Starting Over

Between the wall and the couch I’m sitting on are the picture boards from my mom’s funeral. There are three of them, each detailing a different era in her life. I haven’t looked at them since I brought them home in July, but I know they are back there, untouched but for some dust bunnies and wayward dog hair.

I thought about taking them out today. About showing the pictures, her story, to someone who has never met her. Thought maybe it would help me spend some time with her, remembering what a wonderful person she was. To talk about her and celebrate her life for a while.

But I didn’t.

Instead, I quickly redirected my thoughts to something more pragmatic. Molly and I really need to find the time to clean out her closet and dresser, to go through her jewelry and keepsakes. 

But really I’m in no rush. As long as most of her things are still in my parents’ house, there is some sense of her being there, I guess. Of everything, it’s her sock drawer that really sticks out in my mind. All paired up and ready to go.

Only they’re not going anywhere. 

Truth is, I don’t think I’ve been dealing with my mom’s death all that well. I haven’t cried much (save for my weekly hour of couch time) and I try not to think about her very often. Maybe I’m subconsciously afraid of how much it’s going to hurt, of admitting how much I’ve lost. Usually as soon I start thinking about her, I shift my focus to the things right in front me (chair, window, the ache in my low back) to get my mind in a safer place. I lie and say I'm being mindful of the present moment. But truthfully, I'm avoiding the present moment when I abandon my sadness and look for something else.

Not sure I’m ready to pull out the picture boards yet, but I did just reread the eulogy I gave at her funeral service. I’ll share it here. And maybe soon I can share those boards…

Back to the beginning and starting over, it seems. 

Mom's Eulogy

It’s nice to see so many people here. I see faces I’ve seen since the day I was born, lifelong friends and family that have been with my mom throughout her entire life. They knew her as a little daddy’s girl with curly red hair growing up on Fairmount Ave. in St. Paul, as a shy and skinny kid at St. Luke’s grade school and then at the Convent of the Visitation for high school.

I see the faces of people who met my mom as an adult, watched her marry and become a mother. I see women who learned how be wives and mothers alongside my mom, people that were close to our family through the various ups and downs of life.

She loved you all and there is nothing she would have liked more than to be celebrating her life each and every one of you. It’s a shame we don’t plan events like this for the living, but I know she’s here in spirit.

There are some of you here who never had the chance to meet my mom, but if you’re here because care about someone in her family, that means you care about her because everything good in us is a reflection of her. Pat’s wit and commitment, Billy classiness and love for tradition, Molly’s compassion and devotion to caring for others… my goofiness.

She was the number one fan of each of her four children. She was committed to her job as a stay-at-home mom and there was nothing she would have rather done. She was a volunteer, room mother, cook, nurse, and taxi driver. She was even a leprechaun once a year, secretly delivering a hat full of candy to each of our classrooms on St. Patrick’s Day. She never told us it was her, she just enjoyed hearing the kids and teachers talk about it and try to figure her out. It took us years to finally figure out it was her.      

She rarely missed a game for any of the dozens of sports we played from T-Ball to varsity sports. She drove my brothers to hockey games all over the state and even played in a mother-son game. She once got two cars stuck on our driveway hill before getting the third one out so I could go to basketball practice. She’d even agreed to let my push her in and adult jogger for part of a marathon relay this past May, but decided to sit out when her health got the best of her. I thought I was doing something for her by going on runs with her… but it really was the other way around.

When Molly was in the hospital after her snowmobile accident back in 1979, she was at her side every day. Getting kids to school, heading to downtown St. Paul, then coming home again to care for the other three when my dad arrived in early evening. When Molly came home, my mom took care of her with gentleness, patience, and a kind spirit that can sometimes be hard when caregiving. She had to manage one kid on the mend and three other ones who were taking liberty with their newfound freedoms. I’m sure it wasn’t easy, but she did it with the grace and style that was the hallmark of my mom. 

She was silly, goofy and loved watching us laugh. She did things like put a rubber band around the trigger of the kitchen sink hose so the next kid to turn on the sink got sprayed. She hauled us around in a big blue suburban and let us roll around in the back end while she swerved on country roads. When we were old enough (well, almost old enough), she let us try our hand at driving on those same roads.

We spent countless hours with her playing duets on the piano and lying in her bed watching The Carol Burnett Show, Dallas, Knots Landing, and Nightline with Ted Koppel. There was no place we’d rather be than snuggled up in her arms.

And yet she was the closest thing to a walking Emily Post Etiquette book you could find.  Short from citing the page number in the book, she knew the “proper” or “mannerly” way to handle most situations. And it was never about being “stuffy” or “putting on airs,” it was about respecting others and showing them you cared.  My brother Billy is no Emily Post, but boy did she love enjoying the finer things in life with him when she’d get to put those manners to good use.

But she wasn’t just a mom to us; she was a mom to so many more. On more than one occasion, she welcomed kids into our house (teenagers nonetheless!) whose families were going through hard times or had been relocated during high school. She mothered them like they were here own. That’s how it was with any of our friends that came into the house. Our house was a place kids knew they could come to be happy—and she made it that way. And with all she endured the past year, she still cared enough to ask about our childhood friends.

As adults she never stopped mothering us. She dropped cookies off to us at work, invited us down for coffee and doughnuts, and took us out to lunch whenever she had a chance. She visited and answered the phone at the family business just to be closer to my dad and siblings, often riding shotgun for a chance to catch up.

Being a mom wasn’t just a job, it was her passion.

But if there was one thing that my mom enjoyed more than being a mom, it was being a grandma. The other day Pat was talking about my mom’s “mystery date” to Build-a-Bear Workshop with the first three grandkids. She had fun taking them out, but more than anything she just loved having her grandchildren around, and doted on them whenever she had a chance… taping their pictures and handmade cards everywhere in the house. She loved watching her children care for their children… perhaps she saw her young self in us returning the favor to the next generation.

My mom was also a committed wife. One month before she died she celebrated her 50^th wedding anniversary with my dad. They were pretty funny near the end of her life, getting on each other’s nerves now and again with a playful spirit that kept each other in check. Just two days before she died I was snuggled up with her in bed and she asked me to get my dad. She wanted a hug. And I heard her thank him for a good life together.

Of course at least half of that good life was her doing. She cared for him in every way possible. And for the most part, she did it without complaint but with desire. She was a hunting and fishing widow many weekends of the year, always happy to see my dad return.  I’ll assume it was because she missed him, but my guess is that sometimes it was the joy of knowing that reinforcements had arrived and her weekend of being terrorized by 4 kids was over.

She had a strong, quiet faith. She was at church every Sunday and Holy Day throughout her life, even had some God-sent radar that knew when as teenagers my brothers decided that “going to church” meant just swinging in to pick up the bulletin. She felt closest to God when she was visiting the nuns at Visitation. Molly and I used to talk about what a good nun she’d make.

Our hearts are broken this week and while we’re all sad she’s gone from us, I know she’s here celebrating somehow… and will be waiting for us all at a picnic table just inside the gates of heaven—with cold milk and warm cookies straight from the oven.