Margot Pickard - September 27, 1935 - December 9, 2015
Preface: The Tao that is Written is Not the Real Tao.
She was a child of war; born in Karlsruhe, Germany, prior to WWII. Stories of her childhood are permeated with the inconceivable truths of the devastation of War.
She was there when the Jews were taken away. Her brother was sent off to Leningrad, and he never came back. Death and devastation were all around her. None of it could she understand.
She tells of searching for bombshell fragments among the ruins of the city*, and hiding in the dark of the bomb shelters as the earth rumbled. Imagine the constant danger of random death, or the stink of the dead and of the unwashed living.
It was the World that she was born into.
By the time she met my Dad, a US Soldier, she'd been powerfully shaped by a life lived never far from desperation and risk.
Then she came to America. *** Very much like a Refugee ***
Past the Statue of Liberty, and across the country on a bus, she made her way to Washington State, where she would spend the rest of her life.
She became a beacon of positivity. From a place where she had nothing, she came to a country where a life could be maintained and built upon.
Her family, friends, home, and town grew around her, and her language slowly turned to English. She'd seen the worst in the World, and now she found the best. As importantly, she learned that there was simply no point in hate, fear, and bitterness. These things don't save a person from hardship or loss; but hope, goodwill, and a laugh can ease the pain of self and others.
Through the tragedy of the loss of a daughter, various economic troubles over the years, and eventually the loss of her husband, she always determined to call on her "German" strength, and to find places of enjoyment with those that she met and loved.
She Enjoyed her life.
She was mischievous and adventurous, and seemed to gravitate toward joyful "Antics," much to my Dad's chagrin. The "Rules" didn't quite mean the same to her as they might to others. In part, this was because, to her, the very words of the language being spoken meant something slightly different than to others.
Stories are told, to the laughter of family and friends, about a life filled with examples of confusion at the checkout line, unfortunate interpretations of signs and situations, and many other events that could develop at the moment of one of her many unprepared-for lessons in English. Classic are those stories that surround her early experiences in driving a car. Police were involved on several occasions, but the unafraid woman with the thick German accent could always get away with it**. In fact, she made many friends in this process, and left in her wake many smiles and happy people.
She enjoyed Bellingham, and spent a good portion of life walking the trails around Fairhaven and Lake Padden. She loved the flowers, trees, and birds in the yard. She loved a good murder mystery, a clean house, and a little dog. Most of all she loved my Dad, and her family around her.
She’s seen her kids and grandkids through good times and bad. She had a kind strength that tended to rub off on a person; her way was so clearly a good way; even when she might say “get in trouble,” “have fun!” She wanted people to be HAPPY in what they were doing; whatever it is that that happened to be.
Whatever it was that my Dad provided for her (so many things), she magnified. She managed the setting where his effort could be transformed and given to the real lives of the family and others. She was the classic matriarch, in the greatest sense of the word.
And she never sat down on a holiday.
She maintained positivity until the end, and the end was peaceful; aided by a morphine drip.
Her presence is now maintained by all of the people that she impacted in her life. She reverberates through “us” in ways that we can’t comprehend, and it makes me smile.
*In truth, what was probably happening is that she was told by someone in a uniform to search through the collapse for the critical metals that would be recycled into the German war effort. Children would have been considered fairly expendable.
**The world is changed now. No way would anybody (especially one with an accent) get away with some of these things.