I ran across this eulogy I wrote for my Mother who passed away last winter. I thought I would share it with the world. It brought a tear to my eye. Many of my friends are dealing with the loss of a parent and this is how I dealt with my loss. This is what I said at her funeral.
My Mother’s Laugh
Laura had a great sense of humor. She was Mom to me, grandma to many of you, but today, I will call her Laura. How she developed that sense of humor is hard to understand when you consider her childhood on a dry land wheat farm on the North Dakota plains. She grew up in a tiny, isolated clapboard farm house that was battered by fierce Canadian winds. The winter blizzards left snow drifts piled to the second floor windows. The droughts of the 1930’s brought dust storms and hail and plagues of grasshoppers that devastated their crops and made her life miserable. But Laura’s childhood stories were filled with humor, often leaving her the brunt of the joke.
When she was eight, her older brother talked her into flying. He was always tinkering in the barn and had made a flying apparatus that, when strapped to Laura’s back, would enable her to soar like the prairie hawks, or so he said. He convinced her to climb to the top of their barn, the highest point for miles around, and, attired in a contraption of canvas and baling twine, to leap into the air. She madly waved her arms grabbing at the air, fully expecting to glide over the house and circle the farmyard. For just a few precious moments she seemed to hang in the breeze and then down she swooped, crashing in the barnyard in a heap of broken sticks, canvas, and twine. Bruised and bloodied, her red hair blazing, she cried because she didn’t fly. Laura would tell this story with a gleam in her eyes. And she would always add that when she finished school, she started taking flying lessons at a local airport as soon as she got the chance. She was determined to learn to fly.
Growing up on the farm she was a bit of a tomboy. She loved to wear coveralls and help her father groom his draft horse rather than play with dolls. I remember her tale about standing up to the playground bully. He was picking on another little boy at recess and she would not stand for it. It just wasn’t fair and that’s what she yelled looking up into his face. He was twice her size, but he gauged her rage and determination and decided to back down from the girl with the brilliant green eyes. Laura was a force to be reconed with if she felt an injustice had been done.
It was injustice that drove her to run away from home at the age of 16. She hitched her way to Williston and worked for her room and board while she finished high school on her own. Small town life was not exciting enough for her and it wasn’t long before she headed to the big city.
Laura loved to dance. She would work hard all week as a secretary but when the weekend came, she wanted to have fun with her friends. They would go to dance clubs and she had a different partner every dance. It was at one of these night clubs that she meet a young Army sergeant named Bill Williams. He was tall and handsome and quite a witty conversationalist. He seemed to have eyes for her, but, as Laura told it, she didn’t want to settle down yet. She had a lot to do before she thought about marriage especially with the war in Europe on the horizon.
But Bill was persistent. He had to go away for a couple of months while attending officer candidate school. When he returned on leave, he headed for her apartment to see if she wanted to go out. When she opened the door to his knock, she was shocked. She slammed the door in his face. She stood inside her apartment, her whole body shaking.
You see when Laura was a young girl she had had a dream. She had seen the face of the man she would marry. She and her sister had read in a romance magazine that if they ate a hardboiled egg with a teaspoon of salt and then went to bed without drinking any water, they would see the face of the man they were to marry. She had forgotten about that face until that moment. With one look at the young officer standing before her with a newly grown mustache, she had realized that he was the one. In seven months they were married.
Being a war bride was no picnic: long periods of separation, exchanging brief letters, always the uncertainty, the dread of bad news. Laura was not prepared for the long ordeal that she would face when she received word that Bill was seriously wounded in Italy. Not knowing how seriously he was hurt, only getting hints in his letters scrawled with his left hand. The slow recuperation with long stays in the hospital and the setbacks. But they made it through the hard times.
Laura and Bill put their lives back together. He went to college and their family began to grow. Laura learned how to pinch a penny until it squeaked. She made clothes for her growing boys, reworking hand-me-downs instead of buying new. She joked about her first attempt at spaghetti and meatballs, it was uneatable. She struggled to keep her small family warm in the record low temperatures of those first winters in Omaha. To here her tell the story, with her jokes and wry humor, you would miss the struggle and difficulty she had to endure.
They finally made their home in Houston. That’s where I have all my memories. Where she caught me every April Fool’s Day. It never failed. I would steel myself the night before and the next morning she would always pull a joke on me. And she would laugh.
My brother and I wanted to join the cub scouts but they didn’t have enough den mothers, so Laura volunteered. The problem arose when all the other den mothers decided to send their worst troublemaker to her den. Everyone was expecting this rowdy bunch to be a disaster. Laura’s strict discipline and disarming humor created a cohesion that was amazing to be part of. Our den kept winning first prize at the monthly pack meetings. It got to the point that everyone in the pack wanted to be part of our den. I remember how proud I was of my mother when I heard my friends wish they could come to our meetings.
One of the clearest memories I have from my childhood is my mother’s laugh. When our parents would entertain other adults in our living room, we kids had to stay out of the way in our bedrooms. I can remember laying in bed hearing the rumble of grown up conversation. Then there would be the clear, high pitched ring of my mother’s laughter. Someone was telling a joke or she made a witty remark, I never heard what set it off. I just remember hearing her laughter: strong and clear and confident. It was full of joy. It made me comfortable and secure. I could roll over and go to sleep, then. I loved my mother’s laughter.
Laura, this is the toast you always made at parties and I make it to you now.
Here’s to you
And from you
And to you again.
If I hadn’t met you,
I wouldn’t let you,
Be my friend.
You’ll be my friend always. And I’ll miss your marvelous laugh.