An Unusual Eulogy for an Unusual Woman.

February 28, 2016

I gave this eulogy at my mother's funeral at her church in Etowah, NC, where she lived the last 15 years of her life. 

     I assume that most of you knew my mother rather well, and will remember that she had an exceptional sense of humor.  She loved to laugh, right up to the end of her life.

     Once, not long ago, when I was staying at her house, she asked me to set up her stereo so that she could play the music she loved so well.  We sang along and danced to her music that night.

     However, the next morning, I guess she thought I was sleeping too late, because she woke me by playing some of Tommy Dorsey's greatest hits playing loudly enough to drown out a jet engine.   She thought that was funny.

     She always loved music, and had great hopes for musical talent in her children.  Unfortunately, Julliard didn't give scholarships for bongo or triangle.  So I think she decided to put a little extra musical boost on me (I was the youngest.)

     All my siblings are named after relatives.  My brother, Paul, is named after our father.  My brother, Wade, is named after an uncle and my sister, Nancy, is named after a grandmother.  I was named after Phyllis McGuire, of the McGuire sisters.  The last time I talked with her, she was still laughing about that.   Real funny, Mom!

     But fair is fair, don't you think?  Mom used her maiden name, Shubert, as her middle name all her married life. However, her real name was LaVon DOZENA!   (Got 'cha!)

     But Mom really did love music.  She always sang to her four children, eight grandchildren, and eleven great grandchildren.  

     Growing up, we often sang and danced to polkas, big band, and funny songs.  She was especially fond of silly songs. 

•   Three little fishes and a momma fishy, too

•   Hot diggety, dog diggety, Boom what you do to me

•   I love you, a bushel and a peck, a bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck

•    

     I particularly remember one song that Mom often sang to us in her native tongue. Please feel free to sing along if you know it. 

Marzy dotes and dozy dotes and little lamzee divy, a kiddleeivy too, wooden shoe. 

     Please don’t think I’m being disrespectful of my mother.  I have endless respect for her, and I know that there was little she enjoyed more than humor. 

      I’d like to end this babbling with a song by Phyllis McGuire - I guess she's my Godmother - and her sisters.  

(Phyllis has the solo, of course)

May You Always

First Friend

There are old friends, and then there is a first friend.

I've known Julie since before I can remember. I knew her before I could see her - before I got my first glasses. I guess we were two when I moved into the house catty-cornered from her house. 

She was the middle of five and I was the youngest of four. We vowed at a very young age that anything that was hers was half mine and anything that was mine was half hers. We didn't realize then how strongly that would apply to our mothers. 

Mom and the Bug (Julie's mom's name is June) became besties and remained so even after Mom moved from our central Illinois hometown to North Carolina. The Bug took a plane and a car and a bus to get to Mom's surprise 85th birthday party! I can still see Mom's face when the Bug walked in. Pure joy!

Big Jim, Julie's dad, hugged me after Papa's funeral and told me he was now my Carthage father. In truth, he and the Bug had been my "half" parents all my life. If growing up with one set of parents is good, growing up with Big and the Bug across the street as a second set of parents was great.

I could tell you what they both have meant to me - what the whole fam damily has meant to me - but it would be a very long (though interesting) book. I was only grounded twice in my life. Both times it was the Bug who grounded me. Don't think just because we weren't really related and for the most part lived in separate houses, the grounding didn't stick!

Julie and I spend endless hours - days - in my treehouse or play house, walking on stilts Papa made for us, playing kick the can with the neighborhood and generally tormenting her (our) little brothers. (In case you've wondered, a small boy can fit down a laundry shoot and survive if there are enough dirty clothes on the floor at the bottom.) We used to walk to the Square at the end of every summer and buy our school supplies together. We even bought some supplies together before we went off to separate colleges. 

And then, as often happens, we sort of went our separate ways. There was never a great falling out, we were always glad to see each other. I wouldn't even think of going back to the hometown without seeing Big and the Bug, even though Jul lived elsewhere. Julie and I just had different lives. 

Then, you know how things happen. Big Jim died when I lived in Virginia. It was hard for people to understand the depth of my grief. Mom lived in North Carolina and the Bug back in Illinois. Mom and the Bug both got old, and confused. Then Mom died.

And today Julie and the Bug face-timed me from the Bug's memory care facility. Nothing has meant more to me than them reaching out to me like that. In recent days Julie and I have emailed each other. She has provided me with the support that I have been missing. A sister, yet not a sister. Someone who has always shared the biggest things with me - family. 

