Celebration
Eulogy
So what can I say about my Mother?
Well…. When I was thinking about what to say, I thought…. So what would my Mom want me to say? and I thought…. I am pretty sure she wouldn’t want me to embarrass her or say anything stupid and then I thought….. she was always so optimistic.
But seriously, what can I say about my Mother that you don’t already know or feel about her. Or wasn’t said at her 70th birthday roast.
Maybe nothing…. maybe everything I say…. you will already know but….. on the off chance that there is someone here that doesn’t know what a gentle caring, loving, smart, and funny woman my Mother was…. I am here to tell you about her.
By the way, the day after the 70th birthday party she told me it was the best birthday she had ever had. It didn’t surprise me that she would say that.
This is a woman that knew she was dying and when I asked her, “Mom do you want to go somewhere? Is there somewhere you have always wanted to go?’ She said she couldn’t think of anywhere she wanted to go, she just wanted to be with her family
My mom was a girl interrupted. She lost her mother when she was 15 years old. It was the single most devastating event of her life. She never really recovered from it. But she also never quit. She married very young and had children very young. After her first marriage failed, with 3 very young children and no support, She put herself through college. She used to sing Helen Reddy’s “you and me against the world” to us.
We were… and always have been…. the little family that could.
She graduated from college and started what would become a successful, life long, career in computer programming.
My Mother was a very passionate person. She loved music and She loved to drive. I remember as a kid, if we were driving in the car and she liked the song on the radio she would pass our house on purpose and keep driving with the radio blasting until the song was over.
Sometimes if it was particularly good, set of songs, we would find ourselves making an unplanned trip to the beach. She loved the beach. Torrey Pines was her favorite beach.
Mom loved to read. We used to share books back and forth and we would talk about our favorite quotes. One of her favorite quotes was “Keep Passing The Open Windows” from the book “The Hotel New Hampshire” In other words don’t quit, don’t jump. She had a shirt that said “Keep Passing the open windows.” That was Mom, she never quit.
When Mom was 35, her work took her to the East Coast where she thrived at the top her field in NYC. She loved loved loved NYC. She loved the food, Broadway plays, the energy, and the people.
We used to call her the mayor of NYC….. because she seemed to know everybody, she got the best deals imaginable, and she could tell you the best route to take to avoid the traffic to anywhere in NYC.
My Mom could make anything an adventure.
My Mom had an in with the commuter train conductors.
Not only did she ride for free, they let her blow the whistle whenever she felt like it.
She told me about this but I wouldn’t have believed if I hadn’t seen it myself.
She signals the conductor, he comes over and he says “You wanna blow the whistle?” She nods and he leads us both to the front of the train. She blew that whistle for all it was worth.
That was Mom, find a way to make 2 hour commute magical.
We had many adventures with Mom in NYC. For example:
We seemed to always have 1 too many people to take just one cab….. but Mom could routinely talk the cabbies into breaking the law and taking all of us in one cab….. She always rode in the front seat and she would promise the cabbies we would hit the floor if we saw a cop.
Mom would yell cop and one of us would hit the floor
We seemed to hit the floor a lot. I often wondered if she really saw that many cops or if it was just a hilarious inside joke between her and the cabbies.
On one such occasion, …..we got pulled over and as the cabby was pulling over, he began crying and saying “OMG I will lose my license if I get one more ticket”…..Before the cop could even get out of his car, my Mom sprung out of the cab and went back to talk to the him.
Now… I don’t know what she said to him that night (and she would never tell me) but he came up to the window and told the cabby to stop crying and if he promised to never to do it again , he wouldn’t give him a ticket AND he let us continue on with 5 people in the cab.This was my mothers magic.
She had a way of making people do what she wanted. I always thought we were lucky she decided to use her powers for the good. We all have many fond memories of NY with our Mom. She loved it and through her, we loved it too.
Years later, the company she was working for…. down sized and she was laid off. This was a pretty big blow to her because she was not used to failing and she couldn’t see how they could do without her. A few months after she was let go, she began getting calls. It seems no one at her old job knew the system as well as she did and they constantly needed her help.Now Most people…. might have been bitter and unwilling to help….. but not my Mom, With an open heart, she helped them. She helped them so much… that at a point the “help” was so regular a coworker devised a plan.
He would hire her as a fictitious sub contractor; she could continue to do her job remotely, from home. She even received high tech computer equipment that allowed her to dial in from her house in New Jersey, to the main frames in Manhattan. She worked there, undetected for almost 2 years.
My Mother was a very funny woman. She could make almost any situation funny.
During her treatment she was in pre-op for one of the many procedures she had to endure. A procedure that was not completely routine. I mean, I had some angst.
Any way…..we were sitting in the pre-op when a nurse came up and said to me
”Oh you must be her daughter, you look just like her” I said I was and Mom smiled.
A minute later, another nurse came by and said the same thing. Mom just smiled as I confirmed that I was her daughter. Finally, the surgeon comes in and says the same thing. Bla bla bla you look just like her. My mom is obviously stifling a laugh. When he leaves I say, “Mom whats so funny and she says. “they keep telling you, you look just like me and I wasn’t allowed to put on any makeup, I look crap. So I just feel sorry for you, if you look just like me.
As she was going in for surgery, she wrote this note:
When I was a kid, she used to do the old, make the straw wrapper look like a caterpillar.
You know, by putting drops of water on it to the straw wrapper squirm.
Well…. Recently, she was doing that trick while we were eating at Olive Garden. She said to me, you’re not watching and I said yeah yeah Mom I know its going squirm like a caterpillar in a second.” Quick as a WHIP! She said “well…. if you don’t keep watching you wont see it turn into a butterfly”
Another time we were sitting at her dining room table and she was fairly heavily medicated. She began to doze off as she was holding some car keys that were left on the table. To wake her up I said: Oh good, we can start the meeting, I see you brought the keys” Her lightening quick response “yes, so we can start the table”
My mother loved to laugh and she tried to find the humor in everything.
But….My mother had her fare share of horrible things happen to her too.
In the end, she was trached, she had no voice box, she had a feeding tube and she was bed ridden. Things that I thought were pretty bad.
I asked her “Mom, they kinda broke you, if you had it to do over again, would you?” Without hesitation she said “Yes, absolutely or I wouldn’t have gotten this time with my family”
You see…..She just never, ever allowed herself to become bitter or to quit. I saw this time and time again through out her life. She got knocked down but she refused to stay down, she would lick her wounds and then she would rise again. Even when her cancer came back, she refused to believe it was over. She was a fighter and fighter’s fight. She fought until the end.By the way, the name she chose for her fictitious subcontractor name when she was secretly working from home was, Rose Phoenix. Kinda fitting don’t you think?
Because That was my Mother was…. She was a Phoenix …. that rose….. time and time again. I think she has risen again. She is with her Mom in heaven now and she’s probably pointing at me right now …. trying to tell me not to forget to tell all of you….. just how much she loved each and every one of you.
And…I think, she would be very proud of her little family that could, today. Thanks for coming; you meant the world to her.
