I buried my mother, Jeanette Sanders Bowens, on May 3, the weekend before Mother’s Day.
The sky remained gloomy for the entire hour-long drive from the Dancing Rabbit Inn in Philadelphia, Mississippi, to the Lee Sykes Funeral Home in Macon, Mississippi, that day. It was as if the clouds wanted to cry but couldn’t. I understood that. I felt the same way. Jesiah, my youngest, stayed close. He could feel the sadness radiating from his mother even if he did not wholly understand it. When I sank into the funeral car, he climbed in beside me and took my hand. We rode like that in silence the nine miles between the funeral home and the little white wooden church where I had spent many more days than Sundays during my childhood.
It was only right to take my mom home to the place she loved and cherished. My mother was born and raised in Shuqualak, a little town in Noxubee County. Her father worked on the railroad while her mother stayed home and cared for the family. She knew what it was like to struggle and what it was like to be successful. She lived and worked in an era where segregation and discrimination were as normal as the sunrise.
She spent most of her adult life there as well. Mama graduated from the segregated Shuqualak High School #2 and attended Rust College. She then returned home to teach for 30 years in the Noxubee County School District, where white flight had run nearly all of the white students into the local segregation academy. She spent the last 21 years of those years educating special-education students. I remember spending hours in her classroom while my mother taught her students to cook, sew, and care for themselves and a home. Those were her other children, and she fought tooth and nail for them to have every thing they deserved.
After she retired, my mother spent her afternoons at our kitchen table tutoring neighborhood students. She later served on the school board in the same school system, which consistently struggled to find the necessary finances, teachers, technology and resources to be successful.
That was the core of who my mother was. If there was a child or person in need, she was going to do her very best to handle whatever it was.
Everyone Grieves Differently
The Saturday morning of her funeral, when I sat in front of a closed white casket, was one of the hardest days of my life. I’m an only child, and growing up, my mother and I were always extremely close. In fact, I didn’t grow up with siblings, cousins or really any other family around. It was just me, my mom, dad, my dog Missy and a host of cats. I did a lot of things wrong growing up, but I also got quite a few right. Mama was never slow to express her pride in the child she and my father brought to their Cooksville Road home at 2 weeks old.
I didn’t sob that May morning. A few tears wet the Kleenex usher standing guard at my side had handed me after shoving a handful of funeral programs between me and the seat’s end. I didn’t cry at the cemetery where the soggy ground denied us the honor of placing her in the grave. I didn’t cry at the repast where my best church friends from my childhood served us chicken, mashed potatoes and green beans in those plastic gloves that don’t quite fit.
Grief is a funny thing. It hits you in the most unexpected ways at the most unexpected times. People would tell me “Everyone grieves differently” when I explained that I hadn’t truly cried. In the weeks since her death, I’ve picked up the phone to call her multiple times. I always think of something new that I need to tell her, and the sadness hits when I realize that I can’t. Even in those moments, that gut-wrenching sob I expected to happen, never came.
That regret-laced sadness hit again in June when the Mississippi Free Press promoted me to Systemic and Education Editor. I left the staff meeting after the announcement and immediately wanted to go home, call my mom and tell her about my latest success. But I could not. Mama is gone.
On the drive home, the tears began to fall. It was only the second time since my mother died that I truly cried. The first happened as I drove to work on the first Monday of our newsroom’s 2025 Mississippi Youth Media Project, my first as program manager. The weekend before, I had stood before hundreds of people, substituting for the leader of an organization that I joined because of my mother’s involvement. The memories of her heading to “the meeting” in all white had been as prominent in my thoughts that weekend as the photo of her I had printed on my daily agenda. That Monday morning, I sobbed that she missed by only weeks her little girl holding up the family masonic mantle.
She Would Expect No Less
That Thursday evening, I sobbed again for what my mother didn’t live to see. The cry slowly turned into a wail, my shoulders shaking violently. I pulled over and sat until it subsided, rolling my window down hoping the fresh summer air would calm me. I cried because she would be proud of the work that I am about to lead, which will shine an even brighter light on the issues that plague this state—issues that my mother tried to address in Noxubee County in the best way she knew how to do.
And while sitting there, realization hit. My mother does know, and she is definitely proud.
She is proud that I’m about to help lead our newsroom in digging deeper into the systemic injustices across this state, not only in education but also in civil rights, human rights, health care and the environment. She is proud that our work will shed light on the ways cities and governments have disinvested in their most vulnerable citizens. She is smiling that I am already digging into the issues suffered by special-education families across the state. And I’m sure she is elated that we don’t plan to just complain about them, but rather begin to look for and present potential solutions.
Those realizations helped me dry my tears. I know she is excited that her daughter has been chosen to help lead this charge of systemic journalism and to encourage another generation of YMP students to do the same.
My mother loved and valued education and dedicated her life to it. Mama felt that the students in Noxubee County and all over the state deserved the opportunity to learn and thrive. She raised me to value those same things and to understand that the world that we live in is not the way that it has to be. In her words, “If you know better, you do better.” It’s time our state knows better.
So, as mom watches, I hope you take this journey with me. We’re going to do it the Mississippi Free Press way, as always. We will bring light to truth. We will tell the stories of those whose voices are often unheard and whose tears are never dried.
I have to do this right. Mom is watching, and she would expect no less.
This MFP Voices opinion essay reflects the personal opinion of its author(s). The column does not necessarily represent the views of the Mississippi Free Press, its staff or board members. To submit an opinion for the MFP Voices section, send up to 1,200 words and sources fact-checking the included information to voices@mississippifreepress.org. We welcome a wide variety of viewpoints.