The floodgates that I've been so successful at keeping at least mostly closed, opened up while I've been writing this. That's good. I need to get this crying stuff under control so I have at least a chance of giving a eulogy day after tomorrow. 

I'll see the Bug and Julia Marie Christina Burling Kirk in April when I go back to Illinois for Mom's graveside service there. 

Can you know how grateful I am?

Threads to the Life Raft

Grief is a bitch.

The loss of a parent is very difficult, no matter how old, or how sick or how expected the death, it's just hard.

Mom's first of two memorial services will be day after tomorrow in the town where she spent her last 15 years.  I'll know a couple of her friends from there.  There will be a few family members there besides my sister and her husband.  Most of the family will attend the graveside service in Illinois in April.  Oh yeah. . . . we get to do this all again.

It's been a long flippin' six days since Mom died. I've heard from several friends via the magical interweb, stating that they are sorry for my loss, etc.  I appreciate those messages, I really do.  I've one friend at home, whom I sure would stand on one ear to help me if she thought it would do any good.  And I heard from a friend I've had since age two over the past few days and she face-timed with me today.  My college roommate, who is like family, was supportive right away.  And of course, I have my sister and my kids, who are the center pole of this whole tent.  That is amazing. I'm blessed by those people who are like warm blankets in a snow storm.

I'm also grieving, however, because  I've come to realize that some of the friendships I thought I could count on - lean on - are not all that substantial.  I suppose I have imagined relationships that aren't there and it's taken this to get it through my thick head.  Today I've often felt as if I were drowning and a couple of friends who happened to be sailing by anyway tossed me three feet of thread and sailed on.

The loss of the illusion of friendship is also very difficult.  In fact, it sucks.  I feel stupid as well as alone.  What do I want?  What do I need?  Perhaps too much.  I may expect too many warm blankets.   To expect people to have time to talk to me when I'm blubbering and not making any sense may just be too much expectation.  I know well, how uncomfortable it is to be around people who are grieving.  It can be flat out exhausting.  I know.  I did it professionally.

And I have learned from this experience.  I won't change my behavior toward friends who are grieving.  I will be supportive.  I will be willing to stay awake and listen.  I will listen even when they are making no sense.  I won't assume that because they have other, more important, or closer friends they don't need me.  I will remember that grief doesn't last X number of days and is then over.

I want to grow to give more and expect less, and in that way be at peace.

(I also want to punch someone - doesn't really matter whom- right in the face sometimes.  But I'm pretty sure that is not going to happen.   I'm just saying)

Some Things I Will Say

On this day, I was awakened by the absence of sound.  The ubiquitous sssshhhhh that lives in my ears  was undisturbed by any other noise. The sunlight was too exhausted to shine through the stained glass window.  Now and then a bird came to the feeder, but it didn't bother singing.

I was waiting for my sister to call so I could go to her house and plan our mothers' funerals.  There would be two of them - one at her church in North Carolina where she lived the last fifteen of her life, and one back in our hometown in Illinois.

One might think that this was wrapping up the story, but as so often happens, one would be wrong.  I am going to tell the whole dang story, and it's not going to make me look much like a saint.  But I have some freedom now that comes with the death of parents.  Well, a freedom and a responsibility to be flat out honest in the telling.  It's not that I have big juicy secrets to tell about my parents, it's more that I don't feel the onus to look particularly saintly for them anymore.

However, when I saw the beautiful, young Cardinal couple hopping about yesterday, playing, dancing, courting in the grass, and they reminded me of my reunited parents, the thought went through my head that if I ever go to the same type of Heaven I imagine them in, I'm going to get the look from both of them.

People keep asking me how I'm doing.  Mom died Saturday and it's Monday now.  She hasn't even been officially dead two whole days, though it seems like a much longer time.  I began mourning her the first time she asked me what my name was, nearly a year ago.  Forgive me, I'm really bad with time, and this has been a scrambled up year, but I think it was about a year ago.

Because my sister lives closer - about 45 minutes, the way she drives - from Mom's house, but mostly because my sister is just a nicer person than I, Nan, my sister, was the primary caretaker from the family.  As signs of Mom's dementia began to pop up more and more, Mom wanted Nancy to be with her more and more.

Mom lived in her own house by herself then.  She and Papa were married 55 years when he died after a long, disgusting illness that took away his physical ability one tiny bit at a time, while leaving his brain as sharp as ever.  They lived in the same little town in Illinois for 42 of those years.  A couple of years after he died, Mom sold the house and most of the stuff in it and moved to North Carolina, where she knew no one.  Well, she knew that Nan and Chip would be moving to that area soon.

