Tuesday’s Tribute: Florence Wendland

Jay and Deb recently launched a new writ­ing exer­cise, Tuesday’s Trib­ute, urg­ing blog­gers to pause and remem­ber that it is not all about them. Rather, each Tues­day, par­tic­i­pants “shine a light on some­one else.”

In this first edi­tion, I share with you the trib­ute I wrote on the occa­sion of the death of my client, Flo­rence Wend­land, an extra­or­di­nary woman who loved her old­est child uncon­di­tion­ally and in the face of obsta­cles, includ­ing the deri­sion and bit­ter­ness of some of her other chil­dren and grand­chil­dren, that would have crushed a per­son of lesser character.

I called my client, Flo­rence Wend­land, who died in 2006 at the age of 83, “Mom.” My own mother knew that and did not object to my bestow­ing that term of endear­ment upon another woman. Per­haps it does not seem appro­pri­ate for a lawyer to bestow such an inti­mate nick­name upon a client within the bounds of a pro­fes­sional rela­tion­ship. But we spent six long years fight­ing side by side to pre­vent her cher­ished son, Robert, from being dehy­drated. And she came to be like a sur­ro­gate mother to me.

My clients: Flo­rence and her daugh­ter, Rebekah Vinson.

She was an amaz­ing woman, com­pletely devoted to her chil­dren, grand­chil­dren, great-grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and friends. She mod­eled uncon­di­tional love, sup­port, encour­age­ment, and enthu­si­asm. She never once believed that she would lose her bat­tle to save Robert. She never once let me get dis­cour­aged, even though it was my job to keep her spir­its up.

A weaker per­son would have given up. After all, even though Robert was not in a coma, per­sis­tent veg­e­ta­tive state or suf­fer­ing from the rav­ages of Alzheimer’s dis­ease or demen­tia, he suf­fered a evere brain injury. And it had to be dev­as­tat­ing for her to see her once strong, healthy, 40-something-year-old, hard-drinking, hard-working son sit­ting in a wheel­chair unable to speak, par­a­lyzed on one side, blind in one eye, wear­ing a dia­per … while every­one involved in the case attempted to fig­ure out just how much of what was going on around him he actu­ally under­stood. But if you had seen Flo­rence inter­act­ing with Robert, you would never have known it. Because she was the epit­ome of the per­son who sees the glass half full rather than half empty.

At the memo­r­ial ser­vice for Robert in July 2001.

That was her baby boy, her first-born, her beloved son in that wheel­chair — and she never let any­one, espe­cially Robert, for­get it.

You couldn’t help but love a woman who would answer the phone and, at the sound of your voice inquire, “How are you, dearie?” You couldn’t help but hug her back when she greeted you in per­son, perched up on her tip­toes, with a big hug.

You couldn’t help but admire and be aston­ished by a woman in her 70’s who deter­minedly sat in a court­room day after day through an exhaus­tively pro­tracted trial, lis­ten­ing to peo­ple talk about how her beloved boy would be bet­ter off dead. She endured shock­ingly spite­ful tes­ti­mony from another son, Michael Hofer, and her grand­daugh­ter, Katie Wend­land, both of whom shunned her. Remark­ably, she turned the other cheek, talked about how much she loved both of them, and pro­claimed that her door would be wide open to them should they decide to come visit and set things right in their rela­tion­ship with her.

When I read Hofer’s name among the sur­vivors listed in her obit­u­ary, I won­dered if he or any of Robert’s three chil­dren ever did set things right with Flo­rence before she left this earth. If they didn’t, they will have to live with their choice. And from my per­spec­tive, they are the unequiv­o­cal losers.

Flo­rence had a deep, unwa­ver­ing faith in God. She wasn’t over­bear­ing about it and she did not make it a habit to preach to oth­ers. She just lived a quiet life that exem­pli­fied her beliefs.

