“To one who bears the sweetest name, and adds luster to the same. Long life to her for there’s no other, who takes the place of my dear mother.” ~ Unknown
One Mother’s Day many years ago, I gave my mother a resin wall plaque bearing that inscription.
Last Thursday, as I held the plaque in my hands, my mind drifted back to that time and I recalled the great love and devotion that enveloped both the giver and the recipient.
Tears welled up in my eyes.
At 11:19 on the previous night, my mama, Shirley Ann Wheeler McFerrin, moved suddenly to her eternal home in Heaven, leaving her family to recall the beauty and happiness that her 83 years and 17 days of life breathed into ours.
Her passing in emergency room 2 at Tallahatchie General Hospital was unexpected, the apparent result of acute liver failure, cause unknown. Mama had no medical history of liver problems.
It was just her time to go.
Those of us who believe in the promise of eternal life through repentance and the saving grace of Jesus Christ trust what the scripture says in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
A couple of years ago, Mama told me, “I know we’re going to die. We’re not going to live forever down here. But if we’ve made ourselves ready, we’ll have a home to go to. That’s what I strive to do.”
During another conversation not long ago, she said to me, “Time is flying by. The only thing that’s left for us to do is to try to keep ourselves ready to go meet the Lord when it’s our time.”
I replied, “We don’t know when our time will come.”
“No, we don’t,” she said. “We live minute to minute.”
Mama’s time, her final minute, arrived at 11:19 p.m. on Jan. 17, when she received the call from Heaven to come home.
I know she’s there today — happy, healthy and whole, with my dad, her parents, four siblings, other relatives and friends, and with the God and Jesus she loved so much.
That is a great comfort. I have shed many tears and will shed many more, but through faith I believe that this is only goodbye for now, not forever.
— * —
Mama was the daughter of a sharecropping father, Ovid Gerald Wheeler, and Sallie Mae Tolar Wheeler.
She was born at Swan Lake in Tallahatchie County but spent much of her early life at Rome in Sunflower County.
Her father earned a hard but honest living providing for his family from the land. As Mama grew older, she, too, sometimes worked in the fields, picking cotton in season when school was not in session.
Shirley Ann Wheeler
Every now and then, she would pick enough cotton to earn a dollar bill. “We thought we were rich!” she said.
Following the lead of her mother, Mama became a seamstress at an area factory.
After a courtship of about six months, in April 1963 she married John Robert Clayton McFerrin, of the Oak Grove community near Charleston.
In November 1964, Dr. T.T. Lewis was attending physician when Mama gave birth to me at Tallahatchie General. She later miscarried another baby, and I was destined to be an only child.
My blue-collar parents labored long, hard hours in several area factories over the years to keep a roof over our heads and to help provide an opportunity for their son to become the first member of the family to attend college.
Their primary devotion was to God and family.
They were members of Walnut Grove Church of God of Prophecy in the Oak Grove community and then, after the congregation moved into a new building miles away, Springhill Church of God of Prophecy in the Spring Hill community. April would have marked Mama’s 60th year of church membership.
Mama had been church pianist for 54½ years.
As a child, she watched and admired a blind lady who played piano at Gooden Lake Baptist Church and developed a longing to play.
The closest Mama ever came to having lessons was watching and picking up pointers from her niece, Linda Worsham, now Linda Todd of Charleston, who did have formal piano lessons.
In August 1969, the new pastor of Walnut Grove, Bennie Goodwin, asked Mama to take the job as church pianist. She was the only person at the little country church who had any exposure to a piano.
She pecked for a while, but eventually honed her skills with the help of a used piano that Daddy purchased for her from Gunn Furniture Store. While he worked night shift in Grenada, Mama passed many evenings playing music, singing songs and, as she once said, “talking to the Lord asking for Him to give me the talent.”
Mama could not read a single note, but she had an ear for the music and learned the basic finger configurations for the major chords. As song leader and soloist, she also could spice it up a bit. I will never forget those sweet sounds — some of which, thankfully, I recorded. They all are etched into my memory.
Somehow along the way, some of her piano abilities rubbed off on her son, who was honored to play and sing, at times through a voice cracking with emotion, at her funeral on Sunday after reading a little eulogy — “little” being the operative word.
It is impossible to capture and relate, with complete justice, 83 years — more than 31,000 days and nights — of a person’s life and living.
Mama worked hard, prayed hard, worshipped hard, played the piano hard, sang hard, loved tenderly with all of her heart and was as proud as she could be of her family and friends.
Just like Daddy has been for nearly 18 years, Mama is absent in body. But she will always be present in spirit.
I love you, Mama.
See you soon.
Shirley Ann Wheeler McFerrin and her son, Clay McFerrin
Clay McFerrin has been editor and publisher of his hometown newspaper, The Sun-Sentinel, for 41 years, and the son of Shirley Ann Wheeler McFerrin for 59 years, two-and-a-half months ... and counting.