But think of that.  Mom was no spring chicken and had been married since she was a girl, and she just struck out and created a new life.  She bought a house, made new friends, had men in her life, won awards for quilting.  She had another big life as an independent single woman.

Mom died and I'm Fine, Fine, Fine

I talked to Val for a long time today. I was so totally fine, fine, fine, that I didn't even convince myself. But for some reason just couldn't stop being fine, fine, fine.

The state of being fine, fine, fine, is something I learned about in "How to be a psychotherapist school." It means your the body is outwardly saying that all is fine, fine, fine, but it's really being a lying bahstahd. Eventually the inside of your body, as well as emotions, start pointing out the lie and the longer the lie is denied, the more insistent and creative the expression becomes. 
Just off the top of my head I can think of a man who was so fine, fine, fine, when he went back to his less than happy marriage that he got extreme sciatica - literally a pain in the ass. I've worked with a family in which the father couldn't even move without the help of his children. Strangely, it was his admission of sexual abuse to those very children that resolved his mysterious paralysis. Even in my own past, I have broken out into a rash a couple of times, one on my ass, one over my heart. You know, the body has a mind of its own and often quite a sick sense of humor.
The past couple of days, my neck is crook. It's amazing how painful it is. I try to massage it, stretch it, put ice and/or heat on it and the pain just moves about getting more "expressive." It's impossible for me to look around. About the only thing I can do is type at my computer looking straight ahead, ignoring everything else. I know there is a lot of stuff stuffed in me regarding the death of my mother. A lot of it is icky stuff - guilt, anger, frustration, anger, guilt, guilt, surprise, relief, and sadness. There's probably more in there than I even know right now. My tummy is really sort of bloated, my head is fixin' to explode, and my ankles are swollen so I must be stuffed with it. Now, being fine, fine, fine, isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's often just a necessary thing because sometimes you just have to get some things done. You have to find clothes to wear to the funeral, plan the funeral, blah, blah, blah. You have to talk to people you're supposed to know but don't. You have to be civil and appropriate - neither of which I'm very good at.I'll get through it.
Comparatively speaking, we'll have an easy time of it. I'll be with my sister and we'll get 'er done. Maybe we'll take turns having melt downs. It seems like an efficient way to handle this. I have family who are willing to listen to me be a bit nuts and I am willing to listen to them be nuts. It's just a matter of timing and if there's one thing my sister is great at, it's scheduling.
So right now I'm fine, fine, fine, and over all, I'm grateful.

Quilt

Mom quilted.  She won awards for quilting.  Her fancy quilts included embroidery, fancy shapes (and by fancy I mean shapes other than squares and rectangles) and her fabrics were specifically purchased to make quilts.

Both my grandmothers quilted.  I doubt that either of them ever considered entering them in contests. I remember Grandma Campbell always had a big quilt frame up in her living room.  When people would come to visit, they'd sit around the frame and quilt while they talked.  I remember as a very little girl, sitting under the frame with all the legs, watching the needles come and go.  Grandma's quilts were made of scraps left over from the dresses she made for herself, and odd bits of fabric.  She would have thought it foolish to buy fabric to make a quilt.

Grandma made all of her granddaughters quilts that were bound when they were married.  It seems a bit sexist now, but it's what she did and it was lovely.  Mine is a "Double Wedding Band" design made of soft colors (Grandma's favorites for her dresses) and white.  Looking closely, I can see how many different people did the quilting.  Everyone's quilt stitch is a bit different.

A quilt like the ones she made involved cutting bits of fabric into small shapes, often her pieces were 2" or less.  Then she'd stitch the various colored cotton bits together into a design, making the top of the quilt.  As you might imagine, this takes a bit of doing, and more than a little knowledge of geometry. But that's just the quilt top.

Grandma would then make a sandwich of quilt top, then fluffy cotton batting, then the backing.  The backing was usually a solid piece of cotton, like a sheet.  However, if she didn't have a piece big enough, a few pieces were often stitched together to make the back.  The resulting sandwich was basted together to keep it in place and then through some matter of folding and clipping, the quilt would go onto the frame, which held the quilt-to-be in place, while the actual quilting took place.

The quilting involves tiny stitches, all over the quilt, sewing all three parts together.  The stitching follows a design that is marked on the quilt top with light blue chalk.  The quilting could be in zig zags, loopy vines, spirals, leaves, flowers, hearts. . . . really any design, but a good quilt would have a uniform pattern of design that was easily discernible from the back, if not the top of the quilt. Hundreds of thousands of stitches went into making one of her quilts.

