A Legacy of Service and Love

Rita Ethel Trahan Bourgeois

This past week, I had the opportunity to drive home and attend my grandmother's funeral.  As the oldest grandchild, I feel blessed to have so many memories of her while she was still young and vibrant and able-bodied.  For the past decade or so, her physical and mental health has succumbed to old age and Alzheimer's.  Before that, though, she lived a life of service that blessed her children, grandchildren, and everyone who crossed her path.  As a school teacher, she touched countless more lives, and inspired ME to want to be a teacher when I grew up, too.  :)

 Wedding Day

 Top Row -- L to R: Uncle Bif, my mom (Nancy), Aunt Anita, Aunt Susan, Uncle Brian

Bottom Row -- L to R: Uncle Donald, Uncle John

As I've reflected over the last couple of weeks on my memories of her, the thing that stands out the most to me is that she always wanted to do what was right.  Almost all of my happiest childhood memories take place "in the country," visiting grandma and paw paw and playing at their house and with my cousins.  When I think of my grandma, I think of her teaching us how to play card games like Rummy or bourre; I think of her swinging on the porch swing with us for hours and hours, singing songs and playing memory games like "In my suitcase, I packed..."; I think of her sitting in her chair doing crossword puzzles and watching her favorite soap opera (Days of Our Lives); I think of what a great laugh she had and how happy it made me feel when I heard it; and I think of all the many random bits of information I gleaned from her over the years, such as: she loved The Price is Right, but couldn't stand Bob Barker; she hated how big her feet were (size 11) but pointed out that having her second toe longer than the big toe was a sign of nobility (a trait which I share with her :); she loved Keds; and she also loved when the grandkids were over and she had an excuse to order Domino's pizza.

I remember how she always called the fridge, "the icebox," and dinner was what you ate at the midday and supper was what you ate in the evening.  I remember her rocking and rocking and rocking every new little baby in her rocking chair, and softly crooning "do do, do di do, do do, go do do" (to "go do do" is a cajun French term for "go to sleep").  I loved her voice and her accent and the way she said "Houma" (the town she grew up in).  But most of all, I loved how much love I felt from her whenever we came over to visit.

A school report by my cousin, Rachel:

The person I interviewed was my grandma.  Her full name is Rita Ethel Trahan Bourgeois.  She was born on January 11, 1925 on South Down Plantation in Houma, Louisiana.  She has five brothers and three sisters.  She is now married and has seven children.  I think my grandma is great and that is why I chose her for my interview.

When my grandma was a child, she lived on South Down Plantation.  Fun games she played were simple things like "Hide and Seek" in the sugar cane fields.  Her favorite dance is the Jitterbug.  Things back then were really cheap.  For instance, you could buy a Hershey's kiss for a penny.  If you wanted to go to the movies, a child could pay a nickel and an adult would pay a dime.  My grandma went to St. Francis Academy and she graduated in 1941, at 15 years old.  She explained that her childhood was a happy time in her life.  

My grandma's jobs were quite simple.  She went to Holy Cross College and became a nun.  She also became an elementary and high school teacher.  When I asked her why she became a nun she replied, "Because I loved the nuns as a child and always wanted to be just like them."

When I asked her if she would advise a young person to become a teacher, her answer was exactly this, "Absolutely, we will always need teachers."  She is now 83 and retired.  I think that her jobs were really cool.

In her twenties, my grandma bought her first car.  It was a Model T Ford.  As a child her favorite vacation spot was Grand Isle.  As an adult, she explained that she loved to go to Las Vegas.  An important news even the she recalls is the Great Depression and WWII.  A modern convenience that she appreciates the most is indoor plumbing and electricity.  Advice she would give a young person today is, "there is always tomorrow."  I think thats the best advice anyone could ever receive.

