On Saturday April 29, 2023 I was leading a Death Cafe Boise at the library and talking about and thinking about my Grandma Shoda the entire time we discussed questions like "what constitutes a good death to you?" and "what do you think people would say about you if you died today?". For some reason I pulled out a new to me (thrifted) leopard print skirt to wear to that cafe, but now I know it was my beloved grandma's spirit guiding me, as she died during my Death Cafe. Turns out her spirit was also with my Lucy at the same time, as she was talking about Grandma Shoda's red convertible that we loved so much and got to babysit several times when she flew in and out of Boise and drive around with the top down.
Truth is, my grandma has been with me and all of my kids always, as we were so lucky to have her as such a positive presence in our lives and homes for so many years. She loved that car, she loved wild printed clothing (I wore leopard print to both her surprise 90th birthday party, her 93rd birthday party a few months ago, and again on her day of death), she loved life and she loved us.
Luckily I have artifacts of her all around my home and in my life - clothes and jewelry I inherited, furniture, photos, a keychain, playing cards, so many birthday cards, a voicemail I saved from our monthly phone conversations, video interviews my kids did about her early life growing up in New Mexico, her silver hair, her strong opinions.
I have a lot to say about my Grandma Frances "Sugar" Shoda, and luckily I was asked by her daughters (my aunts) to write her obituary, which was a little daunting but such an honor. I've listened to her tell me stories for 47 years and absorbed them all so I thought I was well prepared and poured my heart into it for hours and hours and late into the night the weekend she died. For days I listened to stories my family told about her - posts my cousins made on Facebook, things my mom told me, stories my aunts emailed back and forth.
Years ago I taught a “how to write your own obituary” workshop for the Boise Public Library. I’ve collected some of the best, meanest, funniest, most sweet obituaries ever written. They all came in handy as I poured over photos of my grandmother, some I took of her last home she remembers in Washington when I was there for her 90th birthday. Little snippets of her living. I listened to videos my daughters made interviewing her about her favorite songs and stories from childhood and high school dance. I read stories she told me decades ago and had the sense to write down. Even with all of this, though, I felt wildly unprepared for the task at hand.
I tried so hard to distill 93 years of an important life into 800 words. It was hard to do her justice. It felt hard to make everyone happy. I was worried about which stories to tell, which to leave in our hearts. It’s in the Weiser, Idaho, newspaper today and the funeral home ran it last week. I wanted to share it here so it had a permanent home not only in my heart but on my blog with more photos that help tell her story, our story.
Frances Elizabeth Edwards Shoda was born in a Texas winter in a town called Matador, on January 14, 1930 to be exact. Her parents and family called her Sugar for much of her life, and she had the cowgirl boots emblazoned with it to prove it. (Later her family would laugh at this nickname because we all knew her as Feisty Frances who was a bit more salty than sweet.)
Her parents were Bruce and Mary Frances Edwards and she was the oldest of four kids – her younger siblings Marguerite, Bruce Jr. and Joe. They grew up in the 1930s and 40s in Texas and near Albuquerque, New Mexico, where Sugar had lots of friends and her first job as a telephone operator. After high school she met Russell Kinsell, fell in love, got married and had four daughters – Elizabeth, Barbara, Lucetta and Terri – who also grew up in the desert country of New Mexico. When the oldest were teenagers they moved to Cambridge, Idaho, to ranch and later moved to Weiser, Idaho. Frances did all sorts of odd jobs and, like most working mothers, took her daughters along most of the time. From running the golf course to operating the ski hill - everything was a family affair. Frances and Russell divorced shortly after the move to Weiser and she later married Lefty Shoda of Ontario, Oregon, who was our beloved Japanese-American stepfather and grandfather until his death from cancer in 1987. Soon after Lefty’s death she tried out so many other jobs, and when she finally retired she became a woman of the world – traveling all over it, often alone or with her dear friends she met in the Red Hat Society or somewhere else along the way. Frances loved sharing photos of all her worldly adventures with anyone who would listen and when flying or frequently boarding cruise ships became a bit too expensive, she taught herself to drive a one ton dully and pull a fifth wheel trailer and traveled the USA, often stopping to visit her grandkids now scattered about. Speaking of grandkids, she has 11 of them (and 33 great-grandchildren and 4 great-great-grandchildren). They will remember her most for her wild sense of style, her Foxy Lady keychain, the smell of spearmint gum and cigarette smoke in her car in the 1980s, and how she taught them all the rules of poker and when to double-down in blackjack and how well she laughed, loved life and loved them. Many of them inherited her clothes, furniture, big hats, eclectic jewelry, silver hair and adventurous spirit. Grandma Shoda loved big and a long time, as her great-grandkids can also attest to, as they got to have her around for so much of their young lives, too.
