Tribute

A Husband’s Remembrance

It’s energizing to look out at all the people from various walks of life who are here today to celebrate and honor Patricia’s life. Thanks to all of those who helped her and me after her diagnosis and surgeries, as so many of you stepped forward to raise our spirits, provide us with meals, literally move us from one house to another, and allowed us to cry and be carried on your broad shoulders. On behalf of myself, our son, Aaron, and our daughter, Kelly, please know that our gratitude is without end.

I will spare you a lengthy tribute to Patricia. It is easy for the magnitude of this moment to overwhelm me. Accordingly, I am taking full advantage of the existence of social media where you can read the full text of my remembrance of the woman who was known to many of you as Patricia, but who is affectionately known to me, her family, and close friends as Patty Ann.

Patty Ann was a complex woman who appreciated simplicity. She wanted us to remember her the way that we saw her in our lives, not as she was in her last months and days. As such, we have honored her request for a closed casket.

As a naturalist, Patty Ann wanted to feel as close to the earth in death as she did in life. She loved gardening and getting her hands into the soil. As such, she will be buried in a simple all-wooden casket that will decompose quickly, surrounded by grass and trees, in the city she held dear.

In keeping with simplicity she is wearing her everyday uniform, which is hospital scrubs and tennis shoes. She wore scrubs when she was working at the hospital, but scrubs were also her go-to fashion attire. Many sets have paint and stains from the various projects she worked on, and she even used scrubs for pajamas. Some had been worn and washed so many times that sometimes they were almost thin enough to see right through them. Her socks have an Airstream print, which represents the happy times we enjoyed when we’d take our travel trailer on camping trips. Those trips were primarily to Texas State Parks.

In addition to her trademark scrubs and tennis shoes, she wears her white lab-coat which reads “UT Health San Antonio,” has her printed name and identifies her division as “Pediatric Critical Care”. Representing the joy she found in San Antonio’s annual Fiesta celebration, coupled with her Catholic faith, a 2023 Our Lady of Guadalupe Fiesta Medal is pinned to her white lab coat.

We can all appreciate that she didn’t want us to be all gussied up in dress clothes.

Her glioblastoma diagnosis and treatment was a difficult road to travel, but one thing that remained intact throughout was her sense of humor. Several months into the treatment process, she said something that I immediately jotted down under the heading of “Patty Ann Quotable Quotes.” She remarked, rather matter of factly, “Covid has really ruined the whole cancer experience.” It was classic Patty Ann.

My hope for today is that this day is the beginning of moving forward and celebrating what gave her life, rather than dwelling on what took her from us.

It was almost 47 years ago that I met Patricia Ann Stephenson and nearly 45 years since we began a life together.

Over the course of that time, there are more stories to share than there is time to share them today. I’ve probably forgotten more stories than I remember. Every now and then something happens to conjure up a memory of a forgotten story. Needless to say, Patty Ann had good stories and she was a humorous individual. She was quick to laugh and she was quick to make others laugh. This room is certainly full of folks with whom she shared good laughs. If you have a story about Patty Ann, please take the time to share it with me. I’d like to compile as many of my stories and yours as possible. Feel free to email your story to me at ptenner56@gmail.com.

My personal story with Patty Ann began with my walking into the first day of a college summer session class and seeing this stunningly attractive girl who I spotted as I walked through the door. There was an empty seat next to her, so I grabbed it. While waiting on the professor to arrive, we started chatting. During the course of that conversation she mentioned that she always had to use starter fluid to get her car started. I told her I thought she might need to have her carburetor rebuilt and that I’d be happy to rebuild it for her. We had that conversation and many more to follow.

It was a classic tale of the beautiful skinny blonde haired blue eyed good Catholic girl meeting an almost nice non practicing Jewish boy. I was smitten and I guess she was too.

Our first dates were what we called “study dates.” We’d meet at the UT El Paso library, and you guessed it, we studied. We literally worked on papers or studied for whatever classes for which we had upcoming tests. One of our memorable study dates was one where we were unable to sit together. On the way to campus, we consumed a huge amount of raisins. There were several rows of books and a desk and chair at the end of row. I sat at the end of a row of books and she sat several rows away. We were not able to see each other. About every 20 to 25 minutes I’d amble over to the row where she was sitting to get in a quick visit. One one of those trips to visit her, I saw that her face was beet red like she was blushing. I asked her what was going on and she told me that someone, who she thought was me, had come walking down her row. Without looking she held up her hand and warned me to not come any closer because she had just had wicked gas, and when she actually looked up she saw that it was not me. She was so embarrassed and I thought it was one of the funniest things ever.

