Mom's Eulogy

 

What Jen, Bethany, and I talked about while mom was dying and since is, "We don't know what we will do without our mother."

(I mean who will clean our houses?)

It seems like a weird thing to say.

All three of us are now grown.

We all are successful, well-adjusted people.

We have careers, spouses, kids of our own.

It wouldn't seem like we would need a mother anymore.

But our mother is everything to us.

Every good thing that we are is because of who she was to us.

Our mother even now is our confidant, our wise adviser, the person who gives us unconditional love.

Let me tell you some of the things that she was to us.

 

We have to start by talking about our mother's faith.

As Jen has said on numerous occasions, "No one loves Jesus more than mom."

Our mother had a strong faith, and it is the thing that defined her above all else.

She trusted in God enough to let things run their course.

As we were growing up our mother always told us that our choices were ours to make.

Of course, she gave advice or a shove in certain directions.

But for some reason she trusted us to make our own way in the world, even when we didn't deserve that trust.

When we failed she was always there to help us out.

She paid for our overdue credit card expenses, our court fees when we got caught shoplifting.

She was always a steady presence.

She was always more interested in why we did things, instead of what we did.

She encouraged us to search our feelings, to name those feelings out loud.

She wanted us to explore our inner selves.

As a parent I am not always so calm, and I think her ability to be even keel, to trust us, was because of her faith in God.

This faith served her well as she did face her share of difficulties.

Divorce from Gene, battling cancer twice, and Dad’s death, all of which she handled with positivity and grace.

 

My mother's faith also came out in her dedication to the Church.

When I first moved back to New Hampshire Knute said to me, “Now your mother will be able to worship at Concordia on some Sundays."

I will tell you that rarely happened.

Not because she didn't want to come to see me preach, but because she was so busy in her own church.

She was running coffee hour, planning the community meal, singing in the choir, going to help people in their homes, volunteering at the homeless resource center, or just being here to make people feel welcomed and cared for.

She was in charge of the fellowship when she resigned from that duty she found four people to do the work that she did.

This was how it was all of our lives.

Church came first.

My dad would tell the story of how when they were first married it was a Sunday.

Mom came in and woke him up because it was time for church.

My Dad said, "We just went last Sunday."

To which mom said, "Yeah, we will be going every Sunday."

And we did, it was not a discussion just something that she expected our family to do.

I marvel now how she would get the three of us up and out of the house.

Because I know I wasn't the easiest to get up for Church.

We were usually one of the last people to leave, as mom had to clean the coffee pot.

I didn't appreciate at the time how much this would mean for our lives.

My mother's closest friends came from Church.

We would often spend the afternoon at someone's house playing, eating, and drinking.

We would go to the Fields, Arndts, Lerzes, Rouches, or Meles.

It feels like every Sunday we would be with those people for a long time.

To this day we are all still family.

Mom’s family was important to her.

She cherished her relationships with her siblings Paula and David.

She made sure to call and write when they were away, and she loved having them at our house growing up with Gigi and grandpa.

She had two other sisters in Gay and Suzanne.

They had known each other long before they were family.

She also made sure that she cultivated those two important relationships.

We had such great times at the beach, Disney, playing scrapple, Aunt Gay’s yearly February visit, and sitting around the table sipping coffee and talking.

Mom loved having her family around.

She was a supportive mother in law.

Always wanting to hear about their careers, projects, and family.

Mom loved her grandkids.

She loved having them at her house for a week, she loved going to their various sporting events, concerts, plays, and recitals, she loved hearing about their lives or teasing them about people they might be dating, she would always say “yes” to babysit them.

When our kids were little she came to watch them for us once a week.

She took the greatest delight in watching them give us a hard time.

If we were having a difficult parenting moment she would laugh and say, “I love watching this.” (Probably a little payback for all the hard times we put her through,)

 

Mom was an extreme extrovert.

I know that people always think of our Dad that way, and he was very outgoing.

But he needed time alone, our mother rarely did.

If she spent a day or two alone it wasn't pretty.

She loved being around people.

She loved being at the beach, having people over her house, doing things at Church.

She loved to sit and talk to people.

She loved to sit and drink coffee and just have a chat about life.

She always asked people about themselves, and she talked about herself but never too much.

She never tried to make people into anything they were not, she accepted them for who they were.

That is true of us kids too.

She always just accepted us for who we are, in all of our imperfections, she loved us as that person.

It has been amazing to read the cards and online messages of other people reflecting that truth about her.

 

It was here at Calumet that mom’s faith was constantly revitalized and lived out.

She loved this place.

It meant so much to her.

It was where her and dad met and fell in love.

It was where she went on vacations.

It was here that her and our Dad went on their honeymoon.

She was the one who convinced our Dad to sell their home in Derry and move up here to be closer to Camp. (Even though he thought it was his idea.)

For the last 26 years she spent her summers on the shores of Lake Ossipee talking with people and swimming.

At the start of summer she would say, “All the people come now. I love it!”

So many people have told us how much the liked to talk to mom on the beach here, or how she made them feel at home.

That is how she lived out her faith welcoming new people, and constantly fostering old relationships.

 

I don't think we can talk about our mother without talking about how clean she was.

Mom was an obsessive cleaner.

In our house growing up we had garbage cans, but there was never garbage in them.

When I tell people that they ask me what where did it go.

I don’t' know.

I just know that she loved to throw things out.

The dump was one of her favorite places in the world.

When we lived in Derry I have found memories of going to the dump with mom.

She did the same thing in Freedom.

Always had something in her car to throw out.

When we went to Disney and she found out that they didn’t recycle she took home her recycling in her luggage!

I liked to joke with people that mom caught the dust before it settled anywhere in the house.

This was not always the easiest thing to live with.

My mom rarely got that mad about things.

Except when company was coming over and she was preparing.

We were exiled from the house during this process.

And if we moved or messed anything up it would be the rare time she would raise her voice at us.

 

Our mom did it all.

She cleaned, cooked, did the laundry, drove us around to our various events, attend those events.

I always remember her being at everything we did.

Sports, theater, cheerleading.

And on top of all that she worked full time as a geriatric nurse, volunteered at church, and hosted these different events for family and friends.

She was super human.

She did everything, and she did it for Jen, Bethany, and I.

She gave us everything a mother could give and more.

She was our mother and our friend and confidant.

So like I said at the beginning I don't know what we are going to do without her.

 

Today I am just really thankful that she was our mom.

She asked to me to say today that “She hopes she will be remembered as someone who made this world a little cleaner and left it better."

We can say with confidence that she did that and then some.

Amen