Three years ago, as our father Chappie was slipping away from us, mother’s last words to him were “Wait for me, Chappie.” If there is any solace for us today, and there is very little I can see, it is that Millie has been reunited with the great love of her life and, in her words, “the kindest, most gentle man {she} ever met.“ There is solace for us in knowing she and Chappie are together.
The night before she entered the hospital, Mother told Aunt Priscilla that she heard Chappie calling to her, and she wasn’t afraid of death. But she told me a week ago that she didn’t want to leave her children here alone. And that is how we feel now that she is gone—alone. Three years ago the eulogy for Chappie was easier than this one for mother, for then we were speaking to her. Now we feel we are alone. She was the center of our family, the focus for our activities together, and the source of our comfort. Millie was all that to us and more. Her character and strength were always there for us; she seemed to have a will that was indomitable.
Perhaps the most illustrative example of this was her last act on this earth. She was struggling to breath as her lungs filled, but things were not right. Dianne was not there yet. As my brothers, Kevin and Ed, Aunt Priscilla and Uncle Al, my wife Betsy and Kevin’s wife Joanne and I tried to soothe her, she fought for each breath, her body tight. Then Dianne rushed in and Aunt Priscilla yelled, “Dianne’s here.“ Mother gave Dianne’s hand a squeeze, relaxed and died. Her family was all there, and it was now appropriate for her to let go.
Her last act of will and character defines who she was. She willed herself to live, found the strength and courage necessary to continue on and it was all for her family. If she were to speak now of it, she would give credit to Chappie and her children for giving her strength, but we all know that it was she who gave us strength, it was she who allowed us to be who we were, and it was she who showed us lessons about will, and courage and integrity. Such spirit, such determination, and such character are hard to find and terrible to lose.
Millie had great compassion for people. She seemed at her best when comforting others, offering them commiseration, hope or material comfort. She was not wealthy, but gave freely to those in need, either possessions, money or a place to stay. Indeed, the list of people who have lived with Millie and Chappie over the years is daunting. With two very young children, Millie and Chappie took in Millie’s 15 year-old sister Priscilla when their father died. Priscilla stayed with them until graduating from high school. While caring for four young children, she took care of Aunt Marguerite, who was bed-ridden with arthritis. Her own mother lived with us while recovering from a break-down, with our den converted to a bed-room. Chappie’s mother lived with us after that, and we built an addition just for her. Others too found comfort there, spending a week or two as needed. Our cousins Wayne and Judy Gonyea visited often in the summers. During all this time, she served on the School Board and prepared to return to teaching.
Teaching was, of course, a huge part of mother’s life. She was an inspirational teacher to many, and her students responded to her knowledge of math and to her integrity as a teacher. She obviously loved math and always presented it in a straight-forward, clean way. Her students’ nickname for her, “Old Ironsides,” attests to her solid durability, and even hinted at what might happen should you cross her.
Many of her students responded to her warmth and visited the house. The first time they all seemed surprised that she had a family, and a large family at that. It seemed that they expected her to go home to a small apartment and spend the evenings finding ways to make their classes exciting. She was proud of many of her students. She had a picture of the first satellite launch sent to her by a former student who worked on that project. He wrote “I was able to help do this because of you.”
As a mother, she was caring but not grasping. She let us become our own people, and, no matter how much we screwed up, she never took it personally, although I think I got her to come close a few times. As we matured, she encouraged us to leave the nest and build lives of our own. She loved to have us visit, she loved to see her grandchildren, and she loved to send us home.
She was notorious for cutting off long-distance telephone conversations with, “Okay, we’ll see you” and a click. She had some sort of fear of huge telephone bills. On her refrigerator is a small magnet stating:
“Blessed be the brief, for they shall have lower phone bills”
We made much of her independence, when we found out as adults that she had a public life completely separate from her family life. We were all shocked to hear the stories at her retirement party. We couldn’t believe the jokes she had played on her colleagues. “What, My mother did that?“ “She said what to whom?“ I always looked at her differently, and a little suspiciously, after that.
And she loved it when we teased her about it. She would laugh and shake her head from side to side and not say a thing. She had a way of laughing at herself and others that was totaling endearing. She would cock her head in a slightly flirtatious way and give a quick, sly smile. Her natural humility allowed her to laugh often and we all knew she loved to see humor in things. She would occasionally call us to a meal by saying, “Come to dinner, class.” We would really get on her about that. What we didn’t know is how earthy her humor could get. Recently we learned that she has been badgering people for off-color jokes to tell her pitch party friends.
We also didn’t know how much she loved to travel. With four children, a full-time job, and a house full of guests, she simply had no chance to travel until we left the nest. And, then she and Chappie were on the road. It got so we could hardly catch them at home. We begged them to get an answering machine so we could leave them some messages.
We knew she loved to dance with Dad though. We all have memories of their grace on the dance floor, working perfectly in rhythm there as they did in life. I guess they quarreled, but we never saw them. They kept that to themselves, not wanting to burden their children with such grown-up behavior. Of course, that never stopped us from quarreling endlessly about everything.
Mother was never so alive as when she was figuring out some kind of logistical problem, whether it be how to re-arrange a room or fit everyone at the table. She would think through the problem, listen to one of our half-baked ideas on it and then proclaim the answer with such force that all discussion ended. But such was not the case when we played cards. Card playing worked into mother’s love of solving problems, but she needed the cards to win, so we had a chance. The family played cards all the time, and with six of us, we usually could get a game going. Card counting was expected and woe to he who made a silly play because of lack of attention. She ran a tight ship there as well.
Mother did allow herself two luxuries though. One was her hair