My Mother's Eulogy

There comes an age when the natural order of death takes place.  We lose our parents, friends, relatives.  For some of us that age has come too soon, when we were too young to understand or even fully know who the person was that we lost.

 The word Eulogy means, A piece of writing that praises someone highly.

We mostly associate the word to those that have died.  Had I known the meaning of the word before, I would have written this while my mother was alive and we would have celebrated her life with her.  Let’s face it who else but my mother would enjoy an evening of compliments bestowed upon her? 

She was a woman who never grew tired of hearing how beautiful she was.  And she was.  But it was not her outer beauty that defined her.  It was her actions in life that  made her beautiful.

 The way she loved our father and was able to remain friends with him until his own death.

The way she found the true love of her life, Morty and blended a family of wild teenagers.

 Her beauty came from the beauty she saw in life, the art she admired and collected.  The way she looked through a camera lense and could see things others didn’t.

On one vacation I swear she took an entire roll of film on a piece of driftwood.

Ann Marie Jonas taught everyone here how to celebrate, how to live, and let people make mistakes.  She raised her children in what some would call an unconventional way.  We had freedom to succeed and to fail.  No matter what the outcome, she was there to love and inspire.

She was a woman who had no fears in speaking her mind, or offering her advice.   I asked her once what the happiest time of her life was.  She said when we all lived in Mountain Lakes.  She told me she  loved the activity and chaos of the house.  Many people will tell stories about her that all begin with, “Well I was sitting in the kitchen with your mom…”

She loved that time I realize now because it was so full of life and adventure.  She never knew what she would be coming home to after a day at the gallery.

If you walked in the house, you were family.

She welcomed everyone in to her house, and in to her heart.

Having raised five children, there were a few times when I would call her for parenting advice, and more often than not she would listen quietly and then pause before saying, “You wanted to have all these children.'

Mom was a Jonas woman.  To be a Jonas is to be loving, accepting, always getting their way and having a laugh that is unlike any other.

My mother had many pieces of advice that the family called “momisms”  If you do whats right, you never go wrong” was probably the most often stated.

She also called her Evers children, Evers Achievers.  She believed in us, she believed we would all find our paths.  She believed that of everyone.

Earlier yesterday I was laying down and I could hear my cousins laughing.  It sounded just like my mother’s laugh and it made me smile. 

So rhetorically I ask how do you say goodbye to a woman who was a mother, sister, aunt, grandmother, daughter, lover?

The answer is simple.  You don’t.  You do not need to say goodbye to someone who lives on in all of us.

In the faces and mannerisms of our children, in the love that last almost 40 years with Morty.

In the laugh heard by cousins. 

Ann Evers truly was a beautiful woman, but it was her heart that she gave willingly to all of us.  It was the time she spent listening, observing, loving.

She would not want you to stand here and eulogize her.  She would want you to eulogize and celebrate your own lives.

There was another thing my mother always asked everyone.  She would say, “So tell me, are you happy?”

That was what she wanted most.  For everyone to be happy.

Be sad now because it is right to feel the loss of someone so larger than life.

But after this, to truly celebrate the life we now mourn, do what is right, and be happy.

 

Do that for her.