Dad and Kris

Dad has a girlfriend.

"I want you to meet her," Dad clears his throat nervously. He's gathered all of us together in the living room after Friday Night Pizza.  "This Sunday. Her name's Kris Nolan Clare, she's a young widow with a five-year-old son, and she works at Goodwill Industries," he rattles off in clipped sentences. "Everybody be here Sunday."

He says this with a note of finality, collects his newspaper and glasses, and abruptly leaves the room. All of us gape after him. Apparently, he will not be fielding questions.

Kris and Dad

We glance sideways at each other. It's not that there haven't been other women. Since Mom's death ten years ago, Dad's dated a couple of ladies seriously and comes perilously close to marrying one of them. He plays this new relationship, however, close to the vest - possibly because of the relentless manner in which we stalk, research and grill every woman who comes sniffing around.

What little we do know about her is not reassuring. Playing detective, I spot her one night as she and Dad attend a community theater event. She's only a few years older than I am. That, all by itself, is plenty of reason to hate her.

"Also, did I mention she has great legs?" I break the news to my sisters. "And don't even get me started on her boobs."

The following Sunday, we fill Dad's living room with spouses and kids in tow feeling nearly as nervous as Dad. The entire Brown family battalion waits for the new girlfriend's arrival. When the doorbell rings, we jump.

Kris, of course, is just as nervous as we are. She ushers her five-year-old son Nolan - scrubbed and shining like a kid out of a catalog - through the door, and we look each other over in awkward silence.

Until Nolan toots.

"Oops!" he grins and claps a hand over his red face.

We laugh, suddenly relax, and throughout the afternoon become acquainted with the remarkable woman who will eventually marry our much adored father.

Just about the same time Dad becomes a 49-year-old widower with ten kids, Kris is a very young and pregnant wife. One early morning, sailing down the highway on her way to work, she comes upon a terrible accident. In the mangled vehicle is her husband Tom who's departed for work just a few minutes before Kris.

Tom's only barely alive. In the emergency room before they rush him to surgery, Kris clings to him.

“RBO,” he whispers to her. Real Bad Owie. It's their little joke whenever they bump a toe or an elbow and need sympathy from each other.

“Yes,” Kris breathes. “RBO!”

Because Tom is strong enough to tell Kris he loves her before he's whisked away, she holds out hope he’ll make it through surgery. But it's the last time he's able to speak. He dies three days later.

In the same way Dad is making himself get out of bed every morning to go to work and care for ten kids, Kris will give birth to her only son, raise him alone, and force herself to go on with the business of living. Her parents, her mother and father-in-law, and her best friend Tina support her through the most difficult days of her life.

Kris and Dad

All at once, I forgive her for being young. The sensational legs and boobs don't matter any more.

"You need to marry her," I whisper urgently to my father in the kitchen. "And dear God, don't mess this up."

He doesn't. Or at least, if he does, Kris loves him too much to mind. On June 2nd of the following year, my brothers and sisters and Nolan and I march Dad and Kris down the aisle.

Kris loves him so much, she's willing to take on not only Dad but also our teenage brothers Jeff and Tom as well. When Tom's ancient, blind and incontinent cocker spaniel stumbles through her door, Kris doesn't bat an eye.

There are other nifty surprises as well. Even on sub-zero winter nights, Dad dons a knit stocking cap before retiring to bed and cracks all the windows in the bedroom. Just to be safe, he fires up the weather alert system and sets it carefully on the night stand. At three in the morning, it shrieks Kris awake with dire news of winter storm warnings in Lodge Pole or Nehawka - unheard of Nebraska villages some 275 miles away. Dad, with his stocking cap snug against his ears, sleeps blissfully through the robotic warnings.

Kris and Dad on their wedding day, June 2, 1990.

Dad adores Kris to distraction. We haven't seen him laugh so much since Mom. But Kris is not Mom. She's the CEO of Goodwill Industries of Greater Nebraska. Dick Brown isn't used to the new genre of the "working wife". To his credit, however, he forces himself to evolve with the times and embrace this new era with a dynamic working wife 20 years his junior. And it works. He's happy, Kris and Nolan are happy, and we're happy. Kris becomes our kids' grandmother and a sister/friend/mother to all of us.

Somewhere, Mom is happy, too. Deep down, I understand she's helped orchestrate these events to bring Kris and Nolan into our lives. Only Mom understands how much Dad and all of us need Kris.

