The introduction

The death of my mother has been the strangest experience of my life. I’m not experiencing it much yet – I remain fairly dissociated and depersonalized. Everything feels not quite real to me. Even though I know it is. Nothing is as I thought it would be. Once again, television has lied to us.

We had the memorial service for my mother yesterday. I think she would’ve liked it. That was one of my goals. The other was to do her proud. The living speak for the dead, and funeral services of various types allow us to speak for them to a group one last time.

I was worried about giving the eulogy. I was worried about speaking in front of a group, even a benign one, about breaking down in grief – though the dissociation helps there, and about writing a eulogy that ranged from insufficient to garbage depending on my mood.

A eulogy is a strange and hard thing to write. I didn’t want it to be too long, but also not too short. I wanted to include humour, but not too much – I have a tendency to make light as a defence mechanism, much like my father. I wanted people to see her in all her complexity, the way I saw her. My mother was a private and guarded person, like me, and some of the things that I thought were important about her others might have missed. I wanted them to know.

But the closer it got, the worse the draft became in my head regardless of how much I worked on it. It was too short, too long, not enough of this, too much of that. And who did I think I was putting this together? Others would undoubtedly do better. I read it to my counsellor and she had nothing but good things to say, but I tend to discount positive feedback, especially when what I’m doing is important.

And then it was time. I didn’t break down. I didn’t panic. I didn’t make a lot of eye contact, but then again, that’s not something I regularly do. And, it went well. I think “I don’t speak well in front of a group of people” is one of those lies I tell myself about my skills and abilities.

I’ve attached the eulogy below – it’s longish as I went beyond the ten minutes suggested – though not by much – seven hundred words are about five minutes – but I decided I’m okay with that. I won’t be giving it twice.

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The eulogy

When I was thirteen, we took a summer vacation in the Okanagan. One of the activities we got up to was river rafting. Because I was a teenager, I knew everything. I certainly didn’t need the guide’s repeated reminders to hang on to the boat with one hand at all times. Did he think I was going to lose my balance? It was a lot of fun, and as we cruised into calmer waters, the guide gave me a shove, sending me into the water. I probably should’ve been hanging on. I was fine and floated along with the boat after sputtering for a bit. What I didn’t see was Mom jumping to her feet, ready to defend me against a river guide who’d obviously lost his mind. It’s good that saner heads prevailed.

But that was mom. She was ferocious where she loved.

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I find public speaking difficult. I don’t enjoy being the centre of attention.

I complained about it to my mother every year when public speaking rolled around. We both probably dreaded its arrival. But mom is where you go when you have a problem, or need some help, and that stays true for a lifetime.

When I told her I was frightened to stand in front of the class and give a speech, she didn’t tell me to imagine the audience naked, nor did she helpfully offer to let me call in sick.

Instead, she told me that speaking in front of a class full of teenagers was one of her least favourite things as well – awkward when you’re a teacher – but that doing things you don’t like or find difficult is part of life. Challenges wait around every corner, so you might as well wade in.   

It used to annoy me, that practical philosophy of hers, but I’ve come around.

Her favourite teaching jobs were the ones she had teaching adults, especially those in prison. She worked in the prison system for quite a few years and spoke often about how much she enjoyed it. Mom liked helping people who needed it. She also used to say that there was nothing like a captive audience, but she honestly found great satisfaction as a librarian and teacher there. Though I imagine the first days must’ve been nerve-wracking.

But you stiffen your spine if you’re afraid, and do what needs to be done regardless. Mom lived by that rule and passed it on.

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I remember when she was diagnosed with diabetes. Learning to deal with the daily needles was hard –  she sweat buckets gearing up to do it that first day –  but she got it done with the help of a sacrificial practice orange, and before long, she was a diabetes rock star. She was fierce when it came to her cancer treatments as well, though she would’ve phrased it differently. Mom took the ongoing evolution of the English language quite personally. If caused offence.