After wielding a big rig was no longer feasible for Frances, she settled for a red convertible, roller blades and a snowbird trailer park in southern Texas near Padre Island in the winter months, heading to Idaho, California and Washington to spend summers divided at her daughters’ homes. Ever ready for a new adventure, she eventually spent her last years at a beloved senior apartment in Stanwood, Washington, near her oldest daughter Elizabeth where she loved playing cards with her friends and weekly trips to the beautiful nearby nursery and tearoom. Her final two years on Earth found her coming again full circle, making her way back to Weiser, this time to Indianhead Estates Residential Care near her youngest daughter Terri where she died at the age of 93 on Saturday April 29, 2023. In her life she was a cowgirl, a mom, a grandma, a mail carrier, an entrepreneur designing feathered hat bands and feathered high heels, a professional seamstress sewing items for Neiman Marcus, restauranteur, a great cook at home, a real estate agent reaching a million dollars in sales, cooked for an oil crew in Alaska, waitress, and even ran for Mayor once! Frances “Sugar” Shoda loved chocolate cake, the 1960 song Wheels by The String-A-Longs, playing dominoes, reading books in bed late into the night, Wheel of Fortune, and all of us, her family. And did we ever love her, too.
She wanted her cremains scattered by her daughters at a special spot in Oregon and no funeral but since we love a good party, her family will be gathering to celebrate her and disregard that final wish. (She’d understand and approve!)
Frances is preceded in death by both her parents, sister Marguerite, brother Joe Mack, and both husbands. She is survived by her brother Bud (Bruce), daughters Liz Chester of Washington, Barb Ross of Wyoming, Lou Norstebon and Terri Fritts of Idaho (along with sons-in-law Curt, Ted, Jim and Fritts) as well as grand-children Andy Bumgarner, Russ Bumgarner, Sara Lawson, Reed Bumgarner, Heather Pecht, Hillary Grigel, Amy Pence-Brown, Amber Pence, Garrett Pence, Andrea Williams and Lindsey Fritts, all their spouses, 33 great-grandchildren and 4 great-great-grandchildren. Her family would like to thank Renee, the employees, and residents at Indianhead Estates for their loving care and friendship.
The last time I really got to sit and talk with my Grandma was in December when I was asked to speak to a church full of teachers in Weiser, about an hour and a half from my home in Boise, on how to add more body positivity to their lives and classrooms. It is also the town where I was born, the town where my Grandma lived much of her life and again lived out her last days. There had been a huge snowstorm and I brought a gorgeous poinsettia to her at my visit after my talk. She was lucid, rare these days as dementia had really taken over her life, and talked to me for 45 minutes straight without falling asleep. One of the very first things she said to me with tears in her eyes was this:
“I read somewhere once that mothers raise their children the best they know how, and sometimes eventually those kids forgive them. I hope my girls understand that everything I did was for them.”
She also told me a story of how dementia felt like she was suddenly in a dark black hole and it was scary and wild stories about her younger days as a woman and fun stories about skiing and cooking and ever the spitfire, stories about funny things her children said and how much she despised some certain men in her life. As I am myself a woman and a mother, her granddaughter - the daughter of her daughter - the mother of three children and in the hardest year of parenting I’ve ever experienced, I felt all this deep in my bones. Forever mothers, we are, circling into blackness, clawing our way back out, letting go. Flaws and fears and fierceness and fun, women til the end. Here’s to one of my favorites.