Nolan and Dad

Today our little brother Nolan is a successful businessman in Omaha married to his beautiful Brianne. Kris, who is still dynamic and full of her cheerful energy, is the family matriarch at every holiday, baptism and athletic event. She's traveled hundreds of miles to be by our sides during surgeries and graduations. And once a year, she and my sisters and I make a trip to Omaha for our annual girls' shopping weekend - one time in white-out, blizzard conditions because nothing, and I mean nothing comes between us and our shopping trip.

We sometimes forget what an amazing woman our stepmother is and how respected she is in her professional life. To Nolan and all of us, she's simply Mom, Kris and Grandma.

She’s the one at Thanksgiving who still thinks it’s possible to snap a picture of all her kids and grandkids gathered in front of the fireplace. There are 70 of us. Even as she's taking a picture, some of us are reproducing. It's what we do.

She’s the one who laughs hardest at our jokes, the one who never forgets a single grandchild at Christmas, and the one who’s stuck with us through thick and thin.

And by God, she still has great legs.

Mother In-law

My sweet mother in-law is dying.

Her son Tom and I sit by her bed at 2 in the morning while my husband John escapes to the hospital lounge to sleep a few hours.

"Did I ever tell you about the time I was 11, and Mom and I hoed a beet field all by ourselves?" my brother-in-law muses in the half darkness.

The Howards, about 1962. From top left clockwise: Bill
Howard, Jim, John, Dave, Tom, Cliff, Julie, Mary and Ruth.

Over the last three decades, I think I've heard every story about the Howard siblings growing up on the family farm in Gill, Colorado. The one about the much loathed pheasant shirt Ruth Howard carefully sews for her sons tops the list.

"That's a perfectly good shirt!" she nags her young sons who wad and toss it hastily to the next little boy in line.

I hear about a 10-year-old Tom who secretly constructs an inter-connected tunnel system deep into the dirt beneath the farmyard. His father is astonished one day as he drives a tractor across the yard only to inexplicably sink halfway into the ground - tractor and all.

Ruth laughs until she cries when her kids mercilessly tease her about the broken clock she lugs to the repair shop. Three years later, it still hasn't been collected.

"I've got to get that clock!" her daughter Mary mimics her mother.

The stories are legion.

Tom, along with my husband John, falls in the middle of the Howard kids. "Tom and I raised ourselves," John loves to say. Inseparable, the brothers traverse every inch of the family farm digging in the mud and racing their tricycles. When John must climb on the bus for his first day of school, he's devastated to part with his little brother.

I hear most of these family sagas when the seven siblings gather together in Gill. However, newly married into the Howard family more than 30 years ago, I tend to be a little naive about life on the farm.

"We used to love dressing up like our favorite Renaissance philosophers," John tells me with a straight face.

"That's right," his brother Tom nods gravely. "People still call us the Kennedys of Gill."

I'm relieved to discover otherwise. Meeting John's parents for the first time, nevertheless, petrifies me. Born and raised in Gill, Colorado, John's dad Bill maintains the generations-old family farm. Ruth Howard is, by all accounts, the finest cook in Weld County. A former home economics teacher, she and Bill prize education above all else. Every one of their seven children is a college graduate, and Bill and Ruth Howard are revered in the community. The seven Howard kids are smart, talented, and - like their mother - cook like gourmet chefs.

I can hardly toast a pop tart.

A tall, soft spoken gentleman, Bill Howard welcomes me into the fold. But I wonder if Ruth has reservations about a girl from Nebraska who can't cook. Or sew. Or garden.

That all changes when our oldest son is born. Kenny, the first Howard grandchild, is a huge sensation. Bill and Ruth make the trip to Nebraska to meet their new grandson and marvel at his long limbs and downy blonde hair.

"He looks like my babies," Ruth murmurs. Over the infant carrier, we smile at each other. Just like that we're friends.

Grandma and Grandpa with the grandkids. From left: Emily
Laura, Grandma, Kenny, David, Grandpa, Tommy. Not
pictured: Mitchell.

After a while, it's hard to forget I haven't been part of the Howard family forever. John's siblings slip automatically into birth order assignments: Jim and Mary, the oldest and youngest, are the biggest smart alecs. John, in the middle, is almost as irreverent and closely bonded to his funny, gentle brother Tom. Dave is the kind soul, Julie is beautiful and brilliant, and Cliff - the youngest brother - quietly observes his siblings and occasionally delivers a blistering funny one-liner.

Throughout the years the Howard kids move away or marry or produce grandchildren. But when they're all together, the stories abound and Grandma's cooking is the monumental focal point of every gathering.

