Her birth name was Stella Amanda McHenry; named for both grandmothers. However, she never liked her given names. So when she was baptized into the Catholic faith in 1919 she took the name Maris-Stella, which she used for the remainder of her life. She was also occasionally known by her nickname “Sam,” a pet name she acquired in her youth because the first initials of her given name spelled S.A.M.

She and Vincent met while she was in nurse’s training at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Hot Springs, SD. Vincent was a patient who had been in a car wreck and spent two months recuperating from a broken pelvis. Stella received her diploma and became a registered nurse on 29 Nov 1922; the next day, Thanksgiving Day, she and Vincent were married. They made their home on The Judd Ranch in the Black Hills, later living in Hot Springs or Custer for brief periods of time. In 1944 they moved to Hood River, Oregon along with Stella's sisters and their families; in 1969 to Hayward, California where they made a home next door to their daughter, Bertice.

After Vincent’s death in 1973 Stella continued to live in Hayward, moving to Winlock, Washington in 1984 to live with her daughter, Bonita and family. A year later Stella suffered a devastating stroke that left her unable to walk. Round-the-clock nursing care required a move to a facility, where she lived the last two years of her life, unable to speak, but understanding perfectly everything that was said to her. She was a woman who had faced every difficult challenge in life and yet managed to have a smile, kind word, and helping hand for others at any moment, she bore this last suffering with great dignity and grace. She was ready for heaven and home, to see loved ones again in a better place, when she died at Rosary Manor at Providence Hospital in Chehalis; her family brought her back to Hermosa to place her next to the love of her life, Vincent.

“I Would Have Chosen No Other” by Bonita Meyers

Mother’s Day has come and gone once again, leaving a store of lovely memories from our children. I’m not yet used to being the older generation, the object of gracious giving from children too soon grown. I have the feelings of things left unplanned and undone.

My mother died three years ago this spring. I don’t look at Mother’s Day cards anymore, or potted plants, or colorful blouses. I still avoid the candy counter, where she delighted in picking out chocolates and the yarn shop, where she chose rams of colorful thread for her crocheting.

There’s a lingering, bittersweet sadness, whenever I think of her. I wouldn’t have wanted her to continue in her poor, worn out body, but the Mom who inhabited that body is sorely missed.

She wasn’t a pretend, story book Mom. She was, at times, temperamental, cranky and sharp-tongued. She was also loving and caring and helpful and tender hearted. She bore five children, raised four of us and loved all her children with a life long faithfulness, which never faltered.

Mom was born in Nebraska, the fourth of 13 children and was taken by covered wagon to Montana when she was a few weeks old, to be raised in the Flathead country.

As the oldest girl, she cooked, washed, cleaned, cared for the younger children, took care of farm animals, worked in the hay fields and fought with her father every fall, in order to go to school. She loved literature.

Once she had completed the eighth grade, there were no further academic studies for my mother, who grieved. She stayed on the family farm until an attack of appendicitis sent her to a hospital in Hot Springs, South Dakota. While healing from surgery, she learned that she could enter training at the hospital, to become a registered nurse and that was the path she chose. She never returned home again.

She did return to living on a farm, though, when she married Pappa. The farm was tucked into a valley in the Black Hills. It was Mom who cared for neighboring families, delivering babies, bandaging up cuts, splinting broken bones and sitting with the ill and dying. That was in addition to all the work a farm required, where there wasn’t running water or electricity.

Mom was a handsome woman, one of those lucky people who become more beautiful as they age. She never thought so, thought, and claimed to be built like a “Russian peasant.” She was of medium height, stocky, large boned and the strongest woman, both physically and mentally, I have ever known. She was energetic, aggressive in doing work which needed doing and brooked no nonsense from kids or chores.

Behind all her caring for us, ran a theme. “Do better than I did. Go farther than I did. Follow the Lord God and He will help you.”

She never achieved her own dream to be a writer, to be a painter, to be a poet. She wrote stories and poems in the air while she worked, but only a few found their way to paper. She did paint for several year in her late 60s and 70s. All her efforts left her dissatisfied.

I guess Mom never really realized how far she came from her beginnings, how she showed her children that you can try your hand at anything, or that love is given … and given again, to other imperfect beings.

She was felled by a stroke at age 85, which took her speech and her ability to walk. For a few weeks she raged, shaking her useless hand with her good hand, keening in sorrow. The rest of us wept out of her sight, but she observed tear stains one day, concern showed in her expressive eyes and from that day on, she patiently bore her limitations with a God given serenity.

She lived for two more years, becoming fragile, translucent and more precious to us that we’d ever imagined. The love in her eyes and her sweet smile will be with us always.

If I’d had a choice of Mothers, I would have chosen no other.