Dear Mom

This is the eulogy I delivered at mom's service on Sunday. Some have asked if I could post this. I have so many thoughts about this process and this journey I wished to be able to post and share- but its so very complex a process.
For now, here is the letter:

I’m sitting perched in my office, the sky is open and vast and blue.
The snow is melting on the streets and dripping from the rafters.
How many times have I started this letter, this commemoration–on the page and in my head.
As many as there are snowflakes I see disappearing before me.
How can I possibly wrap up neatly and poetically what you are and meant to me?

How do words possibly sum this up?
I think that you knew that the last request you would have of me would be the most difficult task thus far. A task I feel too ordinary to accomplish, basking under the light of a life so extraordinary.

I hope these words find you in the heavens and wrap you up and find respite in your heart.

I would be remiss to start any of this without thanking the countless people in which you walked this amazing journey with-that I have walked this amazing journey with.
Gratitude is all I have, and it doesn’t seem quite enough for those people who loved you so dearly.

Thank you,
Dad
Sisters
Brother
Nieces and Nephews and the little tikes that brought you so much joy
Friends- too many to mention, but all so very precious to you, I know
My love and my partner- you loved her as if she were your own
My support group and dear friends
Doctors and healers
And
The Northeast GA Hospice gals- what an amazing gift you offered us in her last days
Thank you.

I could speak of my life with you.

I could tell countless stories of tearing up tights, washing behind my ears, telling dirty jokes and having you simultaneously laugh and chastise me, countless hair perms,
warming benches by the pool and by the court, overnights in Paris, Rose Parades, dirty britches, summer switches, perfect birthday parties, gingerbread houses, maps that were
wrong, ganging up on poor dad, clogging, weddings, exploding chocolate cakes, fried chicken, fur coats, and raising one of those kids “you just have to keep your thumb on”…..
Too many stories to even scratch the surface. So much laughter. So much life. And I shall not forget the times of sorrow or sadness, it has made me who I am as much as the joy.

But I feel it is important to talk about you since this last part of your journey began.
You know that I am grateful for this journey with you, but I would like to share with everyone else why. I hope you don’t mind.

I sat by your hospital bed that August morning watching you breathe
Apprehensive of your waking for I knew you would question why Dad had flown home
Dr Hatchett was there to deliver the news of the cancer that they had spent hours trying to remove, and what your next steps would be. In true form, you looked at us and looked back at him and said “We’ll do whatever we have to do to fight this, WE WILL fight this”- which reminded me of the night before watching the doctors stand in the hallway with not much hope in their eyes, and I thought, “you do NOT know my mother”

I took on your sense of fortitude and confidence as my own armor and watched as you gracefully underwent chemo, lost your hair- but not your dignity, and moved into over two years of remission.
I dreaded the phone calls after scans came back.
I know you dreaded calling me when the cancer resurfaced and the doctors said that there was no “cure”, only methods to prolong your life.
I stood on the sidelines and cheered as you chose to take on alternative forms of healing in addition to what the doctors recommended.
I listened as you told me how cancer made you question who you were and what your purpose was. Would you have questioned anything if your body were not fighting against itself? Would you have grown old without asking the hard questions, without diving into the dark parts of yourself in order to heal? I wonder.

I listened again as you told me that you have learned to stop saying “yes” all the time. How you learned to start taking care of yourself in order to take care of those around you.
I listened as you straddled the line between what people thought of you and who you really were. How you felt like you had to “put on” this face because it was what people
expected of you- when you really just wanted to be you.

I watched as you struggled to decide whether to resume chemotherapy or radiation instead of choosing to just be with it. And when I asked you what the greatest lesson of all of this was
I listened as you said “To take every moment in, not to take anything for granted- good or bad”. And I thought, does it really take cancer or death for us to truly grasp what that
means. I suppose it might.

I watched and I listened.
As you gave me the greatest gift you could- your Truth
And your Truth became my own, and the questions you asked of yourself, I began to ask of myself. And thus, my journey continues.

And I am grateful that with your last breath, I knew you.
That I really knew the lady behind all of the giving and loving and Martha Stewart-ness. That I really knew that the spirit that resided in this itty bitty body was bigger than any of
us could really see. That I really knew that when your spirit filled a room that it actually spilled out of that room and out into the world. That I really knew that upon your last days, you knew your spirit was this big, and so letting go of everything would actually manifest what we already knew.
I am so grateful that I knew you.

It will be said of you that you were strong, that you were a fighter
And these things I to believe
But I also believe that your strength carried you to a place of greater understanding about yourself, about life-until it was time to go. And that fighting actually made way for surrender into a grace that is far more powerful than being a warrior. This grace which allowed the true healing to happen. Cancer may have taken you from us, from this world but grace has allowed your soul to transcend all of it into its truest form of perfection–which is love.

As I watched you those last days- it seemed you were going over your entire life in your mind
And as I witnessed those last moments with you, I knew that you were taking care of every last detail- nothing undone, nothing to be done.
And the peace in which you transcended to
Is my peace

I don’t know that any of these words are truly enough
But I know that you were truly enough
And I am truly enough because of what you’ve taught me

Every day
Every moment
As the sky opens before me
You are there
You are here
In me

I love you
Endlessly

Your grateful daughter