I Love New Mexico Memories: Bunny Terry

Episode Transcript

Bunny : (00:00)
Hi there. I’m Bunny Terry, and you’re listening to the I Love New Mexico podcast. Whether you’re a native new Mexican who’s lived here for your entire life, or you’re just considering a visit, this episode is for you. Join us as we share a lot of New Mexico stories, talk about all things New Mexico, and include topics like what’s magical here, where you ought to visit, what’s happening, and the things you absolutely cannot miss in the land of Enchantment. We’re excited that you’re here and we can’t wait to show you what an amazing place New Mexico is because let’s face it, I love New Mexico.

Bunny : (00:50)
Today’s I love New Mexico podcast is going to be just a little bit different from some of the others because today I don’t have a guest. Today I’ve decided to share some stories with my listeners that they might not have heard otherwise. I, as many of you know, from listening to this podcast, 2023 was a hard year in our family. My dad who had been slowly, um, physically losing his strength because of a, what was probably Parkinson’s and definitely prostate cancer passed away in August of 2023. And then just 79 days later, my mom, who was incredibly healthy, um, got Covid and she passed away. So I lost both of my parents last year, and it was a devastating year, and yet it was a gift in so many ways because those final months when my parents were alive, we were all really purposeful about spending time with them and, and first trying to help my mom with dad. And then after dad passed away, spending a lot of time with her to help her with her loneliness. And people still stop me. In fact, I got a, an email recently from a client who hasn’t bought a property from me yet, but who’s been looking for a while, and he said, Bunny, we just read that news about you losing both your parents last year, and we wanted to offer our condolences. And I sent him a note back and I said, what is really the truth? Which is what a hard loss it was for us at the same time that it was this huge blessing because my parents, who were very faithful and who prayed together every day, even up to the night before my dad passed away, my mom, he and my mom were trying to whisper prayers to each other, other as he laid in the hospital bed.

Bunny : (03:00)
And they had always prayed that they would not have to live apart, and that they would not have to spend time living in maybe a nursing home or assisted living facilities that they would get to stay at home for the entirety of their life. And, you know, they got both things that they wanted. So while it is heart wrenching to lose both of your parents, even at 89 and 91, it is a gift that they got exactly what they wanted. They got long, fruitful lives lived every moment in New Mexico, except when they were out of the country trying to help someone else. And they got to spend all those years together, even in later years when they were, um, not nearly as healthy or mobile as they would’ve liked to be. So we have spent the last, really just the last couple of months going through all of their belongings. And my sister has been really spearheading all of that. But you know, they live in a small town in northeastern New Mexico. They live in Logan, New Mexico, and their house was full of mementos and things that my mom had saved. And this past weekend, I went to Logan to help my sister get ready for an estate sale. And by the way, if you’re listening to this on the date that it drops you’ll know you should know that we’re going to have the estate sale to end all estate sales. My mom loved to go to estate sales. It was her favorite thing. And many of the things that we found in her house are the, are things that she bought at estate sales. She has a little red sequined hat that she bought at an estate sale in Amarillo, and then she wore to every sale that she went to, and in fact, she wore it so frequently that last year after my dad passed away, she and my sister went to a few estate sales and people recognized her.

Bunny : (05:02)
They were like, we were wondering when you were gonna show up in that red sequin hat. So her house is full of things that she bought at estate sales, some of it honestly, um, needed to go in a trash bag and go to the dump. But there’s a lot of really valuable things. And then there are a lot of surprises. And the biggest, one of the biggest surprises for me is how many of, um, the things that I wrote and created that, um, I either threw away like the first draft of my book or, um, never thought of again, my mom saved and my sister had set aside this box and she said, this is your box. And I said, that’s a really big box. And she said, uh, she saved a lot of stuff. And I opened up that box and there were multiple copies of all the blogs that I have written since 2009 when I first started writing the I Love New Mexico blog. And I was shocked at how many copies she had. It was like she and Belinda said, well, I have a copy of all those too, because I printed them for her. And I said, but Belinda, she has two or three copies. And she said, oh, I know. She would ask Kent, who is my brother to print a copy? Or Kenny, who is my nephew to print a copy, or she would ask me to bring copies with me when I came to visit. So, so the amazing thing is that my mom had multiple copies of every blog I ever wrote, and surprisingly, I, and I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, I’ve been writing this blog now for 15 years. There were lots of copies of blogs in that box, and it’s just a testament here we are just past Mother’s Day. It’s a really a testament to, um, the things that your biggest fan will do. I mean, your biggest fan is always gonna be your mom. My husband and I talk about that all the time, that when you lose your mom, it’s really hard because you lose the person who believes in you. At least for me, I know that’s not the story for everybody’s mom, but who believes in you so unconditionally and without judgment. And so I was treated to going back through all of the blogs that I’ve written in the I Love New Mexico blog, and if you’re a listener to this podcast, I would encourage you to also go to the I love New Mexico blog.com website and read some of the blog posts because while, um, I’m not an amazing writer, I am a practiced writer, and I’m especially practiced in writing about and talking about New Mexico, and I found a few blog posts blog and, and rather than going on and on about how lonely it is about my parents and what my history is with them, I thought that I would read a couple of those blog posts to you because they’re surprisingly all about New Mexico and they’re all about love and care and faith and the kind of people that my parents were, which is really indicative of a lot of people that live in New Mexico.