My mom wasn’t big on avoidance or denial. She faced most problems, including her cancer, head-on, and proceeded courageously, even when things were hard.

I wonder if that’s the British coming through?

My mother was courageous in most things, but she deferred to my dad when it came to challenges of the eight-legged variety. She did improve in her response significantly over the years, no debt helped by my dad’s habit of showing them before releasing them back to the wild.

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Mom grew up in Vancouver, and she never stopped loving nearly everything about it. For her, it was the most perfect of cities. She loved the streets, the beaches, the drinking water – the best in BC – and the mountains. Nowhere was better, though New Zealand came close.

She told me more than once my father’s New Zealand stories were one of the reasons that she fell in love with him. It sounded wonderful there.

Dad wasn’t another only child, another tick in the plus column. Her “only” status worried her when it came to motherhood. She told me she was frightened she wouldn’t be good at it, not having brothers or sisters to practice on.

I did tell her that the relationship isn’t the same. We’re much kinder to our children than to our siblings. She never could reconcile the bickering and the fights with how she imagined brothers and sisters would be.

If I could time travel, I’d head back and put her parenting fears to rest: she was brilliant at it, and I told her that often. She liked it, and that helps.

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My mother was devoted to the people she loved, and to the causes she held dear. And if our happiness was her happiness, our sadness was hers as well, and she would work tirelessly to try and turn things around.

I’ll miss not having her to lean on. I’ll miss not having her on the other end of the phone, or in person just because. She was my go-to for so many things. Who will I compare thrift store bargains with – my mom enjoyed a bargain hunt.

Michael said it well – there’s a scratching at the back of my brain. I feel like I’ve lost my keys, and I’m frustrated that I can’t find them, but it’s really just Mom’s absence. There is a hole in my reality where one didn’t use to be.

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Mom loved travelling, and she managed to see a fair bit of this world. She travelled alone, with friends, and with her children, but her most constant companion was Dad.

The destination wasn’t the most important thing; mostly, she just wanted to go. Two of her children thoughtfully got married overseas providing a convenient excuse.

And if the travel was local-ish when we were young, it got more global when my parents achieved that conflicted empty-nester status.

Mom told me often that she’d have us back in a hot second, and I suspect she was only half kidding.

She was an adventurous traveller, willing to try almost anything once, good qualities when you’re visiting new and strange.  

Good qualities in a sailor as well. Dad introduced her to sailing, and she loved it forevermore. She and Dad spent a fair amount of time cruising the Gulf Islands and San Juans on Koromiko over the years. As far as I can tell, there’s no better way to get a great tan.

She made it to New Zealand a few times, and to the UK and Europe more than once as well – we ate the best sandwiches of both our lives sitting next to a river in Oxford in the early nineties, and she loved cruising the rivers in Europe with Dad.  

She went to Mexico, to Cuba, to China, and to Disneyland. She found everywhere fascinating.  

It’s said that travel helps one develop compassion and a generosity of spirit, but my mother had those qualities innately, as well as a surfeit of grace. Grace is what made her a lifelong champion of the underdog. It’s why she stuck with the Canucks for so long.

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Mom was a reader, a love she passed down. She always had at least one book on the go, often a gruesome mystery. My mother was a gentle woman who struggled to understand unkindness and cruelty, and yet her taste in books and television viewing tended to the bloodthirsty.

She was especially fond of British murder.

It was her love of reading and language that led her to study English at university, and she remained fond of Shakespeare and Chaucer her whole life, even in the original old English. She found the idea of Cliff Notes horrifying. That we all couldn’t manage Shakespeare without assistance remained a puzzle to her.   

Her affection for language made playing Scrabble with her fun. Who doesn’t love going up against someone with a robust collection of exotic words in their memory banks? Of course, there were other game options available. We’re a family that likes to play.

The most popular choices were Scrabble and Crib. I won’t hazard a guess as to the number of cribbage games Mom has played over the years, but I’m sure it’s close to five digits.

