Barbara Joy Wright, age 88, passed away peacefully sitting at her kitchen table in her home on Friday, February 25. She is survived by her daughter, Catherine Wright, and her grandchildren Ronald and Natalie Enos. Her gravestone reads “loving wife, mother, and grandmother” and she was in every sense of the word. She will be laid to rest on Monday, March 7 at 2:00 p.m. at Pacific View Memorial Park & Mortuary (3500 Pacific View Drive, Corona del Mar CA 92625) with the ashes of her husband Ronald Edward Wright, who died on March 22, 2002 (https://www.ronaldwright.org).
As I was looking through photo albums to find pictures of my mother for the memorial, I realized that in all the key moments of my life, she was there—graduations, wedding, the births of each child—as well as nearly every Christmas and summer break and all of our vacations. We didn’t live together for the past 30 years, but she was certainly a constant presence in my life. I have lots of wonderful memories. On many Saturdays when I was in elementary school, we would take the bus to Laguna Beach because she didn’t drive yet, then we’d climb on the rocks looking at the tidal pools and picnic on the bluffs overlooking the sea in Heisler Park. Through my teenage and college years, I spent a lot of time with my father due to our shared interests, but my mother and I remained very close. One day shortly before I was to leave home for the first time to begin my Ph.D. program at Baylor in Texas, I came down the stairs and heard her telling my dad, “You have to stop her. You can’t let her leave.” That feeling didn’t diminish much over the next three decades. Even when I’d spend entire summers here, it was never enough time and every goodbye was always terribly hard. Even now, it still feels like my mother is very much with me. As I pulled out a few photos from the photo albums for the slideshow, I could hear her voice in my head, “Don’t take those out! You’ll never remember where those went.” Mother, I want you to know, I put every one back in its proper place!
My mother had a long and wonderful life. She always considered herself to be blessed, and saw God’s providential hand in life’s details. She approached life with a sense of adventure. As many of you know, she grew up in South Africa where she met and married my father, and then as a young couple they immigrated to Canada so that my father could eventually attend Bible School and go into the ministry. My mother once wrote out a story of key moments in her life for my son Ron when he was a child. I’ll let her tell it in her own words:
April 9, 2011
Dear Ronnie: From your loving Gaga,
There have been many exciting events in my life - I don't know which one I would put on top of the list, but here goes. The day I got married to Grandpa was so exciting that I got the most terrible headache!!!! And I never get headaches! The next most exciting day in my life was the birth of my one and only, who had you and your sister!
When your South African grandfather and I were in our mid-20's, newly married, we immigrated to Canada in 1958. Your grandfather wanted to further his ministerial studies in the States but we were not able to get immigration status and found that Canada would accept us so we went there instead with the intention of working there for a while and then your grandfather going to the States later on to continue his studies for the ministry. While we were looking for jobs in Toronto, Canada, we were walking down a busy street downtown, silently, both deep in our thoughts. Grandfather actually had an appointment for a job in a building which we just passed when he said to me, "Let's go and have a cup of coffee." I nodded my head and we crossed the road and went into a coffee shop and sat down at a table. We were not talking, just silently going through the motions, when he put his hand over mine and said he knew that I knew. I just looked at him and tears started falling down my cheeks. It was like the voice of God within us both, at the same time, telling Grandfather that our plans were not His plans. He wanted Grandfather not to waste any more time but to go immediately to the States and get on with it. I knew this too
without any further explanation. God told us both at the same time. There was no argument because we knew it was God instructing us. We said Yes to God. To cut a long story short, a local church helped the wheels turn and arranged for Grandfather to leave immediately and to enter the U.S. on a student's visa and enroll in the college of his choice in Springfield, Missouri where he spent the next two years finishing off his degree which he had started years earlier in South Africa. Before he left Toronto, he made sure I was taken care of. I had already secured a job and we were staying in a boarding house for three weeks downtown. Grandfather bought one of those enormous Toronto newspapers where there are pages of want ads for this and that. The very first pick that he lighted on he told me to phone that number listed and go from there. The ad read something like: Wanted: Female young girl to babysit and do light duties in return for free board and lodging. Cutting the story short again, I stayed there for the two years that Grandfather was away. It was a young Jewish family who accepted me as one of their own. I was able to hold down my day job in a law office as a legal secretary as well as do light housework on Saturdays and evenings and to watch the 4 and 6 year old kids when their parents wanted time out. I was never homesick. God completely took care of that. Grandfather did well where he was. He was able to come and visit me whenever he could and we spent one summer on our own in rentals.