Bunny : (08:15)
So here is a blog post that I wrote on May 11th, 2022. And this, to give you some context, this was in the middle of the, um, hermit’s peak fire that was raging in Las Vegas, New Mexico. And then there was another fire that had just started in Jemez New Mexico. And so we were surrounded here in Santa Fe, we were surrounded on all sides by fire. And I happened to go to Logan to visit, um, it, I wrote this on May 11th, which was the day before my parents’ anniversary. So if you’re listening to this blog on May 14th, I want you to know that May 12th, 2024 would’ve been my parents’ 74th wedding anniversary. We celebrated their 73rd last year in 2023. And it was, it would’ve been unthinkable at that moment to think we, that they weren’t gonna be around to celebrate their 74th, or at least that my mom wasn’t gonna be around to celebrate it, but they weren’t here. On their anniversary this year, my mom, it was also my first Mother’s day without my mom. So going back and finding these stories and rereading them and knowing that she kept and cherished them was really a pretty amazing gift. And so I’m going to read this blog post, and if I have time, I’ll read a second one, but I want you to know that, um, if I have to stop in the middle, it’s just because I’m so, I was so blessed to have these amazing parents, these amazing new Mexicans in my life. But it also, I’m telling you, we have a big hole in our hearts where they, where their presence used to be, certainly not where their love is. But um, this is a hard one. But here’s my blog post from May 11th, 2020 second. It’s all about my parents and their faith. And the title of the blog post is Praying for Rain and Dancing in Your Heart.

Bunny : (10:23)
Every morning I wake up with ideas of stories I could write about my dad. He’s a character that Kenneth Harry, just ask anyone who knows him. There are a million tales I could tell and there’re an or they’re an equal number. He would tell you most of them true. Just yesterday when I was with him at their house in Logan discussing the devastating fires in Northern New Mexico, he told me a new story, one I had never heard before. He said, there was this time when we all got together to pray for rain. It was the middle of summer and the heat wouldn’t let up, not even at night. And our crops were wilting and dying in the field and it hadn’t rained a lick since April. So of course, brother Arnold and Brother Arnold was the pastor who married my parents, and he was also the pastor who baptized me when I was nine years old at the Logan First Baptist Church. So back to dad’s story. So of course, brother Arnold set a time for us to get together to pray for rain. We all showed up down at the Baptist Church just like he asked, just like he said we should. And after we sat down and took one look and said, here we are about to pray for rain, and not a one of you brought an umbrella, he was sure disgusted with us. And then dad laughed his laugh not so loud and forceful now that he’s almost 90, but it didn’t matter because he still finds that story funny and it’s very telling, you gotta have faith. You know, my dad said and smiled and I nodded and smiled as well because that’s what I do when I’m listening to dad. I want to have endless faith. And then I look at dad whose feet and back and hands hurt all the time, every day he has a hard time eating because all of his, because of his false teeth, and he has a hard time hearing because his hearing aids are such a complexity sometimes needed to be cleaned or turned up, but never providing the amplification they promised when purchase. I wanna have faith and, and yet I get angry at God for allowing such a good and faithful servant to suffer so many physical ailments after a life of only loving and trusting in all the promises his Bible gives him every day. I also feel angry about the fires. Why won’t this wind stop blowing? Why won’t it rain? Dad scoffs at my anger. He’s always quick to remind anyone who will listen that his life in fullest full and happy, that he’s been more than ble, more blessed than anyone in the world ever deserved. And he reminds me that we’re not in charge, that more than half of our life will be spent wondering why life is something we endure. Dad says that’s what faith is all about. When I showed up a few days ago, he and mom were sitting outside on the porch with the record player turned on listening to Bob Wills sing, San Antonio Rose. They love to share memories of hearing wills play at the Tookum Carry Armory during World War ii. They talk a little about that, about dad driving his older brothers to the dance. He was 11 at the time, and about mom spending the night with my cousin Gwen and someone else sneaking out and going to town for the dance when we were barely outta grade school. She says, remember those Sunday nights when we all, we’d all decide to get together for a dance? My mom says, and dad nods. They’d move all the furniture out of someone’s living room in the Porter community where they grew up, a little town over between San Juan and Logan. They’d frequently be at my Aunt Thelma’s and they’d drag all the furniture out in the front yard so they’d have space inside for dancing.

