Garda and her teeth

I was brushing my teeth before bed the other night and had a revelation.

Those who knew my mother, Garda, knew that she took good care of her teeth. It was almost an obsession with her. She would floss every day and the brushing took five minutes. She was very thorough.

And she always worked a toothpick after meals.

Even in those last few days of her life when it was a chore just to walk a few steps to the bathroom, she enjoyed brushing her teeth and the way her mouth felt afterwards.

The revelation I had the other day was the “why” of this life-long habit.

I thought perhaps it was because Dad had his top teeth pulled in his early 40s and had uppers. That probably wasn’t too fun or romantic. Surely it was expensive.

But that wasn’t it.

Garda’s mother died when she was only ten years old. It was a vivid but painful memory for Garda and her sisters to become orphans at such a young age. (Grandpa died in 1925.)

It was never clear to the girls what killed Grandmother Malinda, but it was a long and painful illness for a woman of 43. Speculation is that it was perhaps undiagnosed diabetes. She had her gallbladder removed. The immediate cause of death is believed to have been blood clots on the brain. Who knows? Medical science in Southern Utah in 1933 was rather primitive.

Anyway, back to Garda and dental hygiene.

A few months before Malinda passed away she had all of her teeth removed because it was believed they were causing an infection throughout her body.

Just imagine the impact that had on a 10-year-old girl. You come home from school to see your already-ill mother made worse by having all her teeth extracted under little or no anesthetic. And she would never recover. She died in December of 1933.

Call me crazy, but I think Garda saw bad teeth as a sign of death. She didn’t want to go through all that pain (or make her family endure it) so she kept her teeth clean and healthy.