Eulogies For Our Mothers

Neil delivered such a beautiful eulogy at his mom's funeral yesterday.  We wanted to post it for anyone who might care to read it.  While I'm at it I thought I'd post the words I shared at my mom's funeral in June.  So here are Neil's words, followed by my own. It's been quite a season of loss.  

Neil's Eulogy for his mom. October, 2014:

Solid and Steady. Those two word come to mind when  I think about my mother. A quote I read recently came back to me when I started writing this eulogy. It refers to the well being of body and mind and compares it to a mountain. It states:
“Well being of body is like a mountain. A lot happens on a mountain. It hails and the winds come up and it rains and snows. The sun gets very hot, the clouds cross over, animals shit and piss on the mountain, and so do people. People leave their trash and others clean it up. Many things come and go on this mountain, but it just sits there. When we've seen ourselves completely, there's a stillness of body that is like a mountain.” Mom had weathered many storms of her own - like the loss of her brothers and parents, and she grew up in the hardscrabble existence of the tough Northern Vermont country. Where others might've bent or broke she got strong. A strength that made her a rock for me. Calm, strong, wise, and careful of thought and word. That's how she was.
An early example of this was when I was about 8 years old. I was chasing my brother Paul and his friend Tim Hayford full-speed through the house. They made their escape through a back door, and at top speed I followed. As the door swung back at me I put both hands out in front of me to shove it open. When I did, the whole glass panel in the door exploded in my face. I stopped and took a step back and assessed the damage. In my little mind what I was looking at on my arms was “emergency level 11” on a scale of 1-10. All of my exposed flesh just covered in blood. Mom was in the next room and no doubt heard the cacophony. As my panic rose, I stated, “Mom, I'm cut.” She said, “Where?” I said, “Everywhere.” I went into the kitchen where she was and braced myself for whatever mayhem was about to happen when she saw this spectacle. Her response, without batting an eyelash, “Well, let's get in the car.” I don't even think she said the word hospital. Solid. I was safe. And man did I ever need that at that moment. Not only was this the moment I thought I was pretty likely to die, but she wasn't even going to give me Hell for breaking the door! What a Mom, perfect and unflappable in tough times. A mountain. 

Secondly, Mom was an educator. Her whole working life she was a teacher – a profession  along with nursing which is one of the most noble in my humble opinion. As a matter of fact, she was my very own kindergarten teacher. All through my life people would say, “I know your mother, she was my teacher, I liked her.” She gave of herself so that others could learn. I struggled the other night after leaving the nursing home, watching her die, to find a lesson to be learned through my sadness and misery. Then I realized that what I'd just been witness to was a lot of people taking loving care of my dying mother. And I saw and heard other nurses outside in the hall taking care of other residents, treating them with dignity and great respect and compassion. Lately I've been missing this aspect of humanity due to my own burnout from my own work. In those quiet hours spent with my mother last Saturday night she set the scene that taught me to not get wrapped up in the negative, but to see the kindness of humanity around me. Without the ability to speak or even move she was plying her trade right up the very end. Thanks Mom.

Finally, Mom was one half of a great team that taught me what a true, good, healthy, strong relationship with a partner and best friend is all about. Fortunately the other half of that team is right here today, so I can thank him for his part right now. I must've been like 20 years old before I even considered that fighting was something a married couple did. Fighting? Never once did I see such a thing. (Bickering, occasional eye rolls, and under the breath mutterings between this team while remodeling the kitchen or bathroom together, well that's another story – nobody's perfect all the time, right?) This team always presented a unified front when it came to parenting, and that's a tough thing to do. As a woman Mom was a great role model for a boy. She was strong, independent, hard working and she spoke her mind. And Dad. I've never witnessed more compassion and dedication to a marriage than what he has displayed to me in the final years of Mom's life as her disease took her farther and farther away from all of us. I have marveled at what must have been an unimaginably hard task. Thank you Dad for showing me how it's done.

I'll miss you Mom. Like Dad said the other day at the nursing home, “It's been a good life.”

