These are my comments for Mary’s service on December 18, which were delivered beautifully, with a full heart, by our eldest son Matt:
I awoke two nights ago from a dream in a pleasant state of mind. Almost at once it hit me – I remembered that I had awakened to a world forever changed.
Our Mary is gone.
The very air we breathe is altered. Our grief is made all the more ragged by the impossibility of this thing.
To all of you who ever bought a “World’s Best Mom” t-shirt, I am sorry to say you have been duped. Mary was that, and world’s best wife as well. She gave of herself unselfishly every single day. She was at her happiest when doing something for others – humming in the kitchen absentmindedly while making something to take to someone in need.
Our kind notes have included more than a dozen with the phrase “she changed my life.” She impacted so many, everywhere she went, with her intensely focused attention. She never had a single thought for herself. She was a born caretaker.
Mary was omnicompetent. A trained engineer, she could figure almost anything out. She was an IT expert, an HVAC expert, a true problem solver. If she were here today and the heat was not functioning properly, she would slip out the back and into the basement and bang it into shape. That’s a true story.
Her children and grandchildren were everything to her. She dispensed life’s wisdom to them literally every single day. She cared for them with a singular intensity - had every important detail of their lives in her head.
We met in seventh grade and were friends through high school. I often gave her a ride home, even taught her how to drive a stick. We went to different colleges and had a chance summer encounter – within two weeks we knew this was it. We didn’t tell anybody because it seemed capricious, but to us our love just seemed certain. Our almost 38 years of marriage were happy beyond expression.
Mary is a person of true, unshakable, lifelong faith. We know where she is. She is walking now with Patty, smiling at her father, holding Hannah in her arms, beaming down at her. As Sarah said to me in her grief-hoarsened whisper, “I think it’s Hannah’s turn now.”
So how do we move forward, in this different world? Helen Keller said, “What we have once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, for all that we have loved deeply becomes part of us.”
We move ahead in two ways.
The first is to know she is with us. She is looking down right now and nodding in agreement. “Yes,” she is saying, “tell them, tell them I am watching and listening. Tell them I am happy. And most of all tell them I am still there for them.”
The second way we move ahead is to lean on each other. She taught us how to care. She left a piece of herself in each of us. Her wisdom lives within us. Together we can draw on her lessons to help each other, as she would help us.
Today we celebrate a great life, Mary’s life. She has given a lifetime of goodness in her too- short life.
Goodbye my love, we will speak soon.
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Thanks to ALL of you for the kind notes, flowers, and meals. You have helped us immensely through our heartache. We love you all.
