marthandcathy

Long-time Teacher, Family, Struggle to Recover

They say that into every life a little rain must fall. For retired Dallas teacher
Martha Hanson and her daughter Cathy, it’s been a deluge.

The deluge began in 2001, as John Hanson, Cathy’s father and Martha’s
husband of forty-five years, grew weaker. After several hospitalizations,
John passed away September 18, 2001, a week after the terrorist attacks
in New York.

Losing a loved one is hard under any circumstances, but circumstances
soon grew dramatically worse. Cathy’s 19-year-old son Nicholas died
inexplicably barely a year after his grandfather. Cathy, husband Kevin,
and mother Martha confronted one of the most difficult situations any
parent or grandparent could face: the loss of a child.

The troubles weren’t over, though. Kevin Brown, Cathy’s husband of 25
years, lost his father in March of 2003. The following April, five months
after Nick’s untimely death, Kevin himself died suddenly of a heart attack.

This grieving family lost four loved ones in less than two years time. How
do you survive that kind of concentrated loss? Many would have given up
and given in, but Martha and Cathy keep moving forward.

Cathy recalls the trauma of the time. “I realized how little control I have,
how quickly life can change. I’m still trying to figure out how to survive it.”

“I survived through medication,” she says, and through taking “little steps at
a time.”

Life was not always so painful for these long-time residents of the Pleasant
Grove neighborhood in Dallas. Martha, matriarch of the family, was born in
Ferris, Texas, before moving north to the big city.

She spent thirty-five years teaching second grade in the Dallas
Independent School District, twenty-five of them at one school: Richard
Lagow Elementary. Working with children at the school in the Far South
East Dallas area was her love, Martha recalls.

When she began teaching at Lagow, students came from addresses in
Balch Springs and Mesquite, in addition to Dallas. Despite the terrible
tensions over school integration and busing during the era, Martha
remembers no problems between the students in her classroom.

Relations between the teachers weren’t always so easy, she recalled.
What those who remember the busing of children forget is that the
teachers were bused to different schools as well. It was a traumatic
experience for many.

Martha remembers an African-American colleague who admitted to carrying
a handgun to school for the first two years after integration. Yet her own
personal relations with other teachers were excellent, regardless of race.

Martha’s passion for the students she taught was such that she returned to
school herself, to better deal with dyslexic children in her classes. She also
taught English as a Second Language classes, when the influx of Latinos
into DISD accelerated.

She shared her passion for teaching with husband John. Married in 1956,
Martha and John raised three children: Cathy, Clint, and Chris. Through all
the ups and downs of Pleasant Grove and the area at large, the family
remained faithfully rooted in the neighborhood they called home.

John too was a long-time educator, who retired from the Mesquite
Independent School District. John coached football and track in addition to
teaching science. The family jokes that he often brought home the sex
education videos the district supplied, screening them with his family before
he would screen them at school.

“The films didn’t help,” Cathy recalls. “I thought just sleeping in the same
bed with someone was enough to get you pregnant.”

Cathy, middle child and only girl, showed outstanding talent as a dancer.
By age 16, she was receiving contract offers from dance companies in New
York, Chicago, and Paris. Her parents laid down the law, though. They
wouldn’t let her follow her dream until she had her high school diploma in
hand.

The interim proved beneficial. She met her future husband, Kevin, at a
dance class. Kevin was so impressed he went home and told his mother, “I
met an angel.”

Kevin, a gifted dancer in his own right, accepted offers to dance in New
York, but never managed forgot his “angel” back in Pleasant Grove. By
1977, Cathy had her degree from W. W. Samuel High School firmly in
hand. She and Kevin wed in a story-book ceremony at historic East Dallas
Christian Church, then set out to pursue their dancing careers.

“We knew from the start we wanted to marry and have children,” Cathy
adds. After returning to Dallas and starting a dance studio, Kevin and
Cathy were blessed with the arrival of two children, Nicholas and Nicole.

The trauma of the last few years has impacted Cathy and Martha in
different ways. “I was born again when I was ten,” Martha says. “That’s
always been my strength. I survived because I have faith.”

The events have been more shattering for Cathy. She still shudders at the
memory of finding her son near death, of having to do CPR on her own
child. It is every parent’s worst nightmare, she adds.

Being the creative sort, Cathy felt compelled to write about her son’s
passing. As trauma piled on top of trauma, though, the writing project has
been put on the back burner. “I have to recover first,” she says.

Recovery, though, seems to be beginning. Martha says of daughter Cathy,
“She’s about to decide to have a life again.”

What has helped the two survive this process and what has not? Both
women agree that the best form of helping themselves has been helping
others. It doesn’t make the grief go away, both agree, but it helps put it in
perspective.

Martha provided care for an elderly aunt who had heart surgery during the
period. She also helped her oldest son and his wife as they became
parents for the first time. Cathy provides live-in care for a 98 year old
neighbor on the weekends.

In the face of almost unimaginable tragedy, the family has pulled together
and sustained each other. The support system includes Martha and
Cathy, daughter Nicole, and Kevin’s surviving mother and sister.

Certain things have proven less than helpful, Cathy says. She expresses
frustrations about going to counselors who seem unable to deal with the
pain. “When I talk about losing unconditional love, one of them accused
me of not knowing what unconditional love is.”

“I know exactly what it is” she adds. “It’s the love a mother has for a child.”

Others have been more helpful, Martha is quick to add.

So how does someone survive when the deluge comes? You take it a step
at a time. You lean on reliable people and let them lean on you. You make
the time to help others, rather than getting lost in grief.

Cathy makes time to read as well. “Even at the worst points in the
depression,” she says, “I was always able to get out from under it by
reading.”

Into every life a little rain must fall, the old saying goes. Martha and Cathy
Hanson have had more than their share, enough rain to last several
lifetimes. Yet they’ve survived and they are moving forward, in spite of the
pain.

That in itself is a bit of sunshine on a rainy day.

John Cunyus is a free-lance writer in Dallas. His work is available on-line at www.JohnCunyus.com.

by John Cunyus
©2006, All Rights Reserved