She also enjoyed playing bridge, something she and my dad played regularly with close friends. Though mom never did catch the video game bug. Or the cell phone one. Notifications remained beyond her.

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Mom believed in the potential of people. She believed in “the basic nobility of the human spirit.” That’s a direct quote, by the way. We were cleaning her nightstand and found inside a notebook with writing only on the first page. It was notes for her eulogy, a list of things that were important to her, a list of things she hoped people remembered about her. It’s very like her. Mom liked to help and didn’t ever want to be seen as a bother.  

She loved music, but she didn’t play an instrument, and that was a lifelong regret. I’m sure it’s part of what pushed her to keep me in piano lessons when I fought her so hard. I’m grateful for her persistence.

But she cranked the tunes when she drove, and she considered the invention of the multi-CD changer nothing short of brilliant. The necessity of choosing between Queen, Elton John, or Andrew Lloyd Weber was eliminated.

The available storage on her iPod thrilled her soul.

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Mom enjoyed working with her hands. The arthritis was a cruel blow there. She liked to paint and to draw. She took classes over the years to refine the techniques, but her talent was innate.

She had a lovely way with watercolours.

She was crafty, too: she made wall hangings, and hooked rugs, and embroideries. She crocheted and knitted various things over the years: blankets I still have, and a pink bikini with a white flower she made when I was about seven that I don’t.

She was a brilliant seamstress. She sewed things for all of us at various points in time, and they were extremely well done. Better than today’s fast fashion, to be sure.

I saved some of those too, including a flannel nightgown she made me when I was nine. She made it much too large, so it almost still fits.

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Mom loved celebrating our birthdays, and she did it well. She made some wonderful cakes for us over the years. There were teddy bears, and soccer fields, and sailing boats, and dolls wearing decorated ball gowns. I do love an angel food cake ballgown with marshmallow flower decorations.

No one can do a festive scavenger hunt like my mom.

She was never confident in her cooking skills, she worried about them always and used her recipe cards even for signature dishes like the stroganoff I insisted on for more than fifty birthdays. She also had a great spaghetti sauce and a recipe for chocolate fudge icing that’s best eaten with a bowl and spoon.

Though you should keep it away from your pets. Chocolate isn’t good for animals, and Mom loved animals dearly. She’d never want to cause them harm. Every pet, every dog and cat and turtle she’d had over the years still owned a piece of her heart. Even my brother’s goldfish, Gus.  

Mom and Dad’s house is a wild bird paradise, and watching them at the feeders and shrubberies brought her great joy. She loved sharing stories about the juncos, the hummingbirds, and the downy woodpeckers.

She laughed at the squirrels that tried to steal birdseed and delighted in the deer that wandered about eating acorns. She liked the deer less in the spring when they ate her rosebuds. It was an annual battle with deer on one side and bars of Irish Spring soap on the other. If you know, you know.

Mom has always loved her gardens, and spent hours on them. She especially loved them when the flowers were in bloom. Cut flowers in the house always made her happy.

She had the greenest of thumbs especially when it came to her indoor plants. She’d ignore them for weeks, drown them in contrition, and they’d thrive. I’m attentive, and my plants reward me with fungal gnats. But then, we all know that life is unfair.

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 What else should I tell you about my mom? More generalities, more specifics? Do I hit the high points or all the points? One doesn’t want to omit anything important.

But how do you encapsulate eighty years in a few minutes?

How do I communicate the profound grief her absence brings in an anecdote or phrase? It feels surreal to me that she’s no longer here.

How do we do justice to those we love with tools as clumsy as words? My mother would do better – I tend to ramble. I will defer, then, to her one last time, using the aforementioned notes.

“Sharon was a good friend, generous, always willing to lend a hand or support, a keen gardener with a good sense of humour, who liked people, loved her family, and was proud of her husband and children. She loved life, music and art, all things bright and beautiful, and all creatures great and small.”

In Vietnamese, the word for missing someone and remembering someone is the same.

I’ll remember you, Mom.

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