Read at her funeral Mass on June 3, 2006:
The thing everyone used to notice about my Mom was her smile. She had the most beautiful one I've ever known, and it has been embedded in my mind no doubt since I was a baby and she looked down on me. Over the years her smile did not dim even though she was experiencing increasingly greater pain from rheumatoid arthritis, one of the most horrific and debilitating diseases there is. Now, as I write about her, that smile burns through the fog of sadness and the haze of tears and reminds me how much she loved me and everyone in her family.
Mom's beginnings were modest. She was born in 1930 and grew up during the Depression. She and her sisters lived with their mother and father in a cold water flat in Glendale, Queens. While her father was a firefighter and had a steady job, they still lived sparely but managed to get by on what little they had and lots of love. She went to PS 91 in Glendale and then on to Richmond Hill High School. At the age of 18 she went into Manhattan and entered the working world, taking a job with the Equitable Insurance Company where she worked with an IBM machine that filled an entire room with what was ostensibly the first operational kind of business computer.
Mom and her sisters, Margie and Ruth, were so very close that they were like triplets of different ages. Sharing everything sisters share and loving each other so irrevocably and completely, their bond remained throughout life and has never been broken, not even now that both my Mom and Aunt Margie (who died Feb. 6, 2006) are passed on. Their kind of love is that unconditional and eternal type that poets write about and regular folks hope to attain someday. Mom loved her family and friends so earnestly and unendingly that absolutely nothing could shake its tenacity or endurance. I know that even if Mom didn't like something we did it meant nothing compared to how much she loved us. The power of that love overcame any kind of adversity, thus letting us know we mattered more than everything and anything else.
Article comments
1 - Lisa McKay
My deepest condolences on your loss, Victor. As difficult as this must have been for you to write, it's a wonderful tribute to your Mom and the wonderful upbringing you had. All children should be raised in such surroundings -- I'm sure the world would be a better place for it.
2 - Michael J. West
Beautiful.
3 - Mary K. Williams
I agree with Lisa - wish more Moms (including myself) could be more like yours.
4 - diana hartman
i'm so sorry you've lost your mother victor...
yours is a wonderful memory of her...
5 - Victor Lana
Thanks for the supportive comments.
It's a strange time for me, almost like being in a void or something. I keep telling myself what happened actually did, but I still can't reconcile it with my feelings. I just can't believe my Mom is gone.
6 - Gina Weiss
A beautiful eulogy for a beautiful person...
I know how painful this must be for you and the loss you feel yet she will live forever in your heart.
Her pain is now gone and she will want you to be happy; You can give her that gift.
7 - Victor Lana
Thanks, Gina, and yes I do try to think about the fact that she is free of pain. I want to understand that it's really my selfishness that wants her with me when she is in a better place. I'm working on getting there.
8 - melissa
im so sory vvictor. that is a beautiful euolgoy you rote. remember me, melissa, from high skool?
9 - Victor Lana
Hi, Melissa. Refresh my memory, okay, because I'm a bit fuzzy these days on anything that didn't happen yesterday.
10 - Theresa Arneson
My mom is cool I just want to bond with her
11 - Theresa Arneson
My mom is cool but how do I bond with her
12 - Victor Lana
Theresa, I don't know you or your Mom, but I will say that you want to do something now. I always thought I had time tomorrow for stuff, and now I realize how wrong that philosophy is.
Try doing something together every week. What interests do you share? Find a new interest you'd both enjoy.
Whatever you do, make time, Theresa, (even if you just sit together and talk). Good luck and remember how lucky you are to have your mother.