My opinion of my grandma would be that she has had a really cool life.  She is a very peaceful person.  I know that she will go to heaven when she does die because she is such a giving person.  I thought that it was cool how she was a nun and that she graduated high school at only fifteen years old.  I would definitely want to be like my grandma when I grow up.  Only I would not want to become a nun or have seven children.  That is what I think of my grandma.

Even though my trip down home was quick -- I drove down last Monday and drove back up on Wednesday after the funeral -- I'm so happy I was able to be there with my mom and some of my siblings and my extended family.  Families are forever, y'all!

 When I saw the news on Saturday of her passing, I wanted to do something to honor her memory.  So, I woke all the little kids up and took them to McDonald's for breakfast.  :)  I don't think that we went all the time, but I do think that the ONLY times I ever had McDonald's breakfasts were with my grandma.  

{McDonald's is also where she introduced me to the best treat of all time -- a caramel sundae with nuts on top.}

To close, I want to include the Eulogy that my uncle gave at her funeral...

Thank you all for coming to pay your respects to our Mom and to show how much she is loved and remembered by all of you.  She was born Rita Ethel Trahan on January 11, 1925 on Southdown Plantation in Houma.  They were very poor and her Dad died the year she was born.  Her oldest brother, Berwick, had to quit school to support the family.  She graduated high school in 1941 then entered the convent to become a nun.  Eight years later when it was almost time to take her vows, she realized that it wasn’t what God wanted her to do, so she returned home and began teaching.  

She was teaching in Schriever School 2 years later where she became friends with 3 of the other teachers:  Lillian Bourgeois, Eloise Bourgeois, and their sister-in-law, Alice Bourgeois.  They took her out in Thibodaux one night where she was introduced to my Dad.  She married him a little over a year later.  They would have celebrated their 65^th anniversary on the 18^th of this month.

She quit teaching when she had her first baby… me.  Then, over the next 9 years, she had 6 more.  When the youngest started school, she went back to Schriever School and taught 4^th grade until she retired.

Looking back, I can see that she was one of the main reasons that we stayed a close family all these years.  But, she did it by always working in the background.  Nothing she ever did was ever showy or pretentious or what she would have called high-phalootin’.  She was always modest and humble.  Her lifelong passion seemed to be to serve, care for, give to, and protect her children.

These are a few of the things sent to me when I asked for some memories from the kids and grandkids.

- She loved listening to Dad’s stories and laughed at them as hard as we did.

- She always wanted to cook as well as Dad’s mother did.  Well, I think she passed her up.  Some of her specialties were crawfish bisque, softshell crabs, and turtle soup.

- Anita loved sitting with Mom while she graded papers.  She would let her help and it made her want to be a teacher.  She remembers how Mom used to place stacks of folded clothes on the stairs for each of us to be brought up when we went to bed.  Anita liked it because if she was mad at any of us, she could kick their stack down on her way up.  She used to sit in front of Mom in church so she could hear her sing.

- Mom’s favorite holiday was Easter.  Our kitchen table was spectacular on Easter morning when we came downstairs.  It was a work of love, and it probably kept her up most of the night.

- We all remember supper times, the best meal of the day.  Mom would always eat last to make sure we all had enough.  If it was all gone, she would make herself a sandwich or sometimes do without.

- When John broke his arm trying out for football, Mom was actually happy because it kept him off the team where she just knew he would have gotten hurt much worse.

- I got many notes from the grandkids, but the one thing that was common in them all was that Mom and Dad’s house was their all-time favorite place to go to in the summertime.

- Mom’s mother spoke a lot of French when she was growing up, so Mom often threw out French expressions that none of us could translate, but we got the general idea of what they meant.  So, we often heard things like:

Sha-Baa!  Cuckoo wesch a-monion!  Gris gris pa-tah-sah!  Fud-uhzz au’bah-dah!

But the funniest thing she used to say was in English, and we couldn’t laugh at it, at least not out loud in front of her.  Whenever all 7 of us were together and Mom was trying to get us to cooperate on the job at hand, we would often stretch her patience to the breaking point.  Then, she would have to raise her voice to get us straight, which always worked since we knew we had gone too far.  Then, right after that, she regretted having done it and would blurt out, “Well, you happy?  You made me mad!”

