Eulogy for Dixie G. Kincaid
November 14, 2010
Clover Community Church
Clover, WV

My name is Barbara Kincaid. Or, Barbara Kay as I’m known in these parts… I am Dixie Garrett Kincaid’s only child.

Mother was fifth in the birth order of 8 children:
· Five brothers, two sisters…
· The daughter of Loman Edgar Garrett and Losa Vineyard Garrett...
· Born on a farm that was 18 miles from Spencer on a rock-based road that I will never forget.

Her first schools were country schools with her siblings and cousins.

It was a close family in many ways – one that I with no siblings envied as I grew up. Perhaps, Lucille, Herbert, Loman, and Dixie were drawn together through the years by their interests in collecting antiques. But, they were also competitive. As 60 year olds, they would sit around the kitchen table and argue about who got the better deal during their early collecting adventures.

After high school in Spencer, Mother took a secretarial/business course in Charleston and her first job was at Vandale’s funeral home, the forerunner to Taylor-Vandale.

Extremely creative, Mother started sewing as a teenager. She first learned from her mother and her older sister Lenore. Grandmother was also most significantly her role model for kindness and decency all of her life and all of our lives as well.
My mother’s interests expanded to cooking, indoor gardening, and finally to painting which she learned and began in her sixties.

Queen of the all-nighters when she was working on a project, she was committed and relentless. Mostly self-taught, her favorite skill sets came from high school home economics. In her twenties and thirties, she was a pre-cursor to Martha Stewart. I still have Mother’s edition of Emily Post with photos of elaborate table settings and instructions for the “maid.” Dream on, Mother dear…

It seemed to me, however, that she had trouble working FOR anyone. She actually called my second employer to tell him he was working me too hard. Following that indiscretion, we exchanged a few choice words. I’m not sure my mother ever understood how inappropriate her intervention was. Miss Dixie was always right -- not to mention late.

Still she was a beautiful young and older woman. Even as a little girl, she had black hair and a big smile, the smile that my cousins and I also have. One of my favorite pictures was when she was 4 or 5, barefoot, smiling and holding her doll. Also in the picture was Uncle Richard who was roughly a year and a half younger. Wearing a sailor suit, no doubt made by hand by Grandmother, he stood very straight and looked very serious—already playing the part of good Air Force material.

Even as a 90-year-old with advancing Alzheimer’s, that little girl was with us. As I would carefully guide Mother into bed, she liked to bounce up and down on the mattress, swing her legs, and smile.

My friend Tito Piccolo called her Loretta Young, the actress and television hostess from the 50s who would swirl through the door in a glamorous gown to announce that week’s story. In her 90s -- Mother also developed the royal wave.

She liked clothes and in those early years had a good sense of style. She also understood how to repair a garment and re-make it if necessary.

Her imagination and memory were visual. She could see things as they could be.

But … by far, the most important lesson learned from my mother was her complete lack of fear about Alzheimer’s. After her diagnosis, I was a basket case and I asked if she was afraid. “No,” she said. Her time with her own mother had given her a peace about the years to come. Now, I almost understand her lack of fear. I really do. And, the first emotion I felt the morning after her death was peace. Simple, quiet peace.

Mother and Dad met in high school and were married when they were 22 and 23. They loved West Virginia. It was home. As some of you know, my father died 3 days after their 65th wedding anniversary. In the hospital as it came close to the date in 2004, I would tell him the day and date. Though he couldn’t talk at that point, I’m sure he understood and was motivated to stay alive to reach that milestone.

They were a good team working side by side in the dry cleaning business, building their house, and many other projects. He was her first caregiver and probably her best. As his health failed, he worried about her. Hospitalized with a life-threatening pneumonia in January, he held on for the move to Virginia, then for another 4 months.

Here are some of my diary notes from January 2004…

“Mother and I have been able to spend some brief time with Dad each day.

“He cries when he sees her come through the hospital room door in a wheel chair all dolled up with a mask, gloves, and clothing covers. She put make-up on independently and asked me to find her nail polish. Then she put polish on independently.

“He’s very emotional since he thought Wednesday night and Thursday morning that he was going to die… Today, he was saying, ‘You know, I think I can come out of this.’ He’s already lobbying to come home.

“Mother realizes he’s gone and sometimes remembers where he is. When she does, she’s anxious to see him. She asks: Can we go now? Why can’t we go now?

When we get there…“she tells him: ‘I think you’re better. Your eyes are brighter.’”

“He says: ‘I think I feel a little better.’”

