A Treasure of a Mother-in-law and Grandma

She showed us what love means

Carma Beckwith Mahon was my mother-in-law. She was 79-years-old. She passed from this life two days ago after a fairly brief, ferocious, illness. She had health issues but we didn’t see this one coming.

It’s hard to describe Jan’s mom in a way that fully encapsulates who she was. But to do it requires a slight trip back in time. Because as it happens, I remember the very first time that I met her. You see, my first date with my wife was 40 years ago. We were sophomores at Marshall University. Not long after that date she took me home to meet her parents in the small town of Madison, WV. A young man of 19, I didn’t really understand what that meant. But I know now that what it meant was, ‘mama, I really like this skinny, nerdy kid and I want your opinion.’

Carma shook my hand and through some remarkable maternal magic and prognostication, pronounced me a man with good hands. (In point of fact my hands are dry, cracked, scuffed and my fingers are oddly, congenitally crooked.) In her mind my hands were part of the equation which suggested I was also a good man.

She later told Jan she was sure that I was ‘the one.’ The reality is that I was simply a hyper-focused pre-med student who was full of myself and couldn’t imagine the future beyond the next organic chemistry test. But Jan was like no other woman I had ever met, much less dated. She took her mama at her word and here we are, all those years and lives and children later.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that Carma was like no other mother-in-law I had met. Because she was, from day one, unfailingly kind to me. Of course, she was kind to everyone. It didn’t matter who they were, she had a smile and a kind word. She always spoke to me, hugged me, fed me and encouraged me.

In fact, when we were in some of our tumultuous dating years, it wasn’t uncommon for Carma and Jan’s father Len to ask my then girlfriend, ‘what did you do to Edwin?’ To which she would reply, ‘you know I’m your daughter…’

There was never a time when Carma and Len did not seek to encourage us in our life together and to validate our choices. There was never a time when they sought to interfere, to insinuate themselves in a negative way. They never manipulated. In short, Len and Carma only loved us, individually and as a dating then married couple.

Jan was the first of her siblings to marry. And I became, right away and fully, a son to her parents. Carma was without a doubt as much a mother to me as my own. And for my entire life as an adult, married man and father, that reality has always been present; that safety and reassurance has always run in the background of my life, of our life together. This was true for all of the children she gained by marriage.

When we began to have kids it was truly ‘game-on.’ Carma loved those children from first to last. She has 12 grandchildren in all. Eight grandsons and four granddaughters. And she has loved each of them as passionately as a grandma ever could. ‘Grammie Mahon’ was a hugger, a speaker of affirming words, a woman who never left you without saying ‘I love you.’ She had sleepovers, breakfast on cold mornings, bright Christmas dinners, gave gifts, held ‘princess parties’ for her granddaughters and was ever willing to lavish attention on any child who needed it or wanted it.

She was a speaker of scriptures and a prayer of prayers. And if ever children, sons and daughters-in-law or grandkids were covered in a lovingly-crocheted blanket of prayer, it was all of us. Who knows what her prayers accomplished? Far more than any of us realize, no doubt.

Of course, she was a wife and a devoted one at that. She met my father-in-law, Len, when they were both young clerks for the FBI in Washington, DC. She had moved there after high school from Idaho. What an adventure! They married young and started their family and moved back to WV where he worked in the mines to make more money. They raised four wonderful children together, they struggled, and they pressed on and succeeded wildly.

She loved her husband and was even in her advanced years ever seen holding his hand at the gym, the restaurant or in church. Those who knew her always talked about that tender image. That spark never faded, not with their physical afflictions, not with her near blindness, not with time, not with anything.

It is hard to know that she is gone. Harder perhaps to know that I was never explicit in saying these things to her. I console myself that we had many wonderful times together, many laughs and many shared emotions. We were much alike, she and I.

I could go on about all of the delightful family beach trips and vast Thanksgiving dinners, about the way she welcomed the kids’ girlfriends and boyfriends without so much as a blink. I could tell you about how kind she was when our son developed diabetes, or when Jan had cancer and a life-threatening pulmonary embolus; how much of a rock she was in those times.

Later in life, she and Len moved to South Carolina so that they could enjoy all of their children and grandchildren, who lived within an hour of one another. There was nothing that mattered more to them in this life than that sparkling web of family.

But I think what I want to say is that a mother-in-law like Carma is a living example of grace. A walking, talking object lesson in loving everyone that God puts in your life and making the most of every day, despite trial.

And I also want to say that one of the most important things about a woman like Carma is that even in her passing she was paving a way. Her death has forced her children and grandchildren to contend with that terrible, inevitable thing that is simply part of life. As if she were saying, ‘you see, it’s alright. It just happens. I love you. Now love each other like I loved you, and take care of your grandpa.’

In my own personal theology, I have an image of the mechanisms of death, particularly when time and illness take their toll. I believe that her vision was fading because her eyes had gone ahead of her in preparation for her arrival, so that they would be whole. I believe that her bones ached and her back bent from arthritis because the strongest parts of her had gone on in preparation of her dancing around the throne, simply awaiting the arrival of her true self. And I believe that her voice, a bit strained and weak over time, went on to be ready for her to sing praises to the God and King she loved.

The writer of the book of Hebrews says this: ‘Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us…’

I believe that Carma is now one of those witnesses, one of that cloud of witnesses that watches us and cheers us on, and waits for us. Along with others I have lost, my father, my uncles, my grandmother and grandfather among them.

So dear mother-in-law, dear mother, we love you! Thank you for my darling wife and my amazing children, who would not be mine without you. And thank you for showing me what love looked like. We’ll take care of Len.

Now sing and dance and laugh and praise. And find us a big house by the ocean for that day when reunions are unconstrained by time and death is gone forever.

Devotedly yours,

Edwin, with the good hands

PS: Here is her obituary and her arrangements

https://www.davenportfuneralhome.com/obituaries/Carma-Mahon/