The Eulogy

 My Mom was a compassionate and vibrant woman who always went out of her way to make people feel special. She was classy and proud and had a real passion for life. She had a way about her which endeared her to most everyone she came in contact with, and it is a great testament to her nature that she formed so many long lasting friendships over the years. So many of you here today and so many have gone before her. I just know there was a grand gala awaiting her spirit! Mom cared deeply for the environment, especially our bird friends. In fact, a few months ago when I was cleaning out her desk, I found her lifetime bird list. I was blown away to discover that it takes up an entire legal pad. When I traveled, I would send pictures of the birds we would see from around the country, or have a bunch on the camera to show her when we got home, and she almost always knew what kind of bird was pictured. It wasn’t just birds though. She loved her puppies too! She had such a soft heart for our fur companions to the point that she and a former neighbor used to lovingly retrieve animals who had been hit on South main and give them a proper burial. 

She cared deeply for children and the protection of all that is good and innocent about childhood. She considered all of Tyson’s and my friends “her kids”. There was never a time when more wasn’t merrier or when she got stressed about how full her house was. That just wasn’t a thing for her. In fact, if as a college aged teen, I happened to be visiting for a weekend and came in oh I don’t know, say at about 2 AM with a friend, she might just come right downstairs and said “hey, you guys in the mood for chocolate cake? I was just thinking of making one”. She always wanted “her kids” to know that they were important. 

Mom’s desire to experience life, to really live it, led her to visit all 50 US States and 4 of the 7 continents. She craved adventure and seeing new things. She’d told stories of hitting the road with her own parents and siblings as a little girl and how much fun they’d have seeing the area. She and Daddy traveled every time they had a chance, taking Tyson and I all over the world when we were little. She traveled with many of you in the room and although I LOVED our family trips when I was little, there was a special something to traveling with her once I became an adult. I am proud to have inherited her wanderlust and as Jeff and Sam can attest, there’s a switch that gets flipped when we are on vacation. My Mom installed that switch. The primary difference between her road trips and mine are that my itineraries don’t begin showered, fully dressed, and out of the room for breakfast at 6AM. 

Mom had great style. She was always put together, gorgeously adorned in her enviable wardrobe and jewelry. I used to tease her that someday her overcoordination would overtake her but in truth, I was jealous of her easy way with putting together a stunning look head to toe. She was the consummate entertainer, hosting decades of out-of-town guests for holidays, friends and family parties, and several years of fancy dress Oscars parties. She loved having a full house and took great pride in making sure that her guests’ hearts and bellies were full too. If she wasn’t watching one of her beloved Westerns, there was always music playing in her house. Her musical taste was incredibly varied with top favorites being Luciano Pavoratti, Neil Diamond, and Willie Nelson. Some of my favorite stories were of the first time she heard MArio Lanza sing in The Student Prince, the first movie she could remember and how it entranced her, her bliss upon seeing Pavarotti live in the 90s, a story she was very excited to tell anew to Jeff when we were dating since we’d all already heard it, and that when she took me to my first concert in 1978, Willie Nelson was only this tall. We were as far back and up as was possible to get in the Oklahoma State Fair concert venue. In my own all over the place musical catalog and everytime I notice I’m listening to music with my eyes closed and my head back, I know that is because of Mom. 

Nothing compared to her love for me and Tyson and our spouses, or so we thought. In 2011 along came her Samshine with Reagan following in 2020 and all bets were off. If we’d thought that Mom was the greatest Mom of all time, she blew that title out of the water when she became Gee. Before Sam started school, he was with Gee at least 2, sometimes 3 times a week while I was at work and it was clear that their time together was incredibly well spent when on weekends we would walk into places as varied as Hatfields, the Nature Center, Walgreens on South Main, Wilders, the Candy House, and Academy Animal Hospital, just to name a few, and every person in all of them knew Sam by name due to their adventures. 

Mom was endlessly supportive of our dreams, a great comfort when times were tough, and a shining example of positivity until the later stages of her disease. I really don’t know what I’m going to do without her here on Earth with us. But I will draw strength from the things she taught me and have her words kicking around in my head all the time. “David can.” (a book we read when I was little about believing in yourself) “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” (speaks for itself) and “Knockers up.” (her way of saying, whatever you’re doing, approach it with your head high and confidence in check). The one I’ll miss most is “Have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?” whenever I would pick up the phone to her call. 

In 2010 Mom was officially diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Words hateful enough haven’t been invented for me to express how I feel about Parkinsons. It’s a thief, it’s cruel, and in the words of my spicy mouthed Daddy, it’s a dirty rotten MFer. She fought for a long time and just when the fight got to be too much, she was set free. Mom made her final transition, on a gorgeous Sunday morning, bathed in sunlight streaming through the window, and surrounded with the love of me, my husband Jeff, and her sisters Joyce and Jill. 

It is an honour to stand before you and share my precious memories of my mother. She will be missed by all, but her memory will live on in my heart and in us all forever. I love you so much, Mom, and will miss you more than words can say. In closing, I’d like to share a poem by a favorite spiritual brother of Mom’s, 

Khalil Gibran-The River Cannot Go Back 

It is said that before entering the sea a river trembles with fear. She looks back at the path she has traveled, from the peaks of the mountains, the long winding road crossing forests and villages. 

And in front of her, she sees an ocean so vast, that to enter there seems nothing more than to disappear forever. But there is no other way. 

The river can not go back. Nobody can go back. To go back is impossible in existence. 

The river needs to take the risk of entering the ocean because only then will fear disappear, because that’s where the river will know it’s not about disappearing into the ocean, but of becoming the ocean. 

Later this year, Tyson, Tristan, Reagan, Jeff, Sam, and I will travel out, deep into the waters off of the coast of Costa Rica as you requested Mom, and you will become the ocean