Tribute to a Life Well Lived
They say everybody has a story and some stories simply beg to be told. This is one of those stories.
Pam’s story began on December 9, 1957. Pamela Annette McGill, born the 4th child to a couple who were told they could have no children but would eventually have 6. I always thought it was cool that Pam’s initials spelled out her name……..P-A-M. As a young girl, I also thought it was very cool that Pam was born on the same day as one of our teen heartthrobs, Donny Osmond. The only person I knew that was born on my birthday was Minnie Pearl. Life just didn’t seem fair.
Growing up,
Pam was always a Daddy’s girl. It could
be due to the fact that she favored his side of the family more, or maybe it
was because she had that incredible and sometimes quirky sense of humor, a silliness
and zest for life like our dad possessed.
Whatever it was, Pam was destined to become a pivotal part of the McGill
family composition.
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| Granny Pearl holding baby Pam |
Pam held
onto that love of reading throughout her life.
She could pick up a 500-page novel in the morning and have it read cover to cover by the next afternoon. I tribute
the best characteristics of my sweet sister to the nurture, teaching, and
compassionate care she received early in life from our beloved Granny. When Granny passed away in 1972, a big piece
of Pam’s heart went with her. She would
never recover that missing piece but somehow as she grew older, Pam’s personality
took on the traits we all loved most about our dear Granny Pearl.
Pam with Grandmother McGill And what was it that endeared the older generation to Pam? I’m not sure I know exactly, but our other Grandmother, Grandmother McGill, who had something like 28 grandchildren in total once told Pam, “Now, don’t tell the other kids, but you have always been my favorite grandchild.” She didn’t have to tell us - we already knew. There was just something about Pam that naturally drew people to her. As her story is told, maybe you will understand why.
The late
’60s were some of the happiest times for our family. This is a picture of the Ooltewah Church of
God where our Dad preached for 5 years.
My sisters
and I talked often about those years and how special they were to our family. The connections made in those simple times
have lasted through the decades for our family.
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| McGill Family circa 1967 |
Janie would
meet her husband Mickey during that time and they have now been married for 51
years. Pam was Janie's maid of honor and Rodney and I were flower girl and ring bearer in the wedding. Our handsome Daddy performed the ceremony.
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| Pam serving up some Christmas punch |
In the summertime, we spent our time doing what most kids of the ’70s did – we watched game shows on TV. While Mom and Dad were at work we would watch The Newlywed Game, Family Feud, Let’s Make a Deal, Match Game, and our all-time favorite – The Price is Right. For a while, we even got hooked on soap operas like General Hospital and All My Children.
We played with the neighborhood kids, rode our bikes, went swimming at the Church of God campground (Girls pool on the left, boys on the right), and even did a few chores when we absolutely had to.
For lunch,
Pam would fix us potted meat sandwiches mixed with mayo and dill pickles and we
drank many cans of Shasta sodas because Mama got ‘em on sale 12/$1.00 at the
M&J.
Mama shopped at M&J because they gave away S&H Green Stamps. For those of you too young to remember S&H Green Stamps, just google it.
Most days, around 4:00
in the afternoon, Pam would turn off the TV at which point we would do a
cleaning blitz through the house because mama expected it to be clean and
supper made when they got home. I can
still see the three of us running through the house picking up, cleaning up messes
we had made, and making sure all our chores were done, hoping Mama would think
we had cleaned all day.
Like most
siblings do, there were times we fought.
At other times, we fought even harder.
One time I remember, Mama cut Pam’s beautiful nails back so she would
stop scratching us in our squabbles. Not
long ago Pam told me she hasn’t had pretty nails ever since. Although we fought, most of the time, we didn’t. We stuck together and although it was fine
for us to pick on each other, we never allowed an outsider to do it. Pam took up for us with the neighborhood
bullies and always had our back. Most of them were afraid of her because she
was always quick to put them in their place.
Pam watched
out for us as best as a teenager could and for me, she became like my second Mom,
teaching me about life - what to do, what not to do, and basically, just how to
survive. Pam was never good at sneaking
or lying, she would always get caught whenever she tried. With Pam, what you saw was what you got – she
was the "real McCoy". In recent years, I
was reminded that if you don’t want to know the truth about a subject, don’t
talk to Pam about it because she would give you her fact-based opinion on the
matter, delivered with love of course – and she was usually right. She told me a few weeks ago that she didn't think she would be going home. How I wish she had not been right this time.
Pam became a
great cook at an early age. She
introduced us to many new exotic foods!
Foods like Chef Boyardee Pizza in a box (a Friday night favorite), Tacos
with home fried shells (which my sister Janie taught her how to make), and best
of all and still our favorite, Kraft “box Spaghetti”. Through the years, Pam and I have shared many
a box of this savory cuisine. I opened
up her pantry just the other day and there sat a box of this delectable dish. If you haven’t tried it, Food City still
sells it and you can thank me later.
Pam was gifted with a baby boy in the late summer of 1976. I always remembered Jeremy’s birth year because our country celebrated its bicentennial that year. It was hard being an unwed mother in the ’70s but Pam was determined to give Jeremy the best life she possibly could. She got a job working the evening shift at Olan Mills downtown Chattanooga on Carter Street. Mama had retired from there on disability and kept Jeremy when she was able while Pam worked. Those years were hard on Pam with Mom’s health declining, Dad working out of town a lot and Rodney and I being teenagers absorbed in our own little worlds.
Pam didn’t realize it, but her life was about to change in a big way when she met her knight in shining armor, Shannon. Well, he wasn’t exactly a Knight riding in on a white steed, but rather a Prince who drove up in a sporty white Mercury Capri with two little Princesses in tow.
