A Man Who Inspires People

I'm writing this because I must.

Don and I lost our mother this morning. We knew it was coming and with our families, prayed that it be peaceful and pain free. Both our requests were granted. Lorraine (Gaspard) Dennis was 91, and just didn't wake up this morning. God is good.

I was considering the propriety of writing this... this evening. But I must. If you consider me a writer, it is because my Sweet Lorraine pinched the pennies and brought home a check from the sewing factory making St. Aug affordable. There, I had great and legendary English and Literature instructors, and it was also she who never smothered my passions, or tried to dampen my activism, even though she would always caution me to "be careful who you trust". So, my involvement with Free Southern Theater and the Pan-African movement did little more than raise her eyebrows a couple of times with a repetition of the "trust" doctrine. I wasn't an easy teen to manage, but she never made me feel like a problem. If I don't write again in my life I have to write about my Sweet Lorraine.

Lorraine Dennis would never make the news. Her generosity was quiet. Never heard her mention any help she had given anyone. I would only hear of it from the benefactors. 

Momma's integrity and fairness were in effect all the time. Don and I joke about the fact that if she did something for one of us, she did it for us both. So, if we were young and I hit on Momma for $5 for a date, the next time she saw Don she gave him $5, and vice versa. We soon realized that if she didn't have $10, neither one of us could get $5. We also knew that if we brought home too much change from the corner store we would be sent back to correct the error.

She treated everyone, exactly like she would like to be treated... and she didn't have to like you to do so. That was just her way, she didn't create enemies.  The word most often used to describe Mom is "Sweet", "She is so sweet!" What's funny is that I've heard that from some people I know mom avoided as much as possible... but they didn't know.

Oh, Lorraine and "Dem Sisters". Mom had seven Siblings: Thomas, Shirley, Marion, Audrey, Sylvia, Ronald and Henry Gaspard. Mom was the second oldest of the girls, and oh, those girls. Whoever wasn't there got talked about... and that was fine as long as it was them, but no one else had better say anything about any of them in front of any one of them. They were a mess, but they would do anything for one another.

It just occurred to me that considering me, without considering who Lorraine was is as bad as considering Lorraine without considering who Eugene and Lillian, her parents, were. Eugene was the "sweetest" man I have ever met. I know where Lorraine's facility for being good to people comes from. On the other hand, her mother Lillian was tough and stubborn. Lorraine got through hurricane Betsy, living in half drywalled rooms, while encouraging Don and I as we acquired and used new skills to get our home back together.  If she didn't have confidence in us, we never knew it. and at the same time she toughed it through a difficult marriage.

So while Mom was amazing, she was not spectacular. Never liked being a spectacle, so perhaps that part of her did not translate to me.

You will not meet a finer human being than Lorraine (Gaspard) Dennis, and I am grateful to have been her son.