She spent exten­sive time at the hos­pi­tal with Robert, read­ing him devo­tion­als, Bible sto­ries, and singing famil­iar hymns to him. She related that she’d tell him, “It’s OK, Robert. Jesus will take care of you. I know things are rough right now, but they’re going to get bet­ter.” She swore that he under­stood every word and would some­times weep when she vis­ited, but stopped when she spoke those words of com­fort to him.

She was cared for and watched over by the staff at Lodi Memo­r­ial Hos­pi­tal, a ded­i­cated group of pro­fes­sion­als who had to out­wardly dis­play neu­tral­ity through­out the legal pro­ceed­ings. Like me, they adopted her (and vice versa). I remem­ber who she beamed one Christ­mas as she told me about the present she received from the staff: A large con­tainer of bus tokens they had pur­chased for her as a group.

You see, although Robert’s wife and chil­dren stopped vis­it­ing him alto­gether in 1996, Flo­rence spent at least three days per week at the hos­pi­tal with him, rid­ing the pub­lic bus all the way from her Stock­ton home in the morn­ing and back again each after­noon about 4:00 p.m.

Aside from when Robert died, there were only two times when I saw her become depressed and appear to momen­tar­ily lose hope.

Flo­rence with Robert’s paint­ing. After she showed the paint­ing on “Good Morn­ing, Amer­ica,” Robert’s wife, Rose, threat­ened to bar Flo­rence from vis­it­ing with her son at Lodi Memo­r­ial Hospital.

One was the day that the real “Dr. Death,” Ronald Cran­ford, tes­ti­fied dur­ing the trial. I warned Flo­rence it was going to be a rough after­noon because I needed to elicit excru­ci­at­ingly unpleas­ant infor­ma­tion from Cran­ford about the phys­i­o­log­i­cal process of dying when the deliv­ery of life-sustaining food and flu­ids ceases. I sug­gested that she not remain in the court­room. But she wouldn’t budge. She said that she wanted to hear every­thing. As Cran­ford droned on dis­pas­sion­ately, I could see that she was becom­ing dis­traught. She wasn’t alone … the judge had to clear the court­room to let observers recover and regroup, and my own hus­band was phys­i­cally ill for days after­ward. But after that brief break, she was right back in her place next to me.

The other time was when Rose Wendland’s attor­ney threat­ened to have her barred from vis­it­ing Robert at the hos­pi­tal because Flo­rence dis­played a paint­ing Robert made in ther­apy at the hos­pi­tal dur­ing her appear­ance on “Good Morn­ing, Amer­ica.” For a few min­utes she was des­per­ately afraid that she would not be able to visit with Robert. But when I assured her that, if Rose had the audac­ity to fol­low through on that threat, we would con­vene the press con­fer­ence to end all press con­fer­ences — and she could bring the paint­ing! — she quickly became her feisty, scrappy self again.

It was fit­ting that it was Flo­rence who was at Robert’s bed­side when he (allegedly) died of pneu­mo­nia in July 2001, even as the Cal­i­for­nia Supreme Court was mulling his fate. She told me that just moments before Robert died, she asked him, “Can you see the angels, Robert?” and encour­aged him to join them. So I won­dered when I learned that she had died if she saw those angels as she crossed over into eter­nity — and if Robert was there to greet her. I hope so on both counts, and that she is reunited with the son she fought so valiantly and tire­lessly to save.

Rest in peace, “Mom.” You’ve earned it. I am hon­ored to say that I knew, loved, learned from, and fought along­side you.

Also pub­lished at Robert’s Legacy: Con­ser­va­tor­ship of Wend­land.

Thanks for vis­it­ing Col­lo­quium … hope you will return soon! You can sub­scribe to Col­lo­quium by click­ing here!

Tech­no­rati Tags: Tuesday’s Trib­ute

On the Same Topic:

• Tuesday’s Trib­ute: Friend­ship Lost
• Tuesday’s Trib­ute: #1Son
• Tuesday’s Trib­ute: The Old Campus
• Tuesday’s Trib­ute: Music Teachers
• Tuesday’s Trib­ute: Clint’s Fans