The best of friends often surface at the worst of times. It was that way, for me, with my mother's network. After her unexpected passing some ten years ago, they enveloped and comforted us. While Momma had been hand in glove with them most of her life, I had known most peripherally. Then, all that changed.
For instance, there was a neighbor of ours, who had been a friend of my mother's from decades prior. She --- a Tylertown native --- and my mother resumed chumming around, until the end. I was extraneous until July of 2011 when my mother's cohort became my confidante. Twenty years my mother's junior and twenty years my senior, she informed that, in her youth which was years before my birth, my mother Margie was cool. As a kid, I absolutely didn't think so, and my perception didn't shift much as an adult. She was my mother. But after her sudden death in 2011, my friend was convincing as, together, we considered our three lives and early years, three generations apart. Though ours is not to reason why, I realized the reason for her interest and presence. She was doing all of this - for my mother.
And so it was, with family. My mother's beloved first cousin - Delores Brumfield Jenkins of the Oak Grove community --- has also been with us, since the summer of 2011. Until then, my husband Rodney, our daughter Betsy, and I hadn't known Delores well, but she and my mother shared a close familial bond. With a packed house at Crain Funeral Home, I missed Cousin Delores at the service on the Fourth of July. But I well remember her at Ellis Cemetery, when we were departing Momma's grave. There, Delores was. You know what they say (an old Burmese proverb) - "[i]n time of test, family is best."
Cousin Delores's appearance at the funeral was a harbinger. I had no idea, then, how close she and I would become. Family, we became the best of friends. She and her sisters - a raft of cousins - included Rodney and me in a cavalcade of family gatherings. And we followed their lead. With her son Jeffrey, Cousin Delores joined us for Betsy and Erik's wedding in New Orleans in 2018. My daughter introduced Delores to her newly minted husband as "my favorite cousin." My surgeon son-in-law sagely said, "Well then, she is mine, also."
And if you know Delores, then you would agree --- she's good as gold. With a gentle spirit and kind heart, she knows exactly what you need before you do. For Betsy, it was pecan tassies which she inhaled, one after another, at Cousin Delores's home just west of Franklinton. Soon afterwards, Betsy smuggled a batch on the plane, on one of her first trips to California to visit her future in-laws. The scrumptious pecan pies that Cousin Delores made were a sensational hit in La Jolla. She had not only volunteered, something she is renowned for, but she had insisted.
Born in 1944 to Athan (my grandfather's brother) and Freddie Brumfield, Delores and her sisters --- Bobbie (Miller), Jeanette (Cooper), Sue (Griggs), Tommie Lou (Stafford), and Cynthia (who died as an infant) --- and brothers Murdock and Durwood --- grew up in the old Brumfield family home, a stone's throw from our farm, all part of the original Thomas Hezekiah Brumfield homestead northeast of Franklinton. Cousin Delores called my grandparents (Thomas Colter Brumfield and Emma Jenkins Brumfield) "Uncle T. C. and Aunt Em." And her nieces and nephews call her "Aunt Dee." Despite the two decade divide between Delores and my mother who, born in 1925, was already an adult when Delores came along, they became and remained close.
At age eighteen, Delores met Erbin "Ray" Jenkins, the son of Erbin Marion Jenkins and wife Etta Hunt Jenkins, on the perfect blind date; the couple married in 1962. Raising their sons Jeffrey and Mark in Bogalusa where Ray worked as a bale-machine operator at the Gaylord box plant, the couple was inseparable by the time I got to know them in 2011. With Ray's health failing, dedicated Delores was faithfully by his side until the end, which sadly came in March of 2016 when he succumbed. I waited with their family, in the hospitals. But before that, my husband Rodney and I were blessed to join them in 2012 for their fiftieth wedding anniversary celebration at Ben's Ford Missionary Baptist Church, where as a couple they were dedicated members.
When we chat, which is often, Delores is often gathering with her grandson Dustin and precious grandchildren Keegan, Lily, and Riley. Their Granny dotes on them, generously gifting goodies on holidays. Their Easter baskets always include books, candy, and other happies. And I well remember her special gift to them, not that long ago, of a Bible.
Industrious by nature, Cousin Delores also sews beautifully, making exquisite Christmas stockings for the youth in her immediate and extended family. Remarkably close to her siblings, she is an architect of amiable relations. And a devout Christian, Delores is often going to or coming from Ben's Ford Missionary Baptist Church, where she remains active in the many ministries with her church family.
•Stay tuned for Part 2 of this series on family and friends which, as it turns out, are often one and the same. It was Cousin Delores who declared, "It's wonderful that we're family and friends."
