From 1969 to 2026, this world held within it one of the purest and most delightful souls ever to walk its ground.
A sixth-generation Texan who hailed from a family that had been here since the founding of the short-lived republic, Anita Hochdorf (née McGuffin) derived her pride less from the family that came before her and more from the family she started after. Possessing a rare spirit that was equal parts tender and guileless, my mother frequently told me that from the time she was a little girl she dreamt of motherhood just as often as she dreamt one day of being a good wife to a good man.
Indefatigable in her convictions—which were many—mom held two particular convictions close to her heart which were 1) that beauty was important, real, not relative, and a vital aspect of G-d’s universe, and 2) that from early on in a person’s life, they had to aggressively guard their innocence in a world determined to take it away. As a result of both of these convictions, my mother was elegant. Elegant and kind. A West Texas Grace Kelly. A June Cleaver in a world of Roseannes. She despised vulgarity. She hated all things lewd and crass.
There was no mother on earth better than mine, which is a very bold claim to make, but one that I make not because she was my mother and most sons who lose a mother go on to say their deceased mother was the best ever out of a sense of mourning and loss. No no, ho no, I say she was the best mother on earth (and know it in my heart) because she was the mother who every childhood friend my sister and I had wanted as their mother. Other kids at summer camp, slumber parties, and field trips would compare my mom to theirs and tell me how lucky I was to have mine. And I’d always nod, “I know.”
But as a little boy, I didn’t know. Not fully.
In fact it wasn’t until I was around 19 or 20 that I came to realize not everyone’s house had an aesthetic or specific design. Not everyone planned a theme for each room. Every home that dad, my sister, and I ever lived in flourished under mom’s discerning eye, and I recall each decade exactly as she decorated them: Shabby Chic in the early-2000s. Mid-Century Modern in the 10s. By the 20s, French Country. Though there were a few recurring staples in all three that were not inherent features of the decorative schemes themselves, but rather unique to her. Mom had a fondness for golden paint, rustic furnishings, framed depictions of fairy tale creatures, and asymmetrical floral placements that gave each corner and tabletop “wildness”. She mastered the skill of making spaces eclectic without sliding into kitsch, and her decorative dislikes were also well-known: Raggedy Annes on the soffits, cinnamon candles, Live Laugh Love, “Olive Garden kitchens”, the use of crackle past the year 2002, wall art with the Eiffel Tower, and anything minimalist were abominations.
Other small details stand out as I recollect with an adult mind things that, as a boy, I didn’t pick up on or adequately appreciate. How mom never failed to light up at the sight of pink peonies. How I never witnessed a selfish moment from her. How she never suffered a single loss of temper. How I never heard her say a nasty or cruel word. Not once. Even when others had it coming. Did she ever sin? If so, there were no witnesses.
But though mom never sinned, this didn’t keep her mischievous side at bay.
When she and my father were dating, they were riding together in the car and dad said “I have a horrible headache.” And mom replied “Hold on, I think I have something in my purse you can take… yep, here, take this.” So dad held out his hand and popped what mom gave him in his mouth and swallowed it, and mom started giggling and he said “What?”, “You didn’t actually take that did you?”, “Well yeah.”, “It was a button.”
She played a similar trick on me many years later when I was 20. I was watching TV one night and she walked over and handed me a tiny egg and told me it was one of those chocolate Cadbury eggs, and only when I bit down and felt a gooey strangeness on my tongue did she laugh and tell me it was a baby quail from my uncle’s brooder.
She loved thunderstorms, Charleston Chews, and Martina McBride.
She loved desert landscapes because they reminded her of childhood, and she loved counting deer in the Texas Hill Country.
Fran Drescher made her laugh in The Nanny, as did Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality.
She could quote Home Alone 2 backwards and forwards (and now so can my sister and I, because we watched it every Christmas: “Two scoops of ice scream sir?”, “Two? Make it three. I’m not driving.”)
Her recurring nightmare—that we as a family would always chuckle at—was one where she was being chased by the Incredible Hulk (who in her dream was evil), and she had to hide in random places to avoid being found. This nightmare dated back to her childhood in the 70s when Lou Ferrigno played the Hulk on TV. Knowing this, about six or seven years ago, I decided that my birthday gift to mom would be to get Lou Ferrigno himself to make a video telling her that she didn’t have to be afraid of the Incredible Hulk anymore. This was easy enough to do, because Lou Ferrigno was on a website called Cameo (where celebrities make short videos for people who pay). And so after FaceTiming mom and texting her the prerecorded video, I got to witness her eyes widen and her mouth fall open in joyful shock as the Incredible Hulk made peace with her at last: “Hi Anita! Your son told me all about the bad dreams you’re having involving me and the big green monster, and I just wanna say… NO MORE FEAR. Happy birthday from the nicest most good-hearted Hulk around!” When mom started to cry at the end and asked me “How did you do that?”, I admit I fibbed a little (okay maybe a lot) and said “I know some people.” I knew no people.
