Friendship, Merrill Gardens, last day, freewrite

Friendship comes in like little like cat tongues. Write first thought, best thought. But that’s obviously wonky. Commenting upon it means I’m floundering on the surface instead of diving beneath the meta noun. 

My censor to self, the part that wants to sound reasonably smart, should’ve said friendship comes in like the tides. The sustained metaphor wants to hold, even though I’m stuck on cat tongues. Maybe it’s the vast ocean, or how friends are indeed like a ship, a life boat on a stormy sea.

Navigating the vagaries of life is hard enough as it is, and friends, laughing with them, even if for a moment, we leave it all behind. All the troubles and sorrows, the pain and suffering disappears.

Today as I taught my last class at the old folks’ home, I was struck by how deep the friendships had grown among us, without our even having noticed.

Our elders, some areyoung enough to be my grandmother, others are old enough to be my father, unlike the one I never had. But in this room, age has dissolved, and we are all one age between us.

Li says we are all like family sitting around this table. I know so much about each of you. We have traveled beyond the shore where student and teacher are forever divided. This is not casual garden-variety friendship. We have deepened with each other.

Sometimes I feel strange teaching my elders, but the young students I teach must think a vast gulf divides us as well, yet, we too are one. Friendship with 10-year-olds or with 90-year-olds is one thing. Unintentionally or proximity, it doesn’t matter in the end.

3/24/2007 Writers’ Group

Della Madeline Stannard Bedal obituary

Madeline Bedal was a student of mine at Merrill Gardens assisted living. We created a manuscript of her work where she dictated stories of her childhood to me. And October 2005, her brother Bill Stannard created a chapbook of her work. I had no idea her first name was Della—no wonder I could never find the obituary. (added 8/2023.) See also: Madeline Stannard Bedal Chapbook

DELLA MADELINE BEDAL A funeral service for Della Madeline Bedal, 92, of Fremont will be at Chapel of the Roses in Fremont. Viewing Friday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and services at 1 p.m. Pastor Tom Cory will officiate. She passed peacefully on November 29, 2006 in Fremont. She was born May 14, 1914 in Whitefish, Montana and had been a kindergarten teacher before she married and moved to San Jose. She was a devoted wife of 62 years, loving mother and grandmother and an inspiration to all who knew her. She loved to cook, sew and be around her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She is survived by her daughter, Edna Rodriggs of Fremont and daughter and son-in-law, Gloria and John Coyne of Lakeport. Brother and sister-in-law, William Albert and Donna Stannard of Fremont; sister-in-law and brother-in-law, Kay and Ken Hayes of Castro Valley; sister-in-law, Lila Smith of Sacramento and sister-in-law, Betty Bedal of Sacramento; 11 grandchildren, 23 great-grandchildren and 1 great-great-grandchild. Published by ANG Newspapers on Dec. 1, 2006. Legacy.com

Letter to the Montana Historical Society, Madeline Bedal, Memoirs with Maureen

Subject: Madeline Stannard Bedal

Hi

For over a year, I've been collecting the folk stories of Madeline Stannard Bedal (of Fielding, (Stannard Creek is named after her family), and, later, Whitefish. She would like to send her stories to interested folks. 

She is at the Westlake retirement center in Fremont, CA and was born in 1914. Her family homesteaded in Fielding. She's an excellent storyteller. I take down her stories verbatim (she's legally blind) and type them up, read them back, and she makes small corrections.

We've a class called Memoirs with Maureen. I have been trained in folklore collection at UC Berkeley with Professor Dundes. I have not applied analysis to the stories as they're folk narrative. 

I am a Montana Arts Council artist in residence and was listed with MAC during the 1980s and 1990s. I taught poetry to students in Laurel, MO.

Madeline Stannard Bedal Chapbook

Madeline Bedal was a student of mine at Merrill Gardens, an assisted living retirement home in Fremont, CA, where I taught a memoir class. It began as a poetry writing workshop but nobody was particularly interested. I tried out all kinds of writing exercises with them. I brought in Big Band music (a hit) and memorabilia, I worked with themes— anything to spark their creativity. So many of my elderly patients were very nearly brain dead from lack of stimulation. I struck gold when I stumbled upon the memoir process. 

Madeline, who was legally blind, and so she dictated everything to me, grew up in Whitefish, Montana, where she led a pioneer life, rich in memory and tradition. When she died, I was devastated as I had become quite fond of her. Her brother, Bill Stannard made a chapbook of her work, which I never knew about until after her death in November 29, 2006. Kudus, Madeline. Bill said that he sent the manuscript to Montana Arts Council, I don’t know whether or not he did that. I would like to think so. The Pruneyard in San Jose was once the Bedal Ranch. There is one tiny road named in memory of the ranch. I hope to find more of her pieces and post them, so this is a placeholder. Though he sent me the letter in 2006 I decided to post it in 2005 when he sent it out to all their relatives.

