Second Opinion : A Deathbed Lesson for Life: It’s All in the Frijoles

The last six weeks of my mother’s life became an opportunity for me to seek wisdom, to give thanks for all she had given me and to rectify old hurts between us. I was adamant about not leaving any unfinished business between us. 1 wanted to end our time together on good terms.

Why else was I given a warning about mom’s limited time on this planet just days before her terminal diagnosis? The warning had come in the middle of the night while I was in a twilight dream state.

“It’s time for me to go, it’s time for me to go,” she told me.

Four days later she collapsed. The doctor told me she was suffering from kidney disease and gave her six weeks to live.

My mother was a physically small woman. She had only an eighth-grade education as a young woman and made her living as a seamstress, but she was a woman of tremendous character and discipline.

I remember her going back to school to complete her own high school diploma when I was in high school to set a good example, working to improve her English by reading the daily newspaper aloud and helping friends and relatives as they went through their struggles.

Mom was strong, tough-minded, wise, practical, elegant and refined, as well as gracious. One day as she lay in bed a few weeks after the grim diagnosis, I asked her what made her so strong.

I had expected to hear her draw from the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy, founder of Christian Science, and one of her role models. But instead she replied:

“Beans. Beans have made me strong.”

I laughed but was also somewhat disappointed that she didn’t leave me with a stronger message.

It wasn’t until months after her death, as I was preparing frijoles en la olla according to Mom’s instructions on how to cook the perfect beans, that I realized the power of her deathbed message to me.

Mom took great care in washing and sorting her beans. After running water over the beans several times, she would spread the beans out on a tray or large dish and then pick out and discard any imperfectly shaped, shriveled or dark beans. Each bean for her pot had to be a perfectly flawless pinto.

“A bad bean can sour the pot,” she would say.

Mom also cautioned me against adding cold water to the cooking pot if the water evaporated below a certain point, or the beans would turn dark and not appear fresh when served.

Her beans were not only delicious but pretty to look at.

While I was cooking, I realized what Mom meant months earlier.

Not only are beans the staple of the Mexican diet and filled with strength-giving iron, but the rigor she applied to eliminating any undesirable beans was the same exacting attention she paid to eliminating character flaws and weaknesses in herself and those around her.

And so I finally got it. What all that tough love was about, the emphasis on developing character and self-control, of taking in only the good and rejecting the bad.

That day in the kitchen I understood why beans made my mother so strong.