Eulogy

When I was 14, my mom took me on a mother-daughter train trip through Switzerland.  We spent one week hiking in the mountains, exploring gorges and glaciers, and most importantly talking and laughing.  I have thought about this trip often through the years because my mom had given it great significance.  She viewed it as a stepping stone to adulthood, and would frequently recommend a similar bonding trip to other women with daughters whom she met through the years.  Looking back at the trip, I remember beginning to understand and appreciate my mom.  I began to understand what lay behind my mother’s unwavering self-discipline, and she showed me how adventurous and funny she really was.  The combination of discipline and adventure really defined her life.

My mom grew up during a difficult and complicated period for her homeland, and this experience of living her earliest years in wartime never left her.  Her mother, my Oma, lived her entire life as though the war had just recently ended, and that’s how my mom was raised, and me too, in part.  From the time she was a little girl she was extremely disciplined with her household chores and education.  She never needed reminding, as her daughter someday would, to take these things seriously.

It was my mom’s disciplined ambition that enabled her to go to work for the city government in Königswinter at age 16, working long days and studying at night while many of her peers were following American pop culture and going to parties.  It was her discipline and enthusiasm for learning that got her a position in Bonn with the German foreign ministry, which led to an assignment in Sofia, Bulgaria.  But it was her sense of adventure that made my 21-year-old mother pack up her possessions into a blue Volkswagen Käfer and head through the Balkan Mountains to see where life would take her.  I still remember all the stories about this adventurous drive; her fears and hopes, her feeling of freedom at doing something on her own, and also her trepidation about leaving her family with whom she was so close.  Later, when I myself was in my early 20s, my grandmother pulled out the letters and we read them together.  For the first time I got a real sense of who my mother had been, and how she felt when she was my age.  In one of the letters, my mom described meeting a handsome young professor:  “Last night I went to a ball at the American embassy and fell in love.”  At that moment my grandmother could see that my mother’s dreams of living abroad permanently would come true.  And while my grandmother shed tears each time she read the letter, she knew my mom had found happiness.

Growing up, there were certainly times when I resisted my mom’s strict discipline.  It was not the same strictness that friends had maybe experienced, but rather one that came out of a different era and a place that no longer existed.  Of course as I’ve grown older I’ve seen the value in her discipline.  While it could be a constraint at times, it added to the richness of her life.  My mom filled her life with things that mattered.  She frequently said she couldn’t understand when people talked of boredom – the world is too full of things to do and things that matter.  And my mother certainly did things.  Whether it was something big, like advocating for arts funding or gay rights, or something small like writing a card, working in the garden, or eating a quiet meal and reflecting on her week, everything she did mattered in some way.  This came through in her mothering, and her grandparenting.  She made everything seem important, and she was an active participant in everything she did and every place she went.  Whether it was playing together, going to the Museum of Science and Industry, or walking around our neighborhood, she made Nicholas feel like everything they did was important. 

My mother felt most at home in nature.  She would frequently tell us on our weekly Sunday hikes in Brown County that she felt closer to God in the woods than in church.  She grew up in one of the most beautiful spots in the world, yet she was able to find beauty wherever she was.  Each time she arrived in Munster, she would greet me with a description of the landscape, sky, weather.  No matter if it was a glorious October day or a dreary January one, she would find something that had inspired her about the landscape on the drive from Bloomington.  Like my Oma, she believed every day was a gift – something to find beauty and value in.  She liked to talk about taking me for bike rides as a little girl and narrating everything she saw: the sound of the birds, the way the clouds looked, how the wind felt.  She continued this with Nicholas, walking to Schoop’s with him even if it was cold and drizzling, telling him about the world as they walked.  She genuinely could not understand why people would act surprised:  “Ja, I have a coat!  Nicholas has a coat!  We’ll have a great time!”  I remember one night when my mom was visiting, Brian and I went out for dinner.  We returned a couple hours after dark to find my mom and Nick sitting on the front porch, Nick asleep in my mom’s arms.  It turns out they had gotten locked out of the house, and my mom didn’t want to call me and cut our date short.  She happily described walking around the house, letting Nick play in the yard a little while, and then settling on the chair with him wrapped up in her coat while she told him stories until he fell asleep.  When I asked Nicholas if he remembered this, he told me about it in vivid detail.  She had truly turned it into an adventure for Nick, and remembered it as a special moment with him.

I believe the happiest chapter of her life is when she became a grandmother.  She often lamented that being a girl I had a special relationship with my father, and being a boy her brother had a special relationship with her mother.  But when Nicholas was born, she felt an immediate, deep connection with him; she finally had her special relationship.  Her sun rose and set with Nicholas, and he loved his Omi Helga in return.  He loved hearing her sing and tell stories, and every visit began with my mom dancing around the room with Nick, making him laugh.  She could sit for hours with him at the train table, listening to him tell stories, building layouts together.  Nicholas is perhaps the only child in North America who has public art for his train table – miniature statues bought at museum shops by my mom, perfectly scaled for the train table.  And how Nick looked forward to trips to Bloomington, which meant long walks, and interesting activities, and hours spent by the creek throwing rocks.  You might be surprised to know that my mom was a talented rock-skipper.  All the while she taught him about nature – about the plant and animal life in and around the creek, the flowers, the trees.  Nick took it all in with rapt attention, telling me later about the murky water or climbing onto the rocks with Omi to look at the crawdads skittering around.  Together they would watch the deer come out at dusk and then come inside, where Omi Helga, shaky hands notwithstanding, would build lego creations to Nick’s specifications until past bedtime.

My mother was strong and energetic, disciplined and adventurous, full of life and passion.  It seems unfathomable that someone living life so fully could be taken from it so suddenly.  But it is also these defining qualities that give me solace.  I find peace in knowing that my mother truly lived each and every day.  Like her mother, she believed every day was a gift, and it was her responsibility to make the most of it.  I feel her loss terribly, especially from the lives of her beloved grandchildren.  But in thinking about my mother, I realize that my entire life she has been passing down these values to me, and I know what she would have passed down to Nicholas and Alexandra.  At times I will make different choices than my mom would have, but always her underlying love and guidance will be there, informing our decisions and guiding us as Brian and I raise our children and go through life.

My mom once wrote quoted Albert Schweitzer: “The only thing of importance, when we depart, will be the traces of love [and compassion] we have left behind.”  Your presence here shows how much love and compassion my mother had.  Thank you for coming today to celebrate my mother’s life.