Author: Sharron Burnett

We were all devastated after the death of my mother-in-law, Mary Isabell Fisk Gonzalez. Most especially sorrowful was my father-in-law, Julio. He was very lonely, but learned how to carry on with his life by working out at the gym and playing bridge a few times each week. He slowly replaced his grief with a determination to make the best of his new situation, but it was always obvious that he was very lonely even with family attempting to fill his void. Little did we know that in the twilight of his life he would meet a lovely woman named Janell who would help him to be happy once again. 

Sixteen years ago he introduced us to this beautiful and vibrant woman who would become a new member of our family. Janell was a most interesting person. She was born in El Dorado, Arkansas but spent much of her youth living in east Texas during a time when the discovery of oil in the area was booming and famous performers came to her neck of the woods to entertain the men and women working in that industry. Her beauty, outgoing personality and kindness made her an attractive young women indeed. She soon married a World War II veteran and over time gave birth to four beautiful children, Frances, Ann, Don, and Scott. She would be a proud mother for the remainder of her life, always regaling anyone who would listen with descriptions of how bright, successful and wonderful they had all become. 

Janell and her children lived for a time in Paris where she soaked in the history and art of that romantic city. She collected paintings and antiques and explored every corner of the City of Light. She enjoyed her time there and lit up with joy whenever she spoke of her adventures. She enjoyed the markets and the cooking and became quite the chef in her own right. 

Long after her children were grown and she had spent years as a single woman, Janell and my father-in-law met each other at a dance. She was such a strikingly beautiful vision with her youthful appearance and engaging smile that it is little wonder that he noticed her and fell for her quickly. Just after the infamous hurricane Rita threatened Houston, Texas the two of them announced that they were engaged and were quickly married after that. 

Janell fit in well with our family. She and my mother shared stories of being single moms and they developed a kinship that was sweet to observe. Best of all she managed to help my father-in-law smile and laugh again. They were like young newlyweds taking trips to Las Vegas, Puerto Rico and Europe. They loved going out to eat and being with family. 

Janell redecorated my father-in-law’s home with her colorful flair and brought in the lovely things that she had collected during her lifetime. She gave wonderful parties and pampered my father-in-law with all of his favorite foods while carefully adhering to his diabetic dietary restrictions. The two of them had fun together sitting on the deck in back of their house and visiting with the neighbors. Sometimes they even babysat with Janell’s great granddaughter who delighted them both with her innocent spirit. 

I often joked with friends that I got fashion tips from Janell. She really knew how to dress and look like a million dollars no matter where she was going. She and I talked about good books and great places to shop for bargains while my father-in-law and husband worked on the computer. I felt very comfortable with Janell from the very beginning and before I knew it, I realized that she and Mike’s dad had been married for sixteen years.

I understood that Janell had some heart trouble, but with extra care she had managed to forestall any big problems for quite some time. Then her health began to wane..She spent more and more time in the hospital but she remained hopeful that there might be some treatment that would help her improve. Sadly that was not the case. It was so difficult to witness this once vibrant and optimistic woman being sidelined by her illness. 

Janell was a very Christian woman. She was a long time member of Second Baptist Church and had even played featured roles in that congregation’s annual Christmas Pageant. The photos of her in costume are as stunning as she always was in person. She and I often spoke about her love of God and her belief that one day there would be a very special place for her in heaven. She had grown very weary of her life of pain and felt God’s call for her to go home.

On June 2, 2022, Janell quietly passed away at the Houston Hospice. She was a good and godly woman, a mother who adored her children, a grandmother who doted on her grandchildren and a wife who loved deeply. We will all miss her smile and her compassion. I feel certain that she is now at peace and that her soul is as beautiful as her outward appearance has always been. Rest in peace, sweet Janell, and thank you for taking care of our Papa over the years. 

I grew up with music all around me. I remember accompanying my mother and father on Saturdays when Daddy would purchase new 45 rpm records for his collection. Back then we would go inside a booth to preview the recordings before purchasing them. My father was partial to classical music, so that was what I mostly heard echoing through our house when I was small. 

Each afternoon when my dad returned from work he would take off his suit, replace it with a pair of khaki work pants, put one of his records on the turntable and lie down on the sofa to read. The music of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky and other brilliant composers would play so often that I was able to hum along with the melodies and anticipate the stanzas that I enjoyed the most. After my father died our mother used the music as background whenever we were studying or cleaning the house.

My brothers and I often created skits that seemed to capture the spirit of the symphonies that played on the little RCA Victrola that played each piece. We galloped to the William Tell Overture and rode on an imaginary flying carpet to Scheherazade. We danced our way through the dusting, mopping and folding of laundry without realizing how much more fun the music made our chores. To this very day I work best with music in the background.

