My mother died unexpectedly about three weeks ago. We held her memorial service this past Monday, a remarkable experience I’ll probably write more about. I’m posting my remarks at the service below.
We are made of memories and our relationships are built on memories, the memories of experiences we have shared together. Everyone who knew my mother had many memories of her, and had them while she was still alive, and and every experience we shared with her created new ones. Now that my mother has passed from the world of experiences into the realm of memories, we gather here to share memories with each other, and build new ones together. I thought I would start by sharing some of my own memories.
My mother once pulled out a file folder in which she had accumulated a small number of newspaper clippings about a college called St. John’s. She had at some point heard of St. John’s and decided that it was a wonderful place, and collected the clippings as she found them so as to be prepared to convince me likewise as soon as I was, in her judgment, old enough. I remember the folder, and the cut-up newsprint; one of the articles had a picture of a student with a bushel of curly hair, and a tree behind him.Memory is not infallible; I am not sure how long my mother bided her time, whether she waited until fifth, sixth, or as late as seventh grade to begin her campaign for St. John’s. However, the result is certain: I did go to St. John’s, and my mother scrimped and sacrificed for years to ensure that I would be able to go there. And she was right about all of that, and those years are a huge part of why I am the way I am.
For better or worse, I suppose.
I could mention any number of other things. My mother was in this church a double handful of times, always for the most wonderful occasions. In the ceremony in which Margaret and I became husband and wife, my mother stood nervously at the front with my father as Margaret and I had deemed they should, but firmly made assent to the question posed by Helen Cohen, the minister here at the time. My mother was never one to run to the front of the room.
I loved my mother’s laugh. She had a wonderful sense of humor, and would laugh as at anything from the subtlest wordplay to the simplest children’s jokes. The last time my mother was here at First Parish was for the Christmas pageant last year in which my older son Ben had a small part. My mother was holding my younger son Thomas, trying to keep him quiet and happy during the performance. At what must have been the quietest moment in the pageant, Thomas, facing backwards on her lap, remarked upon the sizable timepiece on the front of the balcony,exclaiming, in a voice that I was certain carried throughout the sanctuary - "Gwanma! Look at that huge clock!" and, as he generally used to do, pronounced the word "clock" without its extremely important letter ‘L’. Convulsed with laughter, positively crimson-faced with the effort of remaining quiet, my mother turned to me and said, "Did you hear what he said? He said, ‘Look at that huge clock!’" using the sort of stage whisper that actors spend years learning to project to the remotest seats in the theater, and, of course, also omitting that extremely important letter ‘L’.
It was almost exactly seventeen years ago, give or take no more than a few weeks, that I first took Margaret to Annapolis to visit my family. I vaguely recall doing the normal Annapolis things - walking down by the harbor, lunch at Dimitri’s - but I vividly remember when my mother pulled me aside and said intensely, "Skott, this Margaret is a good one. Don’t you let go of her, you understand?" And I didn’t, and my mother was right about that, too.
So many memories, so long and wonderful a life, however much longer I could have wished for it to be. Anyone who knew my mother knows that she loved children, and above all other children she loved her grandchildren. My last memory of my mother, the last time I really saw her, was the last time that she babysat Ben and Thomas so that Margaret and I could go see "Gone, Baby, Gone." As always, the boys had a wonderful time with her and my father while we were out, and when it was time for us to take the boys home she and my father walked us down the back stairs. My mother came outside to wave good-bye as we buckled ourselves into the car. So the very last time I saw my mother, we were waving good-bye to each other, and I was saying "Thank you!" through the car window, knowing that even if she couldn’t hear me, she would see my lips move and know what I was saying. So that was the last thing I ever said to my mother. "Thank you!"
I said it as often as I remembered, which was still, I’m sure, not nearly as often as I should have. But I’m very glad that those were the last words I ever said to my mother.
