OK. I haven't been on here for quite some time. As many of you know, my aunt (who I was caring for) passed away from breast cancer in November and only two months ago my mother passed away after a three-year battle with the same disease. I'm back to school in September and am going to try and start writing here more often.
For now, here's the eulogy I read at my Mom's funeral. God, I really miss her.
Finding the best words to describe our mother has been very difficult. But when talking to all of her dear family, friends and co-workers over the past few days, Julie and I had so many people tell us how strong, determined and warm she was. It may seem funny, but Julie and I always thought of my mom as being like that, but we never realized that that was how other people viewed her. Your words brought back many memories for us about all the things she did for us growing up that really show what an exceptional, fun, and giving mother, friend, and employee she was during her incredible life.
When the three of us first moved to the States, Mom was bound and determined to create a good life for Julie and me. When she was looking for our first apartment, however, she experienced some difficulty. She found an apartment in Walpole that she wanted, but kept getting the run around from the building manager who clearly did not want to rent to a newly separated woman with a nine-year old and a twelve-year-old. Fulfilling her lifelong ambition of becoming a private investigator, Mom orchestrated her own undercover sting. She had my grandmother make an appointment to look at the apartment. The building manager almost immediately agreed to rent it to her. Infuriated, Mom then proceeded to contact the Fair Housing Association and had him threatened with legal action for discrimination. Needless to say, he eventually rented us the apartment. Granted, it wasn’t the greatest place to live (What thirty-six year old women wants to share a bedroom with her nine-year old daughter and live in an apartment building that is only a few yards from the train tracks and filled with senior citizens?), but it was ours and, more importantly, the three of us were together.
The home she created for us in Maryland was equally our own and even more so because of Mom’s strength, kindness, and, not to mention, her innate talent for interior decoration. Despite my parent’s divorce and the fact that we were miles away from our family, Mom made the best of what we had. Over the years, she constantly worked at re-painting and re-carpeting the house and more importantly she created a welcoming environment. The house was constantly filled with our friends. On any given day you would find Julie and her friends Laura and Ed playing computer games in the extra bedroom or my friends Bill and Stacey sitting in the family room munching on Cool Ranch Doritos while I forced them to watch the latest Madonna concert video over and over again. One summer she even let my sister’s college roommate Alissa and my high school friend Shannon move in because they had no place to stay. Julie and I are still secretly convinced the reason she did that was because Shannon worked during the summer as a driver for Domino’s and could provide Mom with an unending supply of pizza and because Alissa could bring home ice cream from her job at Friendly’s. My Mom’s open door policy also applied to animals; whether it was Holli, the dog we convinced my parents to reluctantly adopt at a moment’s notice on Christmas Day, Wendy, our dog who was a bizarre cross between a dachshund and poodle who never left Mom’s side, or even Kitty, the stray cat who followed Julie home from school one day and absolutely melted my Mom’s heart. You may be asking yourself, where was Mom in this whirlwind of teenagers and scruffy animals? Julie and I can still see her sitting at the dining room table doing her homework, going over her bills or compiling the list of chores for us that she would carefully place with a magnet over the stove every morning as a constant reminder throughout the day that we should be doing something productive. If she decided to join our group of friends in the family room we all usually groaned. This was because not only did one of us have to give up our seat on the coach so she could have her usual spot, but also because one of us would have to sit right next to the TV to change the channel at her request because she refused to pay the extra money to buy a remote for the cable box. Her rationale for this was, as she would say, “I can always get one of you kids to do it for me.”
Even with her active home life, Mom managed to still work full-time at the National Security Agency and work a part-time job on the weekends. Some will find it hard to believe but she actually worked for one day as a banquet waitress and barely lasted a weekend as a sandwich maker in a deli that she frequented because she loved their Italian pasta salad. She finally settled into a part-time job at a clothing store called Units. Mom ultimately became a walking advertisement for their outfits—the then fashionable bulky sweater/stirrup pants combination that was popular in the 90’s.
Probably one of her most crowning achievements was her educational success. Getting her undergraduate degree from the University of Maryland and her MBA from Johns Hopkins while raising two kids and working full-time wasn’t easy. She would always say to us, “If I can do it then so can you!” She would wake up at 4 in the morning to study, work at NSA from 7 until 4, study some more and then go to her night classes. She always reminded us how lucky we were to have the authentic college experience of living on campus, making new friends and getting the chance to truly learn and develop our individuality. Many of you will not know this, but she did get to experience campus life even if it was only for a weekend. One year while I was at Washington College, she decided to come and stay with me for Parent’s Weekend. She actually stayed in my dorm room and, unlike other parent’s who got upset when they learned that their children sometimes showered next to a member of the opposite sex, even showered in a co-ed bathroom. She also attended a keg party where she was reluctantly cornered into conversation with many a drunken college student. Julie and I are truly blessed that she was able to give us the gift of education.
There are so many other things about Mom that we could talk about: her: addiction to the Home Shopping Network, her love for the Sci-Fi Channel or how she wanted her oncologist to write “unlimited” as the quantity on her wig prescription even though she barely wore the one’s she ended up getting and only wanted to get the maximum benefit from the insurance company so that we could later donate them for other cancer patients who could not afford them.
Mom was determined until the end. Whether it was meeting up with friends in Maine, moving furniture and organizing our apartment, or just getting herself to work, she kept going until the end. She is and always will be the most remarkable woman Julie and I will ever know. The hardest thing for the two of us about her passing is that it has always been the three of us. No matter what, we have always been there for each other. It will forever be hard not to actually talk to her and tell her what is going on in our lives. I thank God for the mother, sister, friend and woman she was. We love the fact that she touched so many people’s lives and are grateful that she worked so hard at being such an amazing mother and courageous person.
For now, here's the eulogy I read at my Mom's funeral. God, I really miss her.
Finding the best words to describe our mother has been very difficult. But when talking to all of her dear family, friends and co-workers over the past few days, Julie and I had so many people tell us how strong, determined and warm she was. It may seem funny, but Julie and I always thought of my mom as being like that, but we never realized that that was how other people viewed her. Your words brought back many memories for us about all the things she did for us growing up that really show what an exceptional, fun, and giving mother, friend, and employee she was during her incredible life.
When the three of us first moved to the States, Mom was bound and determined to create a good life for Julie and me. When she was looking for our first apartment, however, she experienced some difficulty. She found an apartment in Walpole that she wanted, but kept getting the run around from the building manager who clearly did not want to rent to a newly separated woman with a nine-year old and a twelve-year-old. Fulfilling her lifelong ambition of becoming a private investigator, Mom orchestrated her own undercover sting. She had my grandmother make an appointment to look at the apartment. The building manager almost immediately agreed to rent it to her. Infuriated, Mom then proceeded to contact the Fair Housing Association and had him threatened with legal action for discrimination. Needless to say, he eventually rented us the apartment. Granted, it wasn’t the greatest place to live (What thirty-six year old women wants to share a bedroom with her nine-year old daughter and live in an apartment building that is only a few yards from the train tracks and filled with senior citizens?), but it was ours and, more importantly, the three of us were together.
The home she created for us in Maryland was equally our own and even more so because of Mom’s strength, kindness, and, not to mention, her innate talent for interior decoration. Despite my parent’s divorce and the fact that we were miles away from our family, Mom made the best of what we had. Over the years, she constantly worked at re-painting and re-carpeting the house and more importantly she created a welcoming environment. The house was constantly filled with our friends. On any given day you would find Julie and her friends Laura and Ed playing computer games in the extra bedroom or my friends Bill and Stacey sitting in the family room munching on Cool Ranch Doritos while I forced them to watch the latest Madonna concert video over and over again. One summer she even let my sister’s college roommate Alissa and my high school friend Shannon move in because they had no place to stay. Julie and I are still secretly convinced the reason she did that was because Shannon worked during the summer as a driver for Domino’s and could provide Mom with an unending supply of pizza and because Alissa could bring home ice cream from her job at Friendly’s. My Mom’s open door policy also applied to animals; whether it was Holli, the dog we convinced my parents to reluctantly adopt at a moment’s notice on Christmas Day, Wendy, our dog who was a bizarre cross between a dachshund and poodle who never left Mom’s side, or even Kitty, the stray cat who followed Julie home from school one day and absolutely melted my Mom’s heart. You may be asking yourself, where was Mom in this whirlwind of teenagers and scruffy animals? Julie and I can still see her sitting at the dining room table doing her homework, going over her bills or compiling the list of chores for us that she would carefully place with a magnet over the stove every morning as a constant reminder throughout the day that we should be doing something productive. If she decided to join our group of friends in the family room we all usually groaned. This was because not only did one of us have to give up our seat on the coach so she could have her usual spot, but also because one of us would have to sit right next to the TV to change the channel at her request because she refused to pay the extra money to buy a remote for the cable box. Her rationale for this was, as she would say, “I can always get one of you kids to do it for me.”
Even with her active home life, Mom managed to still work full-time at the National Security Agency and work a part-time job on the weekends. Some will find it hard to believe but she actually worked for one day as a banquet waitress and barely lasted a weekend as a sandwich maker in a deli that she frequented because she loved their Italian pasta salad. She finally settled into a part-time job at a clothing store called Units. Mom ultimately became a walking advertisement for their outfits—the then fashionable bulky sweater/stirrup pants combination that was popular in the 90’s.
Probably one of her most crowning achievements was her educational success. Getting her undergraduate degree from the University of Maryland and her MBA from Johns Hopkins while raising two kids and working full-time wasn’t easy. She would always say to us, “If I can do it then so can you!” She would wake up at 4 in the morning to study, work at NSA from 7 until 4, study some more and then go to her night classes. She always reminded us how lucky we were to have the authentic college experience of living on campus, making new friends and getting the chance to truly learn and develop our individuality. Many of you will not know this, but she did get to experience campus life even if it was only for a weekend. One year while I was at Washington College, she decided to come and stay with me for Parent’s Weekend. She actually stayed in my dorm room and, unlike other parent’s who got upset when they learned that their children sometimes showered next to a member of the opposite sex, even showered in a co-ed bathroom. She also attended a keg party where she was reluctantly cornered into conversation with many a drunken college student. Julie and I are truly blessed that she was able to give us the gift of education.
There are so many other things about Mom that we could talk about: her: addiction to the Home Shopping Network, her love for the Sci-Fi Channel or how she wanted her oncologist to write “unlimited” as the quantity on her wig prescription even though she barely wore the one’s she ended up getting and only wanted to get the maximum benefit from the insurance company so that we could later donate them for other cancer patients who could not afford them.
Mom was determined until the end. Whether it was meeting up with friends in Maine, moving furniture and organizing our apartment, or just getting herself to work, she kept going until the end. She is and always will be the most remarkable woman Julie and I will ever know. The hardest thing for the two of us about her passing is that it has always been the three of us. No matter what, we have always been there for each other. It will forever be hard not to actually talk to her and tell her what is going on in our lives. I thank God for the mother, sister, friend and woman she was. We love the fact that she touched so many people’s lives and are grateful that she worked so hard at being such an amazing mother and courageous person.
