Violet

Eileen

McClain

Stout

was a resident of Fishers, Indiana. But she claimed no attachment to a particular place—whether Richmond, Indiana, where she was born on October 2, 1944, and where she spent much of her life; or Los Angeles, where she briefly lived at the start of her teenage years; Katy, Texas, where she moved in her mid-fifties; or Fishers—where she retired and passed on September 11, 2021, after a two-year battle with cancer.

To Eileen—or Mom—home wasn’t a town. Her heart belonged to five men whose distinct and often complicated relationships with her sketch the outlines of a life.

First there was Ira McClain, her dad, who to her last days she called her best friend. Ira passed away when she was 14.

Next, there was Mark Chapman, her first son, for whom she tried to reinvent herself. The transition from daughter to mother didn’t come easy. Mark remained the man whose affection she sought most, though she never learned how to welcome it. Mark showed up anyway, time and again. And was with her when she passed.

Shawn Stout is her second son. To her last days, he was the one man among us who never left her side. That her last years were as rich and comfortable as they were is almost entirely Shawn’s work.

John Stout, her husband, loved her more than I’ve seen any one person love another. A high school classmate, his re-emergence in her life when she was a single-mother of three boys at 39 made all of our lives what they are today. “I love her because I know deep down she is just such a good person,” he once said during a long car ride, 31 years into their marriage that lasted 34. “She’s like a child who never learned to lie.” Dad passed in that 34th year, when they were both 75.

And lastly, me, her youngest son, whose own relationship with Mom didn’t truly take root until later in her life, when she was caring for her own mother, Wilma, in her last years. My relationship was the least complicated. Like Ira, I tended to dote and listen. But probably like Ira, too, this was easy because I recognized the best of myself in her. 

Mom was most proud of her roles as a grandma to five children and mom to the three of us. She was also a realtor; an administrative assistant at the Wayne County courthouse in Richmond; and a factory worker at Alcoa. She was a homemaker, woodworker, and gardener. She was a DIY interior decorator with a stunningly rich sense of color and, most difficult for me to believe, she was an avid dancer in the days when folks did their dancing in discos to the Bee Gees (maybe her favorite group). 

When she passed, less than a month shy of her 77th birthday, she died as she was born: a daughter. The single most consequential event of her life was Ira’s passing in Los Angeles, 1958—when he was 37. The trauma of her best friend’s death froze her understanding of love to that of a girl in her early teens. The four men who came after her dad succeeded in our relationships with her to the extent we could fill some part of the foreboding hole his loss left in her.

So now her heart survives through the deeds of her sons and grandkids; while her soul returns where it always belonged—back to her parents’ living room, in Richmond or Los Angeles, maybe a little too much after bedtime for Wilma’s liking, where she can listen to records while dancing with Ira. This was her first home, her only true home, despite all the years she spent away from his love of music, mischief, and her. All this time away, so she could make our home. 

Peace? Forget peace. She has found the beat again ✿❀