My Mother's Eulogy

For the occasion of my mother’s memorial –

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Before I begin, I must make one thing unequivocally clear:  I love my mother very much.

It’s strange how the tenses of verbs change when someone passes away.  Do you say, “I love them,” or do you say, “I loved them”?  Does it really make a difference?  I suppose, when all is said and done, that’s the ultimate truth about death: they will still be gone tomorrow, so does your love no longer count?

I say “yes,” it does still count, as much as it ever did.  So I mean it when I say it.

I love my mother.  And that’s the most important thing you need to know.

It would be a lie to say we didn’t have our troubles.  I supposed every mother and daughter have them.  My troubles were different from my sister’s troubles, and were different than those had by my mother with her own.  But our bond was terribly special, simply because we were so much alike.

Or, are so much alike.  See, there’s that tense thing again.

My mother was exquisitely talented in many arenas.  She didn’t express all of them simultaneously, so they were easy to miss.  My mother liked to sew.  My mother liked to knit.  She was a painter, and once upon a time, liked to quill paper.  If you don’t know what quilling is, you should look it up on Pinterest – one thing I think mom would have loved if she had the wherewithal to find that website.  I mean, can you imagine the pins she would have on “lamps” alone?

Mom was a pianist.  I would say that was a primary identity for her.  She was a musician and she loved being a musician.  If it wasn’t for her own stage fright, I suspect she would have loved playing in great halls and for many people.  Instead she played not-so-quietly in her living room, for her friends, for her family, and often asked me to sing next to her even when I felt ridiculous trying to belt out a Bach that I didn’t know the words to.  It was something we did together.  And it’s something I will likely never do again.

Now that she is gone, I am torn in so many directions. I am torn in complicated guilt and grief for how much time we lost the past two years.  I am torn in gratefulness that I spoke with her every day at the end.  I am torn in relief that she is no longer suffering. I am torn in despair knowing that she is just simply not around anymore - either to laugh with me or cry with me or yell at me in disapproval. I am torn in confusion over what happened and what could have been done. I am torn in desperation to get answers that I know I will never get - and fear that I will.

But there are things I am not torn about.  I know my mother loved me.  And I know that I love her.  I know that my mother felt a karmic quest to create change, especially in our government.  I know my mother was passionate about paying attention to our surroundings and reading the signs of the times, the stars, and within ourselves.  I know my mother would have been horrified to see her situation from the outside looking in.  And I know my mother would be proud of my contemplation to take legal action to the state, on behalf of people suffering from mental illness everywhere, so that we might prevent such things for other families in the future.

That, I know, my mother would support.

I wish I could sing for you one of Barbra Streisand’s classics – but I’m afraid I would turn into a burbling mess.  I have a newborn, so I’m pretty much always a burbling mess anyway... good luck asking me to sing these days.  But I know one thing.  If I were to sing, I would hear my mother harmonizing in the higher register, as she always, always did.  If I were to play piano for you, she would be yelling out the notes from another room – even if the names she said weren’t necessarily correct, she could come out to the piano and hit the note with her hand like Marian from ‘The Music Man’ in that first scene.

Well, look at me now, I am definitely my mother’s daughter – I have written 750 words and I feel like I’m just getting started. 

But for the sake of everyone, I will quote Inigo Montoya:

“Let me explain.  No, there is too much.  Let me sum up.”

We cannot kid ourselves that she was all she could be at the end, because she wasn’t.  The woman I will remember as my mother was vibrant, exciting, funny, and tender hearted.  She was more trusting than she was suspicious.  She answered the phone with a Julie Andrews-like intonation.  She liked to quote movies, as I often love to do, as does my sister.  Mom loved going to the movies, and she had a sweet tooth just like me.  She and I loved to sing in the car together.  She enjoyed the mixtapes I put together for her just as much as I enjoyed making them – most of them opening on a highly inappropriate song for a 60-something year old woman to be singing (I think the last CD I made had “Blurred Lines” as the opening number and she loved it).  This is the mom that I want to, and will, remember.

In short, I love you, Mom.

That’s all you need to know.