Eulogy...

"She always said I would be late to my own funeral, so I guess it is only fitting that I was a little late to hers.

I haven't been to many services like this one, and I have never spoken at one, so please bear with me.

I probably knew this lady longer than anyone here...  she was my mom.

When you start making arrangements like this you think about what the person would like... what color would they would prefer, what flowers would they have liked...  Well, I can tell you that she would never have picked this time... she would not be here... she would be back at home sleeping in.

Her ashes were placed last evening in the column-barium which is located between here and the fellowship hall.  There is a little flower on hers, so if you'd like to stop and pay respects, that would be nice.  In a few weeks there will be a plaque that will have her name and the dates: 1935 and 2013.  There will be dash in-between those years, and I once heard that it's all about the dash.  The dash is what she lived.

Looking through my mother's albums and some of her files, I found my mom to be a very strong and capable woman.  It started to show when she was quite young.  Her name on the program only has her middle initial, but her middle name was Eilene... spelled E, I, L, E, N, E.  Most people spell it E, E, N.  Probably in 1st Grade, the teacher told her she had spelled it wrong, and she retorted, "Well that's the way it is on my birth certificate!"

Just like looking but not seeing, or listening without hearing, I knew her all of my life, but never realized how much she truly did for me.  She had a difficult relationship with her own mother, and she made a choice that she was going to be different.  She was there at all of important times, she participated in my life.  She made an effort to be a mom who loved me and told me so, talked with me, and took the time to understand me.  She always told me there wasn't anything I couldn't do if I set my mind to it.

I've realized that much of who I am is from my mom.  And I hope I have in turn been that kind of mom to my own sons... loving them, being there for them to talk to and taking the time to understand them.

We did have our clashes, and differences of opinion, even up until recently, but we still loved each other.

When I was at her bedside, she was unable to verbally communicate, but I felt that nothing had been left unsaid between us.  There were no I love you's unspoken, no forgiveness to be ask for and granted.  That is the way I think it should be for all of us.

Many funerals make the person seem like a saint, and my mother would be first to tell you she was no saint, but the bad seems to fall away at a time like this, and only the good stands out.

She was a faithful and loving wife to my biological father for 18 years before he passed away, and a faithful and loving wife to my dad, Ocie, for the past 33 years.  She was an excellent housekeeper who was always proud of her home, and she was a great cook!  When other kids were having the same dinners over and over, my mother was cooking Mexican, German and Italian dishes.

She loved to play board games... when I was growing up we could sit and play until we could barely see the board or each other's faces, then turn on the light.... and card games.... we had an ongoing game of Canasta to a million points and I think we were over half-way there.  She was an avid reader and read an variety of types of books, and she loved jigsaw puzzles.  She was also Jeff Gordon's Number 1 Fan in Nascar.

If traveling, she would want to see everything there was to be seen... she gave me that desire also.

She will be missed, and she understood that we would need time to grieve, because we would have to carry on without her... part of the poem we read last evening at her internment was...

    So grieve a while for me if grieve you must,
        Then let your grief be comforted with trust,
   It's only for a while that we must part,
        so bless the memories within your heart.


At the thought of the moment of her last breath, I can envision a younger version of her, rising out of her well-worn earthly shell and reaching up... And as I told the boys, I can picture a larger hand reaching down, and as she was rising to reach to touch Jesus, she was not looking back!  And that is OK.

I would like you to remember the good times you shared with her, and know that now she is free from pain, at peace, happy, and dancing her toe dances on the streets of gold... without the need of toe shoes...

I'd like you to remember her in that way also."


:)