A Fond Farewell

Last night we had a memorial dinner for mom at a local restaurant and it was a wonderful way to say goodbye. We had these hard copy pictures on hand, but then we also had four digital photo frames running (one for grandkids, one for kids, one for travel, and one for "old days") and a continuous slide show projected on the wall where everyone could see (more pictures here).

Kathy read some stories and comments that others left on this site and Adrienne and I wrote eulogies that we read aloud. I am pasting those below for those of you that missed it.

It was hard to say goodbye, but it was nice to see how many people loved and respected mom.

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Erika's Eulogy

I don’t have to explain to anyone here what my mom and I meant to each other. I’m sure each daughter will say the same thing, but our bond was something special. We were practically the same person. We thought the same on so many things that we could communicate without actually speaking. That really came in handy when playing games with the rest of the family.

With all due respect to my father, all of the good things in me came from my mom: my heart, my smile, my laugh, my amazing sense of humor, and my voice. She used to joke that she gave her singing voice to me and she didn’t save any for herself. I treasured that gift most of all and I used it simply for her pleasure. If she wanted me to sing, I sang: at family gatherings, on cruises, in ancient amphitheaters in Greece, on buses, in the car, and most recently in her hospital room. If it would have brought her comfort I would have sang forever.

Mom loved her family and mom loved to travel and if she could mix the two she was the happiest person in the world. Luckily, we were able to mix the two a lot and she really was the happiest person in the world. She loved going to Florida with Aunt Rita and Aunt Monica. She loved it more if one or more of her daughters could go too. She loved going to Vegas. She loved it more if her kids, and more recently her grandkids, came too. I went on my first cruise with mom in 1998 or 1999 and she said she never wanted to go on a cruise without a daughter again. I went on my first international trip with her and the Holliday Park gang in 2000 to Greece and we had so much fun and we laughed so hard, I could hardly wait to go again. We went back to Europe the very next year and added Kathy and Lyle to the mix which made her even happier. Just last summer, even when her pain got so bad she could only walk a short way, she had an amazing time on a Cruise through northern Europe with Adrienne and me. She knew she could not do much and did not want to slow us down but she wanted us to at least get her off the boat in every country. We, of course, did better than that and we wheeled her around the streets of Oslo, Helsinki, and Rostock and onto tour boats in Stockholm and St. Petersburg and we even wheeled her through Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen in the rain. I have to thank Jan and Gene Suchy and the rest of the Holliday Park travelers for making these opportunities available to us and for welcoming mom’s daughters with open arms and hearts.

It pains me to think that Jackson will grow up with only a vague memory of mom. It pains me to think that I will never see her smile again. It pains me to think that I will never hear her laugh again. But this is all pain that I can live with, knowing that she is not in pain any more.
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Adrienne's Eulogy:

Mom was not very religious, but I would say she was spiritual. She had the spirit of an 18 year old kid, with a love for life.

She was raised Catholic and raised us the same. While there are many views that we don’t agree with, her belief in God never varied. She once told me that “God never gives you anything he doesn’t think you can handle”. And that advice has gotten me through some very tough times in my life especially this one.

Whether it was a trick to help her fall asleep during her hospital stay or a prayer in sincere form, or just her reverting to a childhood memory, mom said a lot of Hail Mary’s in the hospital. She mentioned to me that she always wanted to teach it to me in French. One night while she was sleeping I found it online and started practicing. Last week, on Christmas day, we talked about it again. She didn’t believe that I had worked on it, so I brought up my file and read it to her. She corrected my pronunciation and even made me delete a word. “The souls are not ‘Pauvre’” she told me, “stop saying that”. So when I repeated it again, I left out the word “poor”.

Je vous salue, Marie, pleine de grâces, le Seigneur est avec vous, vous êtes bénie entre toutes les femmes, et Jésus le fruit de vos entrailles est béni. Sainte Marie, Mère de Dieu, priez pour nous pécheurs, maintenant, et à l'heure de notre mort.