Ten years later found us living in Vancouver, British Columbia. Grandfather now had three theological degrees and was Vice President and Dean of a small Bible College. We had been there for five or six years when one day we received very exciting, unexpected news from my doctor! We were pregnant! We had been married for 12 and a half years. The doctors actually told us not to buy anything for the baby as the chances were too slim in successfully carrying it to term. Grandfather never doubted for a single second. In fact, God gave him a dream to carry him through this time. The dream was that the baby would be born healthy, but small. There were some other details too in the dream and all of it came true in reality. I, on the other hand, was hospitalized the last three weeks. I had a window in my room next to my bed and every day I looked out the window and saw the same cloud in the sky and in it was the picture of a baby's face - always the same. Much later, the first photograph of the baby that Grandfather took was the exact same face as in the cloud. The baby was born two months early and weighed under 5 lbs. and was put in an incubator for a couple of weeks. [Take a look at that baby now!]
God is good.
Together, my parents experienced the tangible, providential, and loving care of God in the key moments of their lives. They experienced God’s leading personally and directly, and supported each other in fulfilling his will for their lives.
My mother worked hard to support my father while he was studying for the ministry and I will always be grateful for the generous ways that she provided for me as well. She viewed her provision for the ministers in her family as her way of serving God through us. She worked as a legal secretary for most of her life. In California she worked at Gibson, Dunn, and Crutcher for 17 years and then finally at Airclaims for a decade after that. She was extremely competent at her job. She was an amazingly fast and accurate typist and able to deal with a host of complex jobs at once. Her real joy during her working years, however, were the lifelong friendships she established, one of whom remained in daily contact with her until the day she died. She dearly
loved all of her friends and treasured their time together, whether that was on a vacation, having lunch at her kitchen table, or even through an e-mail, text, or phone call.
My mother’s life centered around her family even though we only spent 2-3 months together each year. She loved and supported us in every way. After the birth of each of my children, she flew out to Minnesota and stayed for a month to help me help out. She absolutely adored Ron and Natalie, as you can see from the pure joy on her face when she is holding them as small children. When Ron was a toddler, she once wrote in his Christmas card, “I live for you!” We laughed until we cried at that one, in part because it was so true!! She was so proud of how well her grandkids were doing in college. She celebrated our accomplishments as if they were her own. When I had my first book published, she read the entire thing, even if she was a little resentful towards my publisher for taking so much of my time that otherwise might have been spent with her!
My mother also enjoyed life immensely. She loved going to her time shares in Hawaii and Mexico and driving up and down the coast of California. She loved traveling, and we were very fortunate to be able to return to South Africa a couple of times to visit relatives. She loved her garden and its many flowering shrubs and citrus trees. She had always dreamed of one day having fruit trees in her yard when she lived in colder climates, and relished the tranquility of her backyard in California. She loved her Quality Street chocolates and her daily tea (she never could shake her English roots. Even after 50 years in the US, people always asked her where she was from because she retained her accent). My mother celebrated beauty. Her ipad was full of pictures of flowers and beautiful nature scenes from around the world. She loved animals, spending hours on her swingset in the yard with her beloved cat. We would bring our pets when we came to visit since we stayed so long. She would often wear out our cat with games of chase the feather, and our dog always chose to lay beside her when she sat on her blue tiled bench in the yard. She loved bright colors, flowy muumuus, fancy jewelry, and sparkly nail polish. She loved drives up and down the coast and stopping in quaint little eateries along the way. Last Mother’s Day, I flew out to see her and we drove down the coast, stopping in Encinitas at a little takeout place that serves lobster rolls and then going to La Jolla and sitting in lawn chairs on the bluffs watching the ocean. I will always cherish those memories.
My mother was quite a character. We once were at a nice restaurant and she thought that her steak smelled a bit “off.” She asked to speak to the manager, but he was a long time returning and she was hungry, so in the meantime, she continued to eat it. When he finally returned to our table, she was on her last forkful, which she shoved under his nose, demanding a refund. He quipped that he’d refund what she brought up, but she got her money back!
We have a small family and my mother’s loss leaves a tremendous hole in our hearts. I know she lived a long and full life and her health was declining towards the end, but her departure was still far too soon. She, however, had been preparing herself for life with Christ for several years. Particularly in the past three years, she had been spending more and more time in prayer. She was confident in prayer and genuinely trusted that God had everything under control and was completely capable of intervening in miraculous ways. She prayed faithfully for friends and family. For years, she even prayed for a student of mine who struggled with multiple cancers. As I went through her planner looking for important phone numbers, I saw lists of all the people she
prayed for regularly with specific requests next to their names, several of which were crossed off when they had been healed. She also spent nearly all her waking hours copying scripture passages from her Bible into her little steno notebooks and reading about those passages on online commentaries on her ipad. She had absolute trust in her savior. She was preparing herself to meet him and knew that time was short. She told me recently how conscious she was of wasting time and how she wished she had spent as much time reading scripture throughout her life as she had in the last three years. Of course she also loved watching the Bachelor, even though she felt guilty about it. She was ready to be with Jesus and to be reunited with my father, even if we weren’t ready to part with her. In her daily planner under March 22, the date of my father’s death, there was a sticker with a pink stargazer lily and a caption above it that said “Thinking of You.” Above it she had written “20 years.” On Friday, February 25th she was met with two sets of open arms—those of my father, waiting for her for nearly two decades, and those of Jesus.
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