The layering makes for a very warm covering, and the fine stitching makes for a life-long work of practical art.  I doubt that Grandma Campbell considered herself an artist, but oh, she was.

I love my mother's fancy quilts.  Of course, all her children, her eight grand children, and her great-grandchildren have quilts she made for them.  When the last great, R Wade S. came along four months ago, she had the blocks made for the top of the quilt before she became unable to finish it.  So I finished it for her.

I'd tied many simple patchwork quilts, but I'd never actually quilted one, so the quality probably leaves a bit to be desired, but at least little R Wade can say he has a quilt from his GG.   The blocks she made for his quilt were called a "nine patch," I think.  They were made from little bits of fabric she had left from other projects.  My favorite kind!

Here's the thing about quilts. You take little bits of fabric that one might think were good for nothing, even cut up an old shirt or dress that is no longer worn, and you plan, and you cut, and you stitch them into something new.  Something warm and comforting.   You actually stitch together bits of memories.  Each piece alone means nothing, but together. . . . ah, well, they're something else.

There's much about using what one has, about not wasting, about creating something beautiful from not much, and about taking the time to think of the future owner with every one of hundreds of thousands of stitches.  THAT's what quilting is to me.

So now, I have taken on the position of Family Quilter.  By my mother and grandmothers' standards I'm getting a bit of a late start.  I think my grandmothers would chuckle a bit at a felted saxophone or the use of Rock and Roll onesies to make the top.  But over all, I think they're happy with the whole thing.  I know I am.

 This is just the top for Bump's Rock and Roll Onsies Quilt

 One of Mom's quilts on her bed in her new digs.

 The "Old Lady" quilt top I made for my college roommate for her 60th birthday.

 Detail from Bell's "Hauserphants" quilt

 This is one Grandma Campbell made.  How precise!

This is surely a masterpiece made by dear friends, Dorothy and Pud's aunt or great aunt, I believe.  You can't even imagine the detail.  Each bit is actually crocheted to the next.  

The one I'm working on now, on my small frame.  
,

Hoarding Love

I read this on a friend's timeline:
One of the hardest things you'll ever have to do, my dear, is to grieve the loss of a person who is still alive."

I read it and immediately started crying, thinking of my mother who is so much gone and so much there. I don't spend enough time with her - not even on the phone - because I just never know how much of her I'll find and it hurts so much. I need to be more like my sister and just suck it up, I know, I know, I know. And people keep telling me that I MUST spend more time with her because someday I'll cherish that time. I wish I could spend more time with HER. Now, sometimes, she tells me to leave or fires me, or asks me my name. Those things are tougher than I am.

In my head I know that it's dementia causing this. It isn't that my mother chose to leave me. In fact, in her more lucid moments she mourns her loss even more than I do. She wants to move on and I am at a loss to help her. I am just not the least bit good at this.

I read the quote again the next day, and cried again, this time thinking of friendships and relationships lost. I tend to push new people away, I know, because that cold metallic rock in the pit of my stomach gets a bit larger when they leave.
My friend, Ish Major, has a show on television helping people get over lost relationships. I don't do that well. I love everyone I've ever loved and I frantically try to keep them all with me somehow, like a mother cat with a hundred kittens. It's disgusting, of course, not to mention tiring. But loving someone is so very precious and it seems that not maintaining at least the friendship part of it would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It occurs to me I could be on a combination of ExIsle, Ish' show, and Hoarders. I hoard old friendships and relationships.

I'm pretty sure this makes me crazy or dysfunctional, or neurotic And in the case of my mother, just flat out selfish and a less than good daughter. It's a bit of me that I'm not in love with.

Me, Mom, and my big brother, Paul

I'm not looking for sympathy here. I know many people are going through much worse. I'm just saying, you know. Just saying. Just putting it out there.

As our populations continues to live to older and older ages (Mom is 93) and as we - including our medical system - continue to consider heartbeat and respiration the golden goal, more and more of us will be dealing with this.
Mom is fortunate to live in a beautiful assisted living complex. She has her own, very nice apartment full of her own things, round the clock help, yummy and plentiful food (the little woman can eat!). She is blessed to have my sister, Nancy, who lives 45 minutes from Mom and visits her often and keeps track of all her medical stuff, etc.

But she doesn't want to be here.

I should call her. i should call her right now. Oh, but look, it's 12:01. She'll be at lunch now. I will call her a bit after 1:00, when she'll be back in her room. I'll try to prepare myself for whatever conversation comes. Please, please, please, Fay. Call her at 1:00.