A couple of weeks ago we held a memorial service for my mom.
If you have been around for a while, you have heard me share that my mom had early-onset dementia.
I’ve shared my experience with this in different ways over the years. But you never really heard about who SHE was.
So, to give my grief a page to live on. And to share the impact she has had on my life. AND to normalize the mourning process. I wanted to share the words I said for her at her service.
(AI did not write this. As you can tell by the run-on sentences. )
I hope to keep this short and sweet, just like she was
Coming to a memorial service can be a hard thing to do but coming together is sacred. It is a way we stop and honour the life of my mom, Jacquie. It is an important practice to help us give our feelings a place to land, when we’ve been running from them for so long.
And in coming here today, you are honouring our mom, but you are also helping carry the loss with us
Sharing your sympathy, sharing your stories, sharing the impact our mom has had on you – that helps us carry the grief because that helps us carry the love of her – and grief and love can be opposite sides of the same coin.
As you know, mom suffered early-onset dementia,
It is a disease that had taken mom away, as we knew her, more than a decade ago
And over the years, we mourned, without really knowing how to give ourselves permission to say things out loud or truly call them a loss.
But we carried the sadness of the current losses and the losses we knew would come.
We carried grief. . .
For the way life had to look for my parents.
For the fact that some of her grandchildren didn’t get a chance to know how creative and generous she was.
They didn’t get to hear her giggle at her own jokes, or have her worry over them and how they were doing
They didn’t get the Nana that would babysit them and make them Easter baskets and talk to them about Jesus
It is a loss for mom, our own kids, and ourselves
And I won’t pretend I haven’t had years of conversations and tears with God about mom having dementia.
I won’t pretend it doesn’t make sense to me.
I won’t pretend I never have asked, and don’t still ask, “How can God let bad things happen to good people?”
But if mom was here I like to think she would remind you that God also let a lot of good things happen in her life too.
We can’t just look at the final chapters.
We have to look at the whole story
The story of the little girl who survived major injury, and then danced on stages, and collected leaves and sticks and drove her big sister crazy with how messy she was.
The story of a woman in love, decorating her apartment in a small town, and calling herself a Misses
The story of a mom who had losses but also gained four kids who loved her so so much
A mom who loved her kids through all their hardships, and would write them letters of encouragement when she wanted to really reach them,
A mom who sent birthday cards, always late, just like she had a tendency to be
A mom who always forgave and encouraged her kids to do the same, because she believed peace was worth fighting for. Sometimes I wish she would have told us all off a bit more, she didn’t do anger very well, but she did peacekeeping well.
The story of a lady singing with her whole heart in the church pew and volunteering to make her community better
The story of a Nana who bragged about her grandkids and thoroughly enjoyed who they were
You all carry a bit of my mom in your own stories too, that is why you are here.
And now we choose how to carry her story into ours
How to make sure she shines through in the story of our own lives
I think she would be so proud of how her family has come together through her disease. It isn’t what any of us wanted, but I know she would take great appreciation that her kids are all there for one another and that their father, her husband, is taking such good and tender care of them.
I think she would continue to brag about her grandkids and be so proud of them too, for being strong and brave, and kind, and loving.
My mom gave me a lot of her qualities, even if I was always determined to figure it all out on my own
My mom gave me brown eyes.
She gave me my empathy, the kind that other people sometimes don’t understand.
She gave me her lame mom jokes
But, Faith is the biggest gift my mom has given me.
In first John it says
“God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.”
She loved, she lived for love
She had God in her
Love is patient, love is kind.
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
I have met few people who can love like this.
But I did see it in her. God was in her.
Thank you for teaching us how to love, Mom
It has been a long goodbye, and even though it was more than time to go home to Jesus, it still sucks to be without you.
When I see you again, I will have so much to say to you
Things I have been wanting to say for the past 15 years.
Questions I never got a chance to ask.
And I will tell you, I get it now.
I get how hard it all is to be a girl, a woman, a wife, a mom, a friend, a sister.
And I will thank you for giving me faith, hope, and love, to get me through it. Cause you knew you couldn’t stay for it all.
You left me with something enduring, something I can make sure is in my own story now too, the best I know how
