told me she had wanted to study agricultural chemistry and go into the dairy business like her father. Her mother vetoed that. In 1950 a young woman needed to get married, she was told, and no one would marry a woman chemist. So, in 1950 she married a handsome young graduate from West Point and went on to have five children in eight years.

In 1964 the family moved to Highlands, NC. There was no kindergarten in town at that time, and she was concerned that her youngest child, George, would not get enough socialization or early education. So, here at the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation, she started a kindergarten.

Then, as part of the Democrats War on Poverty, Highlands received a grant for a HeadStart Center. She taught the children and, often, their mothers and fathers, too. A few years later, NC mandated kindergarten in all public schools, and she reigned in her classroom over countless five- and six-year-olds for 27 years. She loved teaching, she loved her students, and they both loved and respected her.

When she retired in 1991, the Highlander newspaper headline read: Beloved Teacher Retires.

Mom loved life. She loved theatre, cooking, eating, and collecting pretty things. More than most everything, she loved to travel and learn. She attended summer schools in Austria, Italy, and Spain, studying art history, culture, and languages. She explored Hawaii, Fiji, Tahiti, Australia, New Zealand,  Europe, Great Britain, forty-seven U.S. states, and seven Canadian provinces. Traveling with her could be exhausting because she insisted on seeing everything! I wish I hadn’t complained so much about being dragged to see Napoleon’s tomb.

The Best Thing for Being Sad

T.H. White wrote in The Once and Future King:

“The best thing for being sad,” said Merlin, “is to learn something.

You may grow old and trembling, you may lose what you love,

you may see the world devastated by fools —

but there is only one thing for it then: to learn.

Learn why the world wags and what wags it.

That is the one thing the mind can never exhaust or regret.”

Always Curious

My last real conversation with her was ten days before she fell ill and had a stroke. She told me she was tired. She asked me if she were going to die.

“Mama, we all die, at some point.”

“I’m really old, aren’t I?”

“Yes, ninety-six is pretty old.”

“Well, how will it happen?”

“I think, Mama, that your body will just get too tired and you’ll decide to leave it.”

“And then what happens?”

She was a lifelong Episcopalian and had strong faith in her God.

“I don’t really know,” I said. “Not too many have come back to tell us.”

“Well,” she said matter-of-factly, “maybe I will.”

There was a pause while I tried to keep my voice steady.

“Mama, are you worried about it?”

“No,” she said immediately. “I’m not worried. I’m curious.”

And that, right there, sums up who Virginia Worley was: always curious. A lifelong learner, a champion of knowledge and discovery, she wanted to know everything. Once, she told a priest friend that her goal in life was exactly that—to know everything.

“No one can know everything,” he reminded her. “Only God knows everything.”

“Well,” she said, “I’ll ask—and He’ll tell me.”

So now, fourteen days into her trip into eternity, I’m sure she’s asking questions, observing everything, and no doubt offering her opinions. I just hope God is up to it.

Epilogue

I plan—Lord willing and the creeks don’t rise, as they say in the North Carolina mountains—to walk the Camino de Santiago again next spring. It’s been ten years since I did it before, and I am older, heavier, healing from a broken ankle, and I tire more easily. I hope I’m up to it.

My intention is to honor my mother along the way—she loved Spain. I will ask her spirit to help me over the hard parts, just as she helped me over the hard parts in life.

I’m curious to see how it comes out.