Bunny : (13:59)
Mom says nobody had anything fancy, just a bunch of sticks that were easy to cart outside. It was the late forties in Eastern New Mexico. Someone had a radio and if they were really swanky, a word my mom uses, somebody might have a record player, they’d turn the volume up listening to Hank Williams sing the lo lovesick blues for just a second before jumping up to dance. They dance miles and miles on those hardwood floors. Sometimes they’re their own set of steps they call the Porter Shuffle. My daddy is still the smoothest dancer I’ve ever had the privilege to step out onto a floor with he and mom are seamless in one another’s arms, two, stepping through a crowd without a hitch. Now they mostly listen. When I arrived on Friday morning, they were laughing and singing along. I asked dad if he’s been out to of his chair to dance, and he lean, leaned forward and he patted his chest. I dance now in my heart, he said. And this morning writing that makes me cry. I don’t know if I cry because I’m sad that he’s too weak to dance or because I’m so happy to have had parents who never hesitated to dance all my life. We could count on dad reaching for mom’s hand when the right ca right song came on the stereo. I knew as early as the second grade that the, that the love in our house was something special, that not everyone’s parents jumped up and dance together whenever they got the chance. I’m so lonesome, I, I could cry as one of the first songs I learned as a child. They love to waltz and that was music they had handy. Today, I think about praying for rain, which is what we’re all doing, nor in Northern New Mexico this week I think about all those folks loading up their belongings to evacuate Las Vegas and Moura and all the tiny towns in between. This is a hard week in New Mexico and there’s nothing to say that will make it easier. All I know to do is to continue to tell stories about love and faith and grace and stories about dancing. I listen to the music my parents love. I pray for rain. I pray for safety for the families who are losing their homes. I donate money to the fun that’s feeding the firefighters and the displaced residents. I write about all those camping trips we took to the mountains above Mora about the Terry family reunions at the Methodist camp in El Porvenir where we played softball and hiked hermit’s peak when my kids were little. I heard yesterday that the Methodist camp burn to the ground in the last couple of days, their smoke in the air. My throat aches from the smoke and from trying not to cry, my daughter-in-law’s 86-year-old grandpa has been evacuated for his ranch and Maura. Why now? Why at this stage in their lives is my daughter’s grandpa and Logan only able to dance in his heart and her wife’s grandpa is sleeping in a guest room in Albuquerque. I feel like the longer I live, the less I have the answers. My YouTube playlist is in the background while I write, and now Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys are playing Stay a little longer. That’s what I want mom and dad to do. Stay a little longer, tell us more stories. Teach us how to be faithful every day. Teach us about grace and about letting go when there’s nothing we can do and about being vigilant when there is. Teach us about love. That was a hard one for me to read because of course this week my heart is still hurting from losing my parents. But I wanna tell you something about New me, New Mexico and New Mexicos. We are resilient. We are made of something special If you, if you’re from here, you know what I mean? If you’re not from here, please take a minute to visit and learn. Get to know the people. Visit those places where I grew up and where I live now, and take a look around you. This could be a hard country. I also wrote a blog post recently that I haven’t posted yet about my dad watching the weather and how every day of my life my dad stood on the back porch and watched the weather because our, our life depended on it. That that was where we found our strength, was watching the weather, praying for grace, and praying for rain.

Bunny : (18:30)
I hope today finds you dancing wherever you are, whether it’s in your heart or on a hardwood floor, or in your parents’ living room. And I hope that this blog post finds you happy and blessed and grateful for the people that you love in your life. Thanks for checking in. Thanks to all of you for taking the time to listen to the I Love New Mexico podcast. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please feel free to share it with your friends on social media or by texting or messaging or emailing them a copy of the podcast. If you have a New Mexico story that you’d like to share with us, don’t hesitate to reach out. Our email address is I love New Mexico blog@gmail.com and we are always, always looking for interesting stories about New Mexico. Subscribe, share, and write a review so that we can continue to bring you these stories about the land of enchantment. Thank you so much.