DEAR READERS: Many of you may know that I rarely use this space to make personal statements. I am writing today to tell you that my mother, Doris Irene Freeland Cole, has passed away at age 95.
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Many of you may have already experienced the loss of your mother, while plenty more continue to be blessed with a mother ready to share wisdom, love and advice.
My mother has joined the ancestors. While my sisters and I knew this day was near, nothing totally prepares you for it.
In my broadcasts and speaking engagements, I often talk about the legacy that my mother has left me. As a former kindergarten teacher, Doris Cole delighted in awakening curiosity and clarity in others. She walked with grace and radiated joy.
People often described her as a beam of light; they gravitated to her. I will never forget when she visited me on campus during my college days. Young men flocked around us in order to follow her — something they did not do for me when she wasn’t around!
Doris Cole taught me everything that I teach and share today: how to be thoughtful, how to honor others, how to communicate effectively and how to move through space with dignity and ease.
She shared key information and examples illuminating how to achieve those ways of being on a need-to-know basis. She did not brag or demand attention, yet she was exquisitely beautiful and kind. She taught us that beauty is as beauty does.
I have a world of lessons swirling in my being right now that she poured into me. My sister Susan said recently that she taught us how to live with grace at the end of life just as she had exemplified it throughout our lives. My sister Stephanie, the hands-on caregiver in our family, says that Mama’s lessons and love flowed from her into everyone she encountered every single day.
Among those lessons: Do not complain. Practice kindness. Recognize the goodness in yourself and others. Have faith. Keep good company. Stand up for what you believe. Be able to support yourself. Be beautiful from the inside out.
As I honor my mother, the daughter of a porter and a maid — who lived to be 101 and who stopped working at 93 — who ultimately became part of Baltimore’s Black elite, I acknowledge her legacy.
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She grew up during segregation. She lived through World War II, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Movement and the election of a Black president. She married a man who would become the first Black state senator in Maryland and the first Black judge on the Maryland Court of Appeals, Harry Augustus Cole. Our family became Black Baltimore royalty. I say it that way because our city was racially divided.
We were honored because our parents were honorable. That is the life I do my best to live — to fulfill their legacy. Through all of the work that I do, my intention is to bring goodness, strength, clarity and inspiration to all whom I touch.
I take this moment to honor Doris Irene Freeland Cole and to invite you to remember those in your life who have passed on and to reconnect to those loved ones who are still here.
Harriette Cole is a lifestylist and founder of DREAMLEAPERS, an initiative to help people access and activate their dreams. You can send questions to [email protected] or c/o Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.
