Eulogizing Mom by Andrew Hirss
Over the weekend, I organized a memorial service for my mother at the Church of the Palms, her chosen place of worship in Sarasota for as many years as she had lived there. My uncle helped write her obituary, which we posted in the Sarasota News. We also sent a copy to the Ann Arbor News and to Bryn Mawr, her alma mater.
The service was held on the Wednesday following her death. I raced to get word out to as many of her local friends as possible, as well as to friends from her Ann Arbor days, including my stepfather, her third husband Rupert. I also reached out to family friends the Conlins and Zimmermans who lived nearby. Rupert responded that he wasn’t sure if it would be appropriate for him to attend. It wasn’t—there had been so much physical and emotional scarring during that marriage—but, true to my people-pleasing nature, I assured him it was. It wasn’t fitting for the Conlins to be there either, given the affair between Mr. Conlin and my mother before she married her fourth husband. Mr. Conlin was Rupert’s best friend. I never knew if Rupert was aware of Mr. Conlin’s affair with my mother. Yet they were both at the service, each grappling with their own memories of my mother in tense, tight-lipped silence. I was too preoccupied to care.
Writing my mother’s eulogy and then delivering it to a crowd of shimmering-eyed elders—mom’s men, friends and bridge buddies, most of whom had never met me—was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. When the time arrived for me to speak, I could barely contain the quaver in my voice and the tremor in my legs. It was a challenge to honor her life and at the same time, speak the truth about her, about us. I felt like such a fraud.
This is what I came up with:
I spent the past couple of days struggling to figure out what to say at this moment, and I was nearly stumped… I mean, it wasn’t supposed to be this way. I wasn’t prepared for this. Not yet, anyway.
But that’s just the way it is, isn’t it? In spite of all our planning, Life—and Death—just happen.
When my mother’s friend Carol Bogdasarian called to inform me that my mother had just been rushed to the hospital, my blood ran cold. Carol said that I might want to seriously consider coming to Florida… NOW. Within 3 hours, I was on a plane from San Francisco to Sarasota. The rest is history.
Sometimes things have a way of working out so badly.
Or do they? When I take a moment to look past my grief, I can see that I was blessed with the opportunity to be with my mother in her final days and hours. I was blessed to have been able to hold her hand and tell her that I loved her, that it was okay, all that might have been unspoken or unresolved between us. It was all okay. I can see that even though my mother was struck with a pernicious illness, she was blessed to have been spared a protracted period of suffering. In the final week of her life, my mother was blessed to have been cared for by a flock of angels at Tidewell Hospice, where she received the best comfort care any dying person could hope to have. Though it wasn’t falling asleep and then just not waking up, it may have been the next best thing. My mother bore her last days with amazing grace, dignity, and the same stubbornness she exhibited throughout her life.
During her marriage to Rupert, my mother had a penchant for digging in her heels with him at the worst time. She’d be so focused on arguing her point—almost always a losing proposition with him—that she’d miss the warning signs that a scuffing about was imminent, the aftermath of which her Covergirl concealer couldn’t always mask.
I saw a few knowing nods of heads when I mentioned my mother’s “stubbornness.” Stubbornness was one of my mother’s hallmark traits. She was not one to accept the things she could not change. She was all about changing the things she could not accept, and on her terms. If unsuccessful at that, she would grimly resign herself to whatever status quo she found herself tethered, biding her time. At times, her obstinacy could be exasperating.
I watched my mother’s war of wills play out with her own mother. My grandmother always managed to win out—it was a family trait to ultimately demur to her—but my mother was the one who always held out the longest. While she was married to Rupert, when his will overpowered hers, she’d retreat into her games of Solitaire. Beyond the shuffling of the cards, the silence in the house was deafening.
Of course, my mother’s other qualities more than made up for her stubbornness. If they didn’t, I’m not sure many of us would have been able to put up with her. As my stepfather Rupert put it, my mom was an “emotionally large” person. She was kind and had a big heart. Rupert said he couldn’t remember my mother ever being deliberately unkind or mean to anyone. When I thought about it, neither could I. My mother was a caring person, accepting of others, generous of spirit.
When I reached out to Rupert for his ideas for my mom’s eulogy, and he told me about my mother never having been deliberately cruel, I almost scoffed. He’d been the primary source of deliberate cruelty in our household. Had Rupert been aware of the irony in his statement? Or was he, for some reason, giving my mother a pass for that time during their turbulent divorce she told him that, in the fourteen years they were married, he had simply been a “paying guest?”
My mother had the ability to effortlessly make friends. Anyone who came in contact with her for the first time generally liked her instantly, and if they were of the male persuasion, they were in danger of falling in love with her.
Though my mother was capable of eloquence, she tended to hold her cards close to the vest. She rarely let those around her know what she was really thinking or feeling. Those of us who were closest to her, and—we thought—knew her best, were always surprised to find out that we didn’t know what we didn’t know.
I remember the morning of 9/11. I sat staring at the television, my mouth agape at what was unfolding in New York. A sickening, free-falling panic came over me. So, I called my mother. When I finished blubbering through the phone, my mother gently said, “Why, you poor dear; you haven’t been through this before, have you?” For a moment I couldn’t fathom how she could be so calm about what was unfolding in New York, but then it dawned on me that, of course! As a child, she had seen the horror of war first-hand, had survived the siege of Budapest by the Germans and Russians in WWII. She had already been christened with the blood of war on her homeland soil; I was experiencing it on mine for the first time. She was able to hear what I was feeling and temper her responses from her own experience. It was one of the most open and deepest moments of communication my mother and I ever had, and I will cherish the memory of it.
I had spent the night before 9/11 in an alcohol and cocaine-fueled debauch and had staggered late to work, oblivious to the throngs of people pouring out of San Francisco going in the opposite direction. When I reached my office, I heard the announcement that, due to the bombing of the Twin Towers in New York, all employees were to return home immediately over safety concerns. As I watched the news in shock after returning home, that sickening, free-falling panic that came over me was as much shame and remorse for my depraved behavior the night before as it was the dread of war having reached American soil. When I blubbered to my mother over the phone, I only shared about the one, and not the other.
I loved my mother very much, and I know she loved me. That she was very proud of me was obvious in the way her friends would tell me so. That I was proud of her, I only wish I had told her while she was still alive. But I am telling all of you now; I am fortunate to have been blessed with my mother, and I am immensely proud of how she lived her life, fought the good fight, and finally won the race.
The last paragraph of my mother’s eulogy was a bit of a stretch when I wrote it and as I spoke it. While she lived, my feelings for my mother were encumbered by years of our “civil estrangement,” born of the conflict between a fantasy bond with her I couldn’t let go of and the maternal bond she had wandered away from when I was a child. Though my love for her and pride in her tenacity was there below the surface, I was never able to fully access those feelings while she was alive. For years they had lain dormant, under layers of secrets, buried by things of which we never spoke, truths we stepped around. With her departure, my opportunity to reconnect with my mother had evaporated overnight.