As far as the class we were taking together was concerned, we were highly competitive with one another. On our first exam, I scored the highest grade in the class with a 95 and she scored a 90. On the final exam, she scored the highest grade with a 95 and I had a 90. We were evenly matched, but I knew early on that her drive and intellect surpassed mine. Side note: After the surgery to resect her right temporal lobe and right hippocampus, damned if she wasn’t still smarter than me. She had some short term memory loss, but everything else was intact.

Study dates continued, but evolved into what I call “church bulletin” dates. If Patty Ann wasn’t going to be able to attend church on Sunday with her parents and family, she’d promise to go to church on Saturday night, which would be our date night. Before our date, we’d stop by the church and pick up the weekly church bulletin to show her Mom that she’d attended mass. Yep, we were sneaky.

I was a motorcycle rider back then and many of our dates included motorcycle rides. To this day, I still can’t believe her parents would allow her to get on the back of a motorcycle, but they did. We had many memories from our motorcycle days. It was something she said we needed to give up before we had our first child.

Fast forwarding, a year later we were engaged and the next year we were married and moving from El Paso to Houston, where I’d taken my first post-college job. Patty Ann finished her undergraduate degree at the University of Houston. While at U of H she took on a part-time job at the Jesse Jones Medical Library in the Houston Medical Center. For my career to advance, I needed to get to Austin. Three years later, I got my opportunity and we moved to Austin. Patty Ann had plans too. She was accepted into a Masters program in Library and Information Science. After graduating with her Masters degree, we moved just south of San Marcos and we began the “commuting years,” Patty Ann drove to San Antonio daily to her medical librarian job at the UT Health Science Center Library and I commuted to my job in Northwest Austin. It was not long before she determined that her true love was not library science and librarianship, it was medicine. While still working her job she charted a new direction, knocked out a couple of prerequisite courses she needed to take, took the MCAT, applied and was accepted to the medical school in San Antonio, and as they say, the rest is history.

Patty Ann never did things the easy way, but she always found a way to take something difficult and make it into something workable. We were seven years into our marriage and she was in her first year of medical school when she decided she was ready to bring some new life into our marriage and that life is our son, Aaron. Our daughter, Kelly, came on the scene a couple of years, who was also born while Patty Ann was in medical school. Having two kids while in medical school showed that Patty Ann was also capable of taking something workable and making it into something difficult. There is nothing like going to medical school while bearing and raising two children at the same time, but she successfully managed to satisfy two burning passions, motherhood and medicine, which many times, was medicine and motherhood.

In addition to being a mother and a physician, she embraced her other role, which I refer to as her being the family matriarch. Hosting parties and family gatherings was something she loved to do.

Her family was the fabric and she was the glue that made everything stick together. She was always willing to help her parents, siblings, nieces, and nephews in any way that she could, be it with financial assistance or providing a place for them in our home. There was a price to pay for that assistance as those she helped were subjected to a huge dose of Patty Ann’s trademark “unsolicited advice,” which usually started out with two words, “YOU SHOULD….” She had a plan for everybody.

After her own family, the extended family was her fellow medical community peeps. She loved medicine and she loved being part of a team and considered medicine to be a team sport. While working at Methodist Children’s Hospital she became the Director of the Pediatric Critical Care Division. She was generally a humble servant and loathe to seek or take personal credit. While working at Methodist Children’s Hospital she became the Director of the Pediatric Critical Care Division. Her boss, Dr. Fred LeMaistre, told her that she had great leadership skills. Being Patty Ann, her response was to say leadership was not her strong suit, but that she had a knack for hiring great people who made her look like she was a great leader. She loved her team of physicians and there were so many years where her family tried to get her to take off on the major holidays, but her attitude was that her folks were much younger than she and they had young children. They needed to be home for the holidays more than she did. When an extra shift couldn’t be filled, Patty Ann saw it as her duty to be the one who did it. She also worked many 24 hour shifts. In Pediatric Critical Care there was no such thing as “at home call.” When you were on call, you were at the hospital.

She touched so many lives, family foremost, along with relatives, friends, coworkers, and colleagues. In terms of work, she’d refer to many of the younger ones she helped mentor as her work sons or work daughters. At one time, her physician coworkers, with one exception. were all women who she talked about as being work sisters, and the lone male physician she referred to as a work brother.

I think her happiest times with me were when I would do ridiculous things that provided fodder for some of the stories she shared through the years with many of you. Two stories you may have heard among the many are: 1) my asking her how you get the paper wrappers onto the muffins after you’ve baked them, and 2) my telling my daughter (Kelly) and her mother (Patty Ann) that our cat, named Einstein, was mute. Einstein “makes the face” that looks like he is meowing, but no actual sound comes out. They both assured me that sound was in fact coming out when he “makes the face,” and that I needed to get my hearing checked. Score one for Kelly and Patty Ann, as I am in fact very much hearing impaired.