As we grew older, so did our tastes in music. We began to purchase our own modern day favorites which often replaced our father’s cherished classical symphonies. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones found a new home on the stereo that our mother purchased to play our long playing vinyls. Our Saturday morning work sessions were more hip than those of our childhood. We no longer pretended to be characters in an operatic play, but only true aficionados of albums like Pet Sounds from the Beach Boys. 

To our great delight our mother appeared to enjoy and appreciate our music as much as we did. Over time she evolved even more by embracing the Bee Gees and Donna Summer. When my little girls spent the night with her she would turn the living room into a discotheques and dance with them for hours. They still delight in the memory of long evenings rocking with the music and sipping on Coke floats during restful intermissions.

In the eighties I adapted to the newer music of groups like Depeche Mode and I evolved into a groupie of all things Michael Jackson. Much as when I was a child I spent Saturday mornings blaring my music throughout the house as I cleaned and did laundry before running my weekly errands. Sometimes I switched to soundtracks from movies or even went back to my roots and played my favorite classical pieces. Somehow the music energized me and made work that might otherwise have been drudgery become almost enjoyable. 

These days most of my music comes from streaming. I listen to hours of traditional Christmas music as I take days to decorate my home. I have preferences for certain styles of music depending on what I am doing. In my mind there are appropriate sounds for painting, writing, studying, cleaning the house, gardening, traveling and going to sleep. I carefully choose great works to accompany me through whatever I may be doing. Music is as integral to my life as eating. It lifts my spirits and comforts and energizes me. 

There are some melodies that remind me of people that I have known or places that I have been. I think of my high school friend Claudia whenever I hear Norwegian Wood by the Beatles. I remember riding to a football game with my friends whenever The House of the Rising Sun plays on the radio. We were almost screaming with delight the first time we heard it. I can picture us all sitting in Eileen’s family Volkswagen bus naively unaware of the many adventures and challenges that lay before us. In that moment nothing really mattered but the joy of music that touched our souls. 

I can’t imagine a world without music and I so appreciate that it is always at my fingertips in ways that people of long ago never had. Music is the captivation of sounds that literally speak to our emotions and our dreams. From the moment our mothers sing to us when we are babies we are soothed by the harmonious combinations of sounds invented by our fellow humans. Just thinking about the process of stringing together notes to create a mood is rather astounding. It is a form of human brilliance that we all too often take for granted. 

I simply love good music and it does not matter what genre it is. The artistry of combining notes to create a theme, an original sound, is testimony to the brilliant ascent of the human mind. I suppose that I owe much gratitude to my father and my mother for introducing me to the wonder of music from the time of the first memories of life that I have. The joy of music combined with books is a great gift from them that I never take for granted. 

The pattern is all too familiar. We know how it works. A mass shooting occurs. Innocent people are killed or wounded by a mad man. We are shocked for a brief time. We offer our thoughts and our prayers. We suggest solutions. The arguments and accusations begin. We get distracted. We change the subject. It’s too difficult to speak about such things without getting emotional, so we create fun diversions to occupy our thoughts. We tune out those who keep babbling about it. We move on. The list of incidents and victims grows, but we would rather think about that tomorrow, or perhaps never again until the next time. 

A celebrity steps up to share his reasonable thoughts. He implores us to think of the real people who have been killed. He makes his arguments very personal. He appeals to our better natures. We can see that he is sincere, that he means well. Some point out that he is only an actor, not a person well versed in the constitution or the anatomy of guns or gun owners. They ask what his real intentions might be. They question his motives and ask why we should even listen to him, even though these same people are devoted followers of another man whose only real claim to fame is that he was and still is a celebrity who became president. We turn away and pretend we did not hear what the honest actor has said. We would rather think about that tomorrow, or perhaps never again until the next time. 

We hear about a deadly gun that makes wounds so horrible that they destroy soft tissue, organs, bones upon entry into a body. They are so destructive that they are capable of decapitating victims with their impact, making them unrecognizable. Some insist that such a gun should banned from society save for use in the military or for policing. Others protest that they are necessary for hunting deer, or raccoons, or gophers or feral hogs. The most honest admit that they want them for protection and that the second amendment gives them the right to own them. We hear the different sides with an unbending determination to win the debate with our own views. We are thinking of our personal rebuttals even as the sounds of differing views are echoing in our heads. We would rather think about that tomorrow, or perhaps never again until the next time. 

We are a nation rent in two, so divided that our only goal seems to be to prevent the other side from accomplishing anything that might actually help all of our citizenry. We seem to just want to be left alone, to be able to enjoy our way of life and what we see as our freedoms without too much sacrifice or responsibility. It is too painful to dwell on the horror of the realities in the world. It makes us feel bad, and we don’t want to feel bad. We would rather think about that tomorrow, or perhaps never again until the next time. 