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| Pam & Shannon the early years |
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| Tammy and Renee |
Pam met Shannon, at my brother Rodney’s wedding. You see, Rodney’s wife Kim and Shannon are cousins and as fate would have it, Pam was serving cake at the reception alongside Kim’s two sisters when she leaned in a little too close to one of the candles on the table catching the lace collar of her pink dress on fire. Luckily, as any prince would do when a damsel was in distress, he helped her to put out the flame, at the same time, sparking a new flame that has burned for over 41 years.
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| Pam Christopher, Pam McGill and Debbie Christopher. This is the famous pink dress and these are the candles that started the flame. |
Here is where I say, “And they lived happily ever after”, right? Well, the story continues.
Not long after Rodney’s wedding, Pam was scheduled to report for duty in the Air Force but as her departure date approached, she knew she couldn’t leave her new love behind, so she changed her mind about her call to service and answered another call – the call to matrimony. In November of 1980 these two love birds tied the knot.
Their family was made up of his, hers, and eventually theirs when their daughter Beth came along in 1984.
Times weren’t always easy for this newly blended family but these two were determined to make it work. Juggling kids, jobs and at times utter chaos, both of them pursued their education – Shannon in electronics and Pam going back to school after many years to become an RN. Pam always had a knack for taking care of others whether it be pets, siblings, or the runt of the litter from Daddy’s brief stint as a pig farmer (that’s a story for another day). In 1981, when Mom’s health declined Pam stepped in to make sure she was taken care of. Some people are just born to be caregivers it seems, and that was our Pam. Nurse Pammy, as I liked to call her.
When Mama died, I was nineteen and had just graduated from high school. Daddy was still working outages with TVA and traveling, so Pam and Shannon let me stay at their house a lot and when I say a lot, I mean I moved in. We had some good times staying up late watching movies after the kids went to bed, talking, singing with Shannon on guitar, and just being silly. I’ve always been grateful for Shannon allowing his new wife’s kid sister to crash on their couch during that time. Life rolled on through the eighties and nineties. Working, raising kids, moving from their little house in Piney to their bigger spread on Creek Road. Together, Pam and Shannon built a wonderful life for their kids and grandkids that were to come. Jeremy had found a perfect life mate in Stephanie and Pam loved her and was so happy when they welcomed their little son Joseph into the world and into their family.
But as with
all life stories, sometimes you get thrown an unexpected curveball. Tragedy struck in the Fall of 2000 and we
watched Pam’s heartbreak into a million pieces upon hearing the news that her
son Jeremy had died unexpectedly. She
always said the loss of a child was the worst thing a human could endure and
having children of my own, I’m pretty sure she was right.
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| The last picture of Jeremy with little sister Beth |
During those
years on her days off from work we would get together at least every couple of
weeks and go shopping, do some crafting or just spend time together cleaning
her big house. She would pay me for helping her because she said I needed some
“play money”. For lunch on those days, we would eat our favorite – boxed
spaghetti. Sometimes we could get Janie
to take a day off from teaching so we could have a sister day. We had our last sister day in early June of
this year when we drove to Pikeville to see Janie after her knee surgery.
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| Sister Days were always lots of fun! |
I went to
work at Memorial in 2003 and fortunately for me, my office was just down the
hall from the Critical Care Unit where Pam worked. Many days Pam would walk by my office door
and stick her head in to say hi. When
she was in a big hurry she would just make goofy faces at me as she passed by.
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| Pam was excited to get to meet Dr. Travis Stork from The Doctors TV Show |
I will forever treasure these memories of her at work. We tried to have lunch every now and then, but I quickly learned that if you are a critical care nurse, you don’t get to take many lunch breaks, usually just eating on the run, a bite at a time. Sometimes she would say, “Moe, I haven’t even had time to pee – I sure don’t have time to stop and eat lunch.” The life of a nurse is hard ya’ll.
One day I badged myself into CCU to see if she had a minute to chat. That particular day when I turned the corner, I walked in on my sister and about 6 other nurses lifting and turning a critically ill patient who weighed in excess of 500 pounds. At that very moment, it hit me what a hero my sister really was. This was just another day in the unit for Pam and her co-workers but to me, it was an image I’ll never forget, and it made an impact on how I viewed my sister from that moment on.
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| Pam with some of her work family, the awesome nurses in CCU |
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| Pam and Nurse Issac |
Pam retired from nursing in May of 2018 due to some health complications that made it hard to continue the 12-hour shifts her career required. We had hoped for a nice long retirement and for Shannon to get to retire with her soon so they could enjoy their hard-earned golden years. But again, as all life stories do, there are twists, turns, and unexpected chapters that take us to places we don’t always want to go. But Pam’s story? It isn’t over. How do I know?
First of
all, Pam’s story continues on in her precious family and a host of friends who
will cherish her memory, continue her legacy of caring for others, and follow
her shining example of a life well-lived.
The next time we see her, she won’t be short of breath or aching in her
joints, having issues with digestion, or feeling tired. I like to think that she will be running to us
with open arms and that sweet, trademark smile that we all loved.
Secondly, the Bible tells us in II Timothy 4:8 that “Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.” Family and friends, we can rest in that hope knowing that one day, we will see Pam again. God looks upon the heart and I am sure when he looked at Pam’s heart he saw what we all did. A heart full of love, of service and a deeply held faith. So many prayers were lifted on Pam's behalf as she laid up in that hospital bed that I can't help but wonder if one of the angels approached the throne and said, "Lord, this one sure is loved by so many people on earth. Anybody loved that much must be something special. Can we go get her now?" So they did.
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| Pam playing on her phone in route to the beach in early June of this year before her hospitalization. |
Rest easy sis, until we meet again.