- She hated to see her kids get hurt or sick, but when we were, that’s when she really shined. She’s the one that stayed by all 7 of us through chicken pox, measles, colds and flus, mumps, poison ivy, ringworms, sunburns, etc.  Some of my most precious times were when I was crippled or sick and had to stay home by myself with Mom.  She became super Mom.  She would work herself into a tizzy to make sure we had every comfort she could think of.

- She was always self-sacrificing and patient when she was suffering, but the hardest trials for Mom were whenever she thought her family was in danger.  That’s when she was really tested.  It turned out that she didn’t have a perfect family.  Something was wrong with us.

- There were many times when Dad would get us outside for projects that involved ladders, ropes, meat hooks, housetops, or especially tall trees (more often than you might think), and then Mom would get really nervous and start suggesting other ways of doing it that might not get anybody killed.  But, as long as Dad didn’t stop, we didn’t stop.  When that didn’t work, she would appeal directly to my Dad:  “Lester!  Oh Lester, please, don’t!”  If he still didn’t stop (and he almost never did), then she would say, “Well then, wait.  Just wait.  I’m going inside.” Then she would disappear into the house and not come out until we were done.  I was always relieved when she went in because I didn’t like seeing her worry so much.  

- Dad taught us to make kites, which were a lot of fun.  When I was pretty young, Dad used to like to send up parachutes when the wind was good.  It just so happened that the best parachute material was a women’s scarf, preferably silk, but a good polyester one worked, too.  I’d don’t know how many beautiful scarves Mom lost to that.  But it got dangerous when the kites got bigger.  It started with a 17 foot one and ended with a 50 foot.  Mom fretted and worried through every one.  

- She also hated it when Dad would pull us through the roads in the cane field behind his truck on an old piece of plywood or cardboard.  Or, when we found a flat piece of wood on Grand Isle and he would pull us behind his boat in the gulf.

- But of all the things we did, she hated fireworks the most, especially cherry bombs.  Dad kept a supply of them for experimental purposes.  He was really good with a slingshot and could shoot a cherry bomb exactly where he wanted it.  We also shot D batteries out of a water pipe straight up maybe a few hundred feet and if we would lose sight of one, we’d have to run under the shed roof.  We used a bigger pipe to shoot a cue ball through the double wall of the barn just to see if we could.  Mom started hiding the cherry bombs while Dad was at work.  Every time he found them, she would hide them better.  But, he never asked her where they were and she never said anything when he found them.  So, as you can imagine, Mom had to stay inside the house pretty often.  Kids can be very unsympathetic when they’re young, can’t they Dad?

- Mom was never outspoken about anything, but those that were close enough to her knew that God was always very important to her, even at a very young age.  To this day, I believe that because of the low opinion she had of herself, she held back a lot of things about God that would have liked to share with us.

- She taught us our prayers and sometimes prayed with us.  She always tried to do what she thought God wanted her to do.  The way she served and sacrificed for others was very Christ-like.  So, I know that Mom wouldn’t want a memorial for her to exclude that part of her life.  So, I’d like to honor her in a way that might help some of you want to know more about her God.

Our Mom is finally able to see the God that was so important to her all her life.  She doesn’t want any of those she loved to end up where the rich man is.  So, if she could, she would advise you all to “hear Moses and the prophets”.  (That is, not only read the bible, but believe it and follow the way to Abraham’s side.)

So, if someone does follow this advice, what does the bible say the way to heaven is?

John 5:39 "You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me.  (Jesus)

So, what is the way to heaven?

John 14:6 Jesus said to him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.

The way is a person, Jesus, the Son of God.  And this (hold up the bible) is where our Mom would tell you to find out about Him if she could speak to us from where she is today.   

I want to thank everybody again for coming to be with us today.

My grandma's hand in my mom's hand.