A little later in January, I wrote…

“She was beginning to forget her life story:

“About the Michigan house that she always said she loved -- she’d ask several times a day: ‘How long have I lived here? How old am I? How long have I been with him?’ The guy she put the nail polish on for…

“Then she would look up and say: ‘Just love me.’” Just love me.

Although this journey has been difficult, complex, and frightening at times, I still believe it was important to make. It was the legacy and value system I carried from these hills: Family means you take care of your own, or least that’s what it meant to me.

Lucille Johnson did it. Herbert Garrett certainly did it. Loman Garrett took care of two dying wives. Russell took care of all of us and entertained us along the way. Sisters and best friends, Lucille and my mother, took care of Grandmother and Granddad in their final days.

We do it because it’s the right thing to do. But, we don’t do it alone. So many people have provided support and encouragement.

My cousins … Bob and Dolores Arnott. Candace (Westfall)and Kate (Burbank). Pamela’s (Garrett) touching long distance calls, though we last met when she was about three. Dear Miranda (Burbank), who was Mother’s special person.

The amazing Joan Niday, my father’s baby sister, who taught my father, the Scottish Warrior, to say, “I love you.” Uncle Ron and Aunt Jackie…

Through this journey, I have had the wonderful support of Grant Colthorp from Michigan and his wife Delores... Grant is doing today’s service as he did my father’s. Before Mother and Dad left Michigan, Grant and three other friends took care of them when I couldn’t be there.

My friend, Linda Willen from Arlington, who has been with me and others on this Alzheimer’s care-giving journey that we make together… Ann Jeffries Johnson whose desire to stand in solidarity in grief with a long-time friend brought her all the way from the Rochester NY area…

Gifts from so many… Thank you all for your kindness and generosity.

Thank you for helping me “Just Love” my mother. Remember… do not be afraid of Alzheimer’s… But do fight for a cure.

One of my last exchanges with my mother came on Thursday after her surgery and the day before she was released from the hospital.

“Barbara,” she said and she hadn’t called me Barbara in years. “Let’s get out of here!” Okay. That’s a deal! A week later things had changed dramatically and she was gone.

The souls of the departed -- Garretts and my father -- have been calling Miss Dixie as my cousin Candace put it… How could she resist? The Garrett siblings, Candace wrote, “ … loved each other no matter what.” So true. It was Mother’s time to go, 20 days after Uncle Loman. They needed her. Who knows maybe there are antiques in heaven…

The Greatest Generation of Garretts from Vineyard Ridge… Let us celebrate them. My mother was proud of her siblings and her mother and father:

· Educators and administrators…
· Farmers…
· Small business owners and homemakers…
· War heroes…
*Richard was chosen to fly over Tokyo on the day the Japanese treaty was signed.
*Loman was with George Patton through seven Army campaigns, including the Battle of the Bulge, and was awarded the Croix de Guerre for gallantry.

A remarkable legacy we’ve been given… Farewell to the Greatest Generation of Garretts. And, Godspeed, Mother dear. Godspeed.

Miss Dixie Leaves Us

Dixie Garrett Kincaid, 93, a retired small business owner from Michigan, died October 28, 2010, of complications from Alzheimer’s. She had lived in Arlington VA since 2004 after residing more than 60 years in Michigan.

The fifth of eight children of Loman Edgar and Losa Vineyard Garrett of Vineyard Ridge, Roane County, WV—Dixie was born January 14, 1917, and was the only surviving member of the Greatest Generation of Garretts. Her two younger brothers, Russell and Loman, also died in 2010. Russell had Alzheimer’s. They were preceded in death by brothers, Garland, Herbert and Richard; and sisters, Lenore and Lucille.

Like her mother, Dixie was diagnosed with late onset Alzheimer’s. Her diagnosis came in 2000, although it is likely that symptoms began at least eight years earlier.

Dixie attended business school in Charleston after graduating from high school in Spencer. Her first job was with Vandale’s Funeral Home, now called Taylor-Vandale, in Spencer. Her husband, L. Hiram, pre-deceased her in 2004 three days after their 65th wedding anniversary.

The Kincaids moved to Michigan in 1944 and in 1949 founded G & K Cleaners in St. Louis MI where they ran the business until the mid 1960s. Survivors include one daughter, Barbara K. Kincaid of Arlington VA with whom she lived, and numerous nieces and nephews in West Virginia, Ohio, Michigan, and Colorado.

Funeral services were in West Virginia November 14. The family requests that memorial gifts in lieu of flowers be made to either the Alzheimer’s Family Day Center of Fairfax, VA www.alzheimersfdc.org) or the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund, Wellesley Hills, MA (www.curealzfund.org)