Russell Mathis

My cousin Rusty Mathis passed away this week, 10 days after going into cardiac arrest. Rusty was a big, tall man in all ways by which we measure, and certainly in all ways that matter most. He was older than me by some years and, as such, always around on the big days of childhood, the holidays and birthdays. Some of my earliest memories are of the two of us and my older brother sitting on the bedroom floor of the Mathis home in Beaumont, Texas, probably on a Christmas Eve, refighting the Battle of Gettysburg with those blue and gray figurines that all Southern boys had in those far off and unenlightened days.

The attentive reader of this blog may note that this cousin has made an appearance in my recollections many times, as an avid gardener, a man of faith, and a linchpin of his community. Rusty was the one who, in the midst of negotiations with executives from a Northeastern city, stopped them cold when said, “We may have to lick the calf twice.” It took a bit of explaining to get at what he meant — you may not succeed the first time, but try again — but once understood, the businessmen took to the expression right away and started weaving it into their own communications.

Although Rusty grew up and spent his life in that gritty industrial city on the Gulf Coast, most weekends found he and his father hunting squirrels with their Catahoulas or raising cattle on their property up in the Big Thicket along the Sabine River. When pressed by Rusty’s mother for why they were always going out of town, his father once told my Aunt Cille, “Cille, you can’t raise a boy on a 50-foot-square lot.”

I spent a lot of time learning to dig postholes on that land as a boy. Now, in my full maturity, I’m beginning to suspect that, as Rusty was a devoted reader of Mark Twain, there was more than a bit of the “Aunt Polly is mighty particular about how this fence gets painted” to the “opportunity” I was given.

Rusty had the Will Rogers gift of the natural-born American humorist: he told long and slow (and believe me, my cousin spoke in long and slow sentences), but always with great purpose and often incredibly funny, stories. He and I, as adulthood often does, fell out of contact for a long period, until the aging of parents, a shared aunt, and the loss of my sister brought us close again. He and his wife, Rosemary, visited the farm often these past years.

One of the first times I met Rosemary, a pretty, tall, skinny girl from Port Arthur, Rusty told me she had a tapeworm. I believed him, as a gullible youngster, and to the great amusement of family wide and large, I indiscreetly repeated her “problem.” That was my cousin, my “Couzain!” as he always called me. He had a sly and targeted humor that belied an active and keen intelligence, as well as a gentle, easygoing speaking voice that was matched by a startling, beautiful singing voice.

Rusty, who was adopted as an infant, made family central to his life. From his parents to his wife and children, from his extended cousins to the assorted half-siblings he discovered late in life, from his hometown of Beaumont to the whole damn state of Texas — the way I sensed it, they were all encompassed in his idea of kith and kin. He had the firmest notion of place of anyone of my acquaintance.

When we lose anyone in this world, there is a void left. But lest we dip into some dreary relativism, let us acknowledge that some are mourned more than others, some leave bigger gaps in the ranks of those left behind. As my cousin lingered these past 10 days before his death, it was clear he was of the latter company. The hundreds and hundreds of outpourings of love from family, friends, church, his city, and way beyond were both evidence and lessons in how to live well, how to be a better man.

We all leave this world at some juncture. To leave respected, valued, and loved, as Rusty was, is the lesson I take to heart. His was the life well spent. Another decade more, another decade less wouldn’t change that trajectory.

Farewell, Couzain!

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