Uncle Cliff holds his niece Emily.

Sad times are inevitable. Ruth grieves over Bill's passing in the old farmhouse. The news that her youngest granddaughter Laura is born with a severe disability is another great blow. Ruth Howard, however, is remarkably resilient. She moves into town and finds a job as an assistant to the disabled of the community - a tribute to her granddaughter Laura. Otherwise, she delights in her six grandchildren, reads anything and everything, and enthusiastically cheers her beloved Denver Broncos.

"Sometimes," she moans to my husband, "I just can't watch Tim Tebow. What is he doing out there?"

Even a broken hip, a minor stroke, and the eventual move to an assisted living facility fail to bring her down.

But then Cliff becomes sick.

This last January, Ruth's adored youngest son passes quietly from esophageal cancer. During the seven months of Cliff's illness, Ruth dares to hope.

Cliff's big brothers are his tender caretakers. Dave brings Cliff  to his own home to nurse him, hovering like a mother hen. Jim drives him to his chemo appointments and cooks tantalizing meals, tempting his painfully thin baby brother to eat. Dave and Jim are everything to Cliff in the final days of his life.

It falls to my husband John to break the news to Ruth. She looks up as we enter her room in the nursing home, pleased and surprised to see us all the way from Nebraska. With no preamble, John sits close to his mother. "I have bad news, Mom."

Her face closes, and she instinctively hunches waiting for the blow.

"He went very peacefully with Jim right beside him," John says gently.

She shuts her eyes, sighs deeply, and gathers herself.  "I let myself be so hopeful," she chokes.

Ruth and her five boys, Thanksgiving, 2016.From left: John,
Cliff (seated), Jim, Tom, Dave and Ruth.

John takes her hand. "We all did, Mom."

He leaves to notify the nursing home staff, and I lean close to my mother-in-law.

"It shouldn't happen this way," she whispers, and the tears fall. I rub her shoulder, and we weep together - we two mothers of Howard boys.

"I guess I should have Lucille's faith," she cries.

Lucille is her late sister-in-law, a much loved and devout woman who tragically loses three children before her own death.

I want to comfort my mother-in-law but don't know how. Ruth Howard entertains serious doubts about the after-life. I fear my Catholic platitudes would not console her and might even demean her terrible grief.

It's not surprising that Ruth loses all interest in eating or even living after Cliff's death. A few weeks ago, she's admitted into the hospital with pneumonia. Her health declines quickly, and she sleeps much of the time.

One afternoon last week, our tall sons who live in Denver visit her in the hospital. Their grandmother perks up as soon as they enter her room.

"Tommy," Ruth immediately demands of her younger grandson, "any chance the Broncos might draft Tony Romo?"

John and I make the trip from Nebraska just in time to say goodbye. Tom is already there, and Mary arrives the following day. We hope to be there as Grandma leaves this world, but Ruth Howard hangs on. Perhaps she is waiting for Julie who boards a plane from California to fly to her mother.

A handful of images in this life will remain with me the rest of my days. One of them is watching my good husband John and his little sister Mary ministering to their dying mother. John gently schwabs her dry lips, and Mary strokes Ruth's white, thistle-down hair speaking soft comforts.

"It's all right. Everything's all right," Mary murmurs over and over again.

Mary's wonderful children Emily and David and David's sweet wife Natalia gaze lovingly at the grandmother they adore. Like my own daughter-in-law Savanna, Natalia weeps at the sight of Ruth, fragile and laboring for breath.

But still Ruth hangs on.

John and Tom and I must return to Nebraska and Montana. So it is Jim, Dave and Mary who keep vigilant watch, and in the end, it's Mary, Ruth's last child, who gently ushers her mother out of this world.

"You can go now, Mom," she whispers. "I love you," she weeps.

It's the last period of the school day back at Grand Island Central Catholic when I receive Mary's text.

"Grandma just passed."

Ruth Howard, 1924 - 2017

I stare at my phone for a long moment. Fortunately, it's my free period, and I have no students in my classroom. Down the hall, John is teaching his last American History class. I decide to delay his grief until the end of the period and sneak silently into the school chapel. It's there that I cry for my mother-in-law.

Only weeks ago, Ruth is alive and well and aching for her lost Cliff.

"Who knows?" she says over the phone to her daughter Mary. "Maybe there really will be a big reunion after we die."

I think of her now, delighted to be with all those she loves - her husband Bill, her parents and brothers and sisters.

And most especially, her sweet boy Cliff.