Zoe's Eulogy for her mom. June, 2014:

I loved her so much.  I love her so much.  She loved me.  Our relationship could have been complicated, but it wasn’t.  It was simple and easy. We knew that we loved each other.  We were unequivocal in our love for one another.  We held no resentments, owed no apologies. We were almost never even angry with each other.  We somehow always knew our time together was precious and so we left nothing to chance.  We’re so lucky that way.

My mom and I didn’t live together from the time I was 4 years old and my mom never completely let go of the sadness of not being physically present in my day to day raising.  But she trusted my dad and my gram (as well as loving aunts and uncles) to fill in where she couldn’t be. She was right to trust them, and yet she was also, always there.  There was never a time that I needed my mom and she wasn’t there for me. She always had my back and I always knew she’d do anything for me.  She was fierce that way.  I hope She will find me because I still need her.  

I think that precisely because my mom and I weren’t physically together every day when I was a kid, she made the time we WERE together particularly special. As a child, when she was with me she was 100% with me.  When I was 8 or 9 she read to me The Catcher in The Rye on her low-to-the-ground waterbed in her cool, 1970’s one bedroom apartment on the 3rd floor.  It had sparkle paint on the ceiling and a balcony and built in air conditioner. It was really sophisticated and fancy and I loved it.   Mom read me A Tree Grows In Brooklyn in the same manner.   She loved both of those books and taught me to love them.  On car rides she told me history stories; those of the Kennedys and Henry the 8th and his 6 wives were our favorites.  She cut my meat up in to the tiniest little pieces when she made me “pepper steak” which I loved.  I think it was just a few years ago that I had to let her know I could cut up my own meat! She made it clear to me, every single day of my life, through deed and through words, that I was the most important person in the world to her.

Now sometimes I worried for just a second or two if this was true because she seemed to really like Wayne.  So, quietly, and not so quietly, my step-father and I engaged in a lifetime of competition for her affection. Don’t misunderstand: Wayne was always so good to me; we played Atari football and baseball and ate gingersnaps and fluffernutters and when we bickered it had the flavor of sibling rivalry.  When Wayne and I finally got to be together last week, after his return from NYC where he bravely saw Momma off, in our embrace I remarked, “I guess we don’t have to compete anymore.”  He responded, “I think we both won.”  And it’s true.  Because she loved us both, all of us, totally, unconditionally, without competitions and with vigor.  But she loved me the most. ;)

My entire life we communicated daily.  Before email, texts and facebook we talked every day.  She used to call me at exactly 5PM when the rates went down.  She always liked to hear about the details of my life.  She was immensely proud of me (sometimes without particularly good reason) and I always knew it.  In fact, as I worry whether or not these words will be enough for this situation (and know they can’t possibly be) I have to remember that if mom were here she’d think this was close in quality to the “I Have a Dream” speech.

As a grandmother, my mom was in a league of her own.  She delighted in her grandchildren and didn’t see anything wrong with spoiling them silly.  Just the other day I came back to her house from a run to find her serving Patrick a glorious breakfast of bacon and french toast on homemade bread with a side of fresh berries as he gazed at the television; heaven for a kid to be so indulged and heaven for my mom to make him happy.  When Harper was little my mom loved to tuck her in at night and the two of them would talk and laugh for sometimes an hour.  Mom cherished these times.  She always just wanted to be with us and treat us well.  

My mom’s pocketbook is a physical metaphor. She carried it everywhere, though it’s big and bulky and heavy.  We had kind of a running joke where I teased her for it’s weight and size but then expressed appreciation when we were out and she had the precise thing I needed. Much of what she was lugging around were things other people might need: Corkscrew, wetnaps, nail file, extra pair of sunglasses, scissors, sunscreen, listerine breath strips, antacids, ibuprofen, hydrocortisone cream, several kinds of hand sanitizer, a wallet with every kind of discount card and at least 4 signed and dated cards (in addition to her driver’s license) to make sure it would be known that she was an organ donor.  And this thing, which is to allow you to administer CPR to a stranger without risk of infection.  So she was ready for that, too.  She lived her days bringing happiness and comfort to those she loved and anyone else who might need it.  If I could, I’d crawl into this pocketbook and go to sleep.

Thank you all for loving and appreciating my mom.