Moving beyond the small details and into the nature of who a person truly is deep down, my mother had a big heart for Africa and for Africans; and poured that heart into helping all the impoverished women and children she met over there any way she could. Tanzania was, for her, a home away from home and a calling.
Above all, she was a devout Christian who loved Jesus (and tried her best to get me to love him). Spontaneous prayer was as natural to her as blinking or breathing, and her Bibles were filled from Genesis to Revelation with notes and drawings that breathed life into ancient stories that for her were ever new.
Which leads to perhaps the biggest part of who she was outside of being an amazing mother and wife… she was a great American artist. Deserving of fame but too humble to ever take steps to receive it. Deserving of wealth but too kind to ever charge money for any requested project.
Here is some of her artwork, all done by hand with colored pens and pencils and brushes:
(Mind you none of this was traced, none of this was stenciled. All of this went straight from her brain to whatever wall, canvas, or paper she was working on at the time.)
Yet even her magnificent illustrations paled in comparison to her beautiful effortless handwriting. Most of mom’s handwriting can be found in her journals (which I obviously won’t share because those weren’t meant to be shared), but there’s a letter that she wrote to me either before I went to Afghanistan or before I visited Israel for the first time. You don’t see handwriting like this anymore. It was common a hundred years ago, but these days it might as well be Elvish.
At 35 I’m a scared little boy again; face disfigured with hideous tears, hands shaking and clenching.
I wish I could say that my faith has been a source of comfort. That my knowledge that mom is in paradise is enough to keep me from grief. But just over a month after her funeral there’s only despair. My sister and I now live in a world without our mother, and will continue to live in a world without our mother for the rest of our lives.
What memories, I wonder, will nurture us in sleepless nights? What stories will we tell her grandchildren, and our grandchildren of her? Videos of her exist that capture her voice, her expressions, her laughter, her wit, her shining youthful skin, her benevolent eyes… but can they ever contain her essence? The vital core of who she was? Her spirit? I suspect not. The image is never the substance. People only inhabit the earth once.
There’s a sentiment that’s taken hold of me in the month since her passing: “My mother is gone, the world can now do with itself whatever it wants. Whatever horrid schemes are perpetrated against others and upon us, none of those things will now befall a woman who was always too pure to be here in the first place. With her now safe in the arms of the Lord, I care not what human beings do to each other; as the one who I loved more than anyone else will never again be touched by it.”
This is a wicked thought of course, and it’s the opposite of the reaction she would have wanted in the aftermath of her passing: Greater kindness. Greater understanding. Greater service. Greater investment in the lives and fates of others. She would never have wanted her death to result in a drawing-inward, a shriveling, a callous disregard. To do that would not be to honor her.
There’s no way to neatly conclude a eulogy like this. No way to tie it up in a pretty bow. ALS is a cruel and horrific disease. Your body becomes a prison holding a perfectly sound mind that can do nothing to break out. After losing the use of all your limbs and your ability to speak and swallow, you remain trapped inside yourself until your diaphragm can no longer contract and you essentially suffocate.
When mom was alive and before she was diagnosed, she would often tell me that her worst fear was being buried alive. She was claustrophobic and absolutely terrified of being confined in tight spaces where you couldn’t move or break free.
I never dared make the observation to her that she most definitely had already made to herself and in turn not shared with me: that ALS was being buried alive, just without the dirt.
Thankfully mom averted the worst that the disease was capable of. In the days leading up to her last moments she still had the use of her left arm, her left leg, her voice, and her ability to eat. When she died, she died in the company of her husband—my father—who never once left her side, just as he swore he never would four decades ago when he was 18 and she was 16. Every member of the family got to say their goodbyes (a blessing we were fully aware not everybody gets to enjoy before loved ones are taken), and I can live in relative peace knowing that my last words to my mother were “I love you. I will always love you. You were the best mother a boy could ever ask for.”
In the hour preceding these last words, I had decided to read a scripture by her bedside which served partly as a benediction and partly as a prayer.
As I was opening my Bible to Psalm 23, my eyes fell upon passages in Psalm 22 whose poetic language described “symptoms” that were strikingly similar to ALS:
My life ebbs away
all my bones are disjointed.
My heart is like wax
melting within me.
My vigor dries up like a shard
My tongue cleaves to my palate
You commit me to the dust of death.
And so I read, in full, as mom teetered between two worlds:
My life ebbs away
all my bones are disjointed.
My heart is like wax
melting within me.
My vigor dries up like a shard
My tongue cleaves to my palate
You commit me to the dust of death.
[…]
But the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures
and leads me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul.
He guides me along the paths of righteousness
for His name’s sake.
Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me.
Your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil
and my cup overflows.
Surely your goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.