Another story she likes to tell is about our first Christmas of going back to El Paso, after we’d moved to Houston. Oddly enough, the idea to go on the motorcycle was hers, not mine. It was adventurous to say the least, but those details are best left for another time.

She also taught me that the best revenge is a dish served hot. One day, we had an argument just before leaving the house to go someplace. The reason behind the argument is something neither one of us remembers, but we were definitely not happy with one another. It was a hot summer day, and as we were driving down the road I started to squirm in my seat and my rear end was on fire. I looked down and saw that the seat warmer was turned on full blast. I looked over at Patty Ann and said, “did you turn on my seat warmer, and she said, “you’re damn right I did.” We simultaneously burst into laughter and we ended up having such a great night.

Beside motherhood, family, and medicine, Patty Ann had other passions. Patty Ann was all abut DIY home improvement and renovation. There was always a project to design and build. She had mad construction skills. She could cut and lay floors, tile or wood, she could do it all. Built in cabinets, frame and build out a new pantry, baseboards – you name it and she did it. She rebuilt stairs from the ground up in one of our previous homes and built a kitchen island that was the source of great laughter from some of her Kansas relatives who worked in construction. That kitchen island was so over engineered, the family joke was that if a tornado struck, we could empty out and crawl into the kitchen island because the rest of the house might be blown away, but that island wasn’t going anywhere. She was adept at using tools and she could wield power tools with the best of them. Her only fear was the table saw, so I did have a role in many of her projects. For most of her projects I was the demolition guy. I couldn’t build stuff like she could, but I was great at tearing things down. She was the master craftsman and I was her apprentice. She also was one of the great perfectionists when it came to painting.

She was also passionate about riddling the landscape of invasive plants and trees. Her main nemesis was Nandina. My apologies to any Nandina lovers out there. Her goal was to remove Nandina from both our landscape and anyone else’s landscape. She loved working with soil and she is probably smiling that we are shoveling dirt into her grave.

A random musing:

I don’t believe she ever fished a day in her life, but she loved Magellan fishing shirts.

The later years:

I have no idea where this came from, but Patty Ann grew very fond of Grackles, or as I call them, HEB birds, because HEB grocery stores are a magnet for these birds. She was one of the few people who could embrace what most everyone thinks of as a trash bird. Maybe she was on to something. If grackles like HEB the same way Texans do, they must be pretty smart.

Our happiest of times were when we’d be on the road towing our trailer. Patty Ann did not like to drive when we’d tow the trailer, but she was the point person when it came to backing the trailer into our trailer space. I struggle with backing it up, but she was my backup queen. Our trailer is named Crystal Blue Persuasion, and we started every trip by going to Spotify and playing that old Tommy James and the Shondells song as we’d head off down the road. Her favorite trips were those where we camped in Texas State Parks. The State of Texas Parks and Wildlife Department was near and dear to her heart. She looked forward to opportunties for us to serve as park hosts. In another life, Patty Ann woud have been a park ranger, naturalist, or a biologist.

Patty Ann reembraced her Catholic faith. Her spiritual journey gave her great comfort and she was profoundly gratified to be a member of a physicians group who held a weekly rosary via a Zoom Meeting.

Conclusion:

My greatest regret is that Patty Ann was not able to retire on her own terms and have the retirement we both had worked toward and dreamed about. Our first big retirement Airstream trip was going to be to travel from San Antonio to the coast of Maine without ever using an interstate highway. We had even mapped it out. That being said, last year we did get our bucket list dream trip. We’ll always have Christmas at Yellowstone.

To our children, Aaron and Kelly, you are the big jackpot winners of the Mom lottery. Your physically present mother is gone, but you got the best of all your mother had to offer, and those nuggets of wisdom, humility, and humor is a cherished legacy that has carried you and will continue to carry you forward throughout your lifetime. Over this last journey with Mom, you were my rocks, and always there for me. I will be forever grateful. You knew you had to be back in Texas and you made that happen.

Paraphrasing the poem High Flight, my wish for Patty Ann is that she is now free of the surly bounds of earth and that she is busy preparing to touch the face of God. Her favorite male musician was John Denver, and although personally I was no fan of John Denver, Patty Ann was undoubtedly the sunshine on my shoulders.

In a tip of the hat to her favorite place, New Mexico, I’ll end with a quote from a New Mexican, Martin Prechtel: “Grief is praise, because it is the natural way love honors what it misses.”

Cheers to you Patty Ann and your life well lived. My hope for you is that in heaven your favorite wine (Hahn Pinot Noir) will always be available. Bravo and Godspeed to you my sweetheart!!