We are like a couple whose relationship has been fractured. We are no longer able to talk, to hear and understand each other’s feelings and ideas. When we try to discuss our problems we always end up in a fight. We find it impossible to comprehend how the other can actually have beliefs that are so contrary to our own. Are we not friends? Have we not loved each other? When did we grow so far apart in the way we see the problems that are tearing us assunder? We stop talking because it is too painful to do so. We would rather think about that tomorrow, or perhaps never again until the next time. 

 We are the United States of America and yet of late we seem to be heading for a divorce. We the people appear content to watch our grand experiment of a democratic republic divide us rather than unite us. We are avoiding truths and problems and solutions. We have become a nation of bumper stickers, flags, soundbites, and allegiances, rather than one dedicated to the proposition that we can work together to solve the problems that only grow with our unwillingness to endure the pain of facing them head on. We no longer have the luxury of thinking about that tomorrow, or perhaps never again. This is the next time and this time should be the last time that we allow our elected representatives to only spar with each other rather than attempt to actually change the dangerous course of politics that has left us reeling in sorrow and anger again and again. 

I am angry and weary of sacrificing one million people to a virus because we can’t agree on how to protect one another. I am angry and weary of sacrificing innocents to mass shootings and violence because we can’t agree on how to protect one another. I am angry and tired and weary of sacrificing our very democracy because we can’t agree on how to protect our freedoms and our votes without justifying treasonous acts. I am angry and tired and weary of the sound and fury of our political views because the noise signifies nothing but the slow and continuous demise of our country. We must think about that today, lest there be no tomorrow.  

There are a number of popular memes bemoaning the behavior of today’s young people. They all suggest that modern day kids are spoiled and without the positive character traits of youngsters of the past. I’ve seen such pronouncements both on Facebook and Twitter. They insinuate that parents are not teaching their sons and daughters to be independent, hard working or grateful for the lives that they have. I cringe when I see them because my continued interaction with youth ensures me that they are very good souls who will do a wonderful job of taking on the problems of the world when the time comes for them to step up to that responsibility. 

I’m not naive enough to deny that there are indeed some not so nice youngsters among us, but such lost souls have always been around since the beginning of time. For the most part the children and teens of today are not much different than we were when we were the same age. In fact history and literature tell us that youths have always been searching for identities and appearing to be irresponsible in the process. It is a natural phase of growth that ultimately passes into maturity. I’ve seen it over and over again.

The first students that I ever taught are now in their mid to late fifties. Some of them already have grandchildren. Even the once most mischievous trouble makers are working to earn livings and provide for themselves and their families. They served as doctors and nurses during the pandemic, often risking their own health for the sake of others. Others became teachers which was a kind of karma given that a few knew how to push the boundaries of conduct when they were in a classroom as students. There are engineers, business executives, lawyers, ministers, builders, real estate moguls, coaches, artists, soldiers and even a talented tenor who recently sang in Carnegie Hall. Many of them once struggled with getting lessons turned in on time or they seemed to be continually filled with angst. They all turned out better than just fine, as will the kids who are coming along in the present. 

We sometimes forget how challenging it has been for our young people during the last couple of years. We have tended to focus on adults who have been sick or who lost their jobs or homes. We forgot that the children were enduring all of the anxiety along with the adults, often without any outlets for their fears. They spent a great deal of time learning remotely from their bedrooms, a situation that seemed to work with the students that I taught save for one little boy who was unable to handle learning from a computer screen at all. He may have appeared to be rude and a bit arrogant but I understood that he was having difficulty follow the lessons even though he is exceedingly bright. I was not present in person to keep him focused on learning. It was painful for both of us, but I would never presume that somehow he was a bad boy. His struggles had more to do with the impersonal nature of the environment than any kind of character flaw.  

Children sense the worry in the world even when they appear to be innocent and unaware. Their thoughts about the nature of our society are often far more profound than we give them credit for having. They hear about school shootings even when we attempt to shelter them from such things. When teachers do their best to be lighthearted in active shooter drills the kids pick up on the hidden fears that prompt such things. When doors are locked and fences are built around campuses they wonder what the adults are attempting to do. They know and understand so much more than we think they do, but they don’t always tell us how they are feeling about such things. It’s up to us to observe when they suddenly become angry or sad.

When I was a child I remember witnessing the panic in our neighborhood when a man two doors down shot and killed his wife. I recall standing outside on our driveway while everyone on the block waited tensely for the police and an ambulance to arrive. I saw the woman’s children crying in terror behind the picture window in their living room. I was only eight years old, but I have never forgotten how frightening the situation was. That house remained abandoned for years after that and I would always cross the street and go to the other side rather than walk in front of what seemed to me to be a scene of horror. It brought panic into my heart just thinking about what had happened there. Think of children and teens who are attempting to process the last few years and how deeply they have been affected. The fact that they are doing as well as they are is a testament to both them and the adults who care for them.

I am a cheerleader for our younger generation. I not only have great faith in them, but I also believe without reservation that they will be outstanding leaders and workers who will take on the jobs and problems of the future. When I hear the passion in their voices as they analyze the challenges that we all face and make suggestions as to how to unravel them, I am impressed with their determination and good will. They are incredibly kind and thoughtful, often more so than the adults. 

I’ve begun immediately hiding or blocking the kind of posts that demean the young. I think that they are short-sighted and presumptive. I just wish that every adult had the opportunity to interact with children and teens and young adults as much as I do. They would be filled with optimism just as I am. Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn were mischievous fellows, but I am certain that they one day became very fine men. The vast majority of our children will be okay if we just have some patience and love them.

I have to admit to total ignorance when it comes to seriously investing money to increase my net worth. Years ago my brothers were buying up Apple stock at bargain basement prices. I suspect that if had purchased as little as a few hundred dollars at those low prices I would have made a remarkable profit. I just never got into the game. I have not ever made much more than just enough to go beyond setting aside the bimonthly investments into my teachers’ retirement fund and saving to send my two daughters to college. Only at the end of my career did I even hear about a mutual fund that my district matched with a small percentage. I have done rather well with that and wish that other schools where I worked would have had a similar program. 

Things have changed a great deal over the years. My first teaching position paid eleven thousand dollars per annum and after more than twenty years in the profession I was still only earning a salary in the mid-twenty thousands. I remember when the Texas legislature raised the beginning teacher salary to forty thousand dollars and gave those of us who had been around for a time a whopping five thousand dollars more than the rookies. I finally hit the big time in my final years when I became a Dean of Faculty. I had a more comfortable income that allowed me to end up with a reasonable pension and begin actually investing even though I was rather late in the game. 

I’m happy that today’s teachers are doing way better than I ever did. Most of the school districts around me offer between fifty five to sixty five thousand dollars a year to rookie teachers and are even more generous in the ensuing years. There are also number of stipends offered to those who teach mathematics, science or special education. Of course additional duties like coaching or helping with after school programs can also add to the eventual take home pay. Sadly about the time that such increases occurred inflation followed, so I’m not sure how much better off our teachers actually are.

I suppose that my best investments have been in my home and in education for myself and my daughters. Along with my husband I have now helped pay for his bachelor’s degree, my bachelor’s and master’s degrees and bachelor’s degrees for both of my daughters. I have always believed that there is no way that I might better have used my money than in education. Learning provides individuals with independence and happiness. 

These days I am more and more appreciative of my home as well. I purchased it for a price that would not even provide me with a vacant lot these days. It is worth well more than twice its original value and the evaluation seems to be rising by the month. More importantly is the comfort I feel inside my rooms. I sometimes pinch myself and wonder how I got so lucky that I have a lovely, comfortable place in which to live, surrounded by the best neighbors that anyone might want. I am in my little castle with conveniences that my own ancestors would never have dreamed of owning. 

Beyond the treasures of education and home, I most value the investments that I have made in experiences. When I think back on my life I remember vacations and concerts and special occasions with family and friends. I can still feel the exhilaration of hiking to the Boulder Field on Long’s Peak or marveling at the mountains in the little ski town of Soll, Austria with my friends Monica and Franz. I think of touring London and the Cotswolds with my brothers and sisters-in-law or visiting Maine with friends Egon and Marita. I smile at the thought of the many camping trips we took with our daughters to Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, North Dakota, Arkansas and Louisiana. I can still picture walking along the narrow streets of San Juan, Puerto Rico with my mother-in-law and father-in-law. I think of Seattle, Los Angeles, the Grand Canyon, New York City, Washington D.C., Boston, Niagara Falls, Savanah, Disneyland, Disney World, Yosemite, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Albequerque, Santa Fe and so many other glorious places that I have seen and enjoyed. There is really no amount of money that seems adequate to replace the joy that I found in my travels.

Then there are the concerts and visits to local museums that brightened the routine of my days. I suppose I understood how important they had been to me when those kinds of things were cancelled during the worst times of the pandemic. I missed the sights and sounds and camaraderie with my fellow humans. I wanted to be on the road again with Willie Nelson serenading us as we traveled along new highways toward new adventures. 

I suppose that I might have done better at investing my money for a more comfortable future but I think I did fairly well given the choices that I made. I found great satisfaction and joy in the things that were most important to me. I suppose that one can’t ask for much more than that when it comes to plotting a pathway to the future. Life is good for me. My memories are so wonderful that they sustain me in even the toughest of times. I can’t think of anything more that I might want.