In a week of very difficult things, one of the hardest was writing and delivering Mom’s eulogy yesterday. I’m posting it here as many friends and family members asked to read it for themselves.
I could stand here and say nothing more than “I had the most amazing mom,” and it would be true and whole and perfectly concise, but there was so much more to her than that.
She was the original fearless girl, growing up in the Bronx with best friends that she would carry with her throughout life, from Barnes Avenue and St. Barnabas, to the College of Mount St. Vincent, and our neighborhood in Rye Brook where she lived and raised the five of us, more or less successfully. She was a founding member of the Worry Sisters, and dared to travel to Germany on a Fulbright Scholarship to study chemistry while many stayed close to home. Friends called her a “spitfire”, and remembered her “as the one with the Irish humor and the flashing blue eyes when she disapproved of our opinions or politics.”
I may be the one in this generation who’s always got to do something a little different than expected, to push the boundaries, but Mom did it first, meeting and marrying Dad, a Jewish Democrat from the Upper East Side. I love to look at the pictures from Mom and Dad’s early life together, how glamorous she always looked, how perfectly put together. I remember her telling me about coming home from the hospital with Patty, I think, in a black sheath dress that wouldn’t have been out of place on Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Likewise, her hand just seemed complete holding a flute of champagne, or a gin & tonic on a warm summer night, or one of Dad’s famous whiskey sours.
Our house growing up was always open to family, to neighbors who would drop by for a visit and stay chatting for hours, to classmates of Dan’s who’d come by for a meat pie dinner and stay for months, to friends who became family, to scores of people to whom Mom was like another parent, a beloved relative, an open ear and debate partner, unless you didn’t like the Yankees, about which she would brook no dissent.
As we grew up and moved out, and no longer needed quite as much help with homework, Mom turned to crafting to fulfill a creative outlet, laboriously hand-sewing beautiful quilts destined not just for display, but loving use; keepsake Christmas ornaments year after year; and artfully designed notecards for every occasion, her precise handwriting the ideal finishing touch.
She bestowed her love of travel on all of us, from adventures by car in the National Parks or in Hawaii with Barbara, exploring Ireland with Patty, and Scotland with me, or making a place for herself in Ocean Reef, where her visits were perhaps more fondly anticipated than Carol and Tom’s!
As the Powers That Be promoted her to Grandma, or “Nana”, she became adored by another generation, and visits to the house were always a chance to make something new — cookies and cakes, or a piece of art – or learn something fascinating she’d picked up reading National Geographic, or remembered from years before.
More recently, as illness kept her close to home, her kitchen became a sort of audience chamber, as she sat in the best seat in the room and visited with beloved nieces and nephews, her brother and sisters, longtime neighbors and friends from near and far. All of us – Barbara, Carol, Patty, Dan and I – are so grateful for your time with her, and with all of us today and recently.
When Dad died 27 years ago, Mom was our backbone, keeping us upright and moving forward. Today, we come together with immense gratitude for her 83 amazing years, and so so happy that she’s finally together again with the love of her life, our Dad, her Lou.
I know they’re going to be hosting one amazing party together in Heaven!