—Maureen Hurley (added 8/2023. I have so little work from 2005 to 2006, I don’t know what happened to it all. So every little thing I find helps me to flesh out those years. This becomes a diary of sorts.) See also: Della Madeline Stannard Bedal obituary 

In the rain without an umbrella, freewrite (Merrill Gardens journal)

Singing, dancing in the rain, the world is transformed, even the gutters lose distinction with the sidewalks and curbstones. The rain pounds the pavement with such vigor that the streets are transformed into vast, gray trampolines, and the Magritte’s Golconda jumpers are falling from the clouds. Not to mention the cats and dogs. The rain bounces up and blurs that distinction between street and curb, ocean and sky. 

Today, in my Elder writing group at Merrill Gardens, one old woman from the northern provinces, tried to reconstruct images of home. She wanted to become a phoenix and rise up from her own ashes in another country. She studied hard to be a doctor. Tomorrow I’ll be 88, she said. I have not thought about China for many years. She is beginning to remember after forgetting the atrocities of the past for so many years.

She said, Once it was raining in her village, the Japanese had invaded, so she walked to school in the rain without an umbrella. She needed to be the strong one, she didn’t let go of her young cousin’s hand, not even when the rain beat down with such force, that their legs turned yellow from the mud. She tells me that the Yangtze means yellow river.

Rivulets made their way to the ocean, to the China Sea, and the school became a raft across the sea to Africa, to the Sahara, and then to Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, the place of flowers, where she made her escape and met her husband in transit, waiting there for years as he perfected his surgery on the open heart. 

The breakthrough operation was the first of its kind in a country of parched thirst, under siege, in a drought. She wears an umbrella for the sun. She is waiting for her people to go to Cold Mountain, where she watched her first movie of a man with an umbrella, singing and dancing in the rain, and his heart was full. He was dancing with an open heart. The rain rose up, like a flock of phoenixes, seeking the eye of the sun.

11/12/2004 Writers’ Group

If. Whatever's burning up your mind, freewrite (Merrill Gardens journal)

And so they asked me, it was my turn, and I had asked them to ponder on "if." A hypothetical question, but also a loaded statement in a rest home. Especially when asked if you had to live your life over. By asking them probing questions, I was asking them to not only to delve into the past, but also to share their souls with each other. 

Many of these folks had lived together for years and still didn't know each other's life stories. I thought, these were the lucky ones, the ones who lived charmed lives, an ambassador, a designer, a concert pianist, and an organizer. What emerged, was that each, thinking the others life was more glamorous than their own lives. Envy. 

One person chose to say her life was perfect. She was content. Another devalued her life experiences. We all gave her a mouthpiece. And another added her story to the collective invisible pile, as if the laundry of the soul was laid out to dry on the breakfast table. 

Then it was my turn. They called in the chips, and here I was, 3 to 4 decade younger than there, feeling valueless and fragile and the Oldsters were telling me that I still had plenty of time left. But I was not convinced. 

Madeline Bedal from Montana, who took just turned 91 wasn't with us. I miss her terribly, as she is my touchstone for the residency. She, who was a kindergarten teacher, who became legally blind, who thought she had nothing of value to contribute, told us extraordinary stories of her pioneer childhood, enthralled us.

I savored those bittersweet precious moments as we made plans for the future, knowing that nothing is really certain, not even the next time that we will meet. And we met fully in the moment and made plans anyway. These senior citizens and I are sharing our life stories. I told them that it felt like I had a roomful of grandparents, and they all smiled and laughed. We reaffirmed each other's existence.

Enroute to the senior center Alene (?) and I pass the scene of an accident, a young man being lifted up on a gurney all cerulean and blue, the colors of the sky. His car looked like in overturned beetle. An SUV had run right over it. I wondered would he make it.

I couldn't help but think of my cousin Sinead emerging from her own darkness, thankfully oblivious to her ordeal, her memory having been wiped clean, her slate blank, so that she couldn't bear witness to the darkness that she had experienced. She fought back. She fought back the darkness, not ready yet. She  began to remember and she raged and raged against the dying of the light. She did did not plant go gentle at that junction of "if."

6/4/2004 Writers' Group

• In the rain without an umbrella, freewrite
• Madeline Stannard Bedal Chapbook
• Della Madeline Stannard Bedal obituary
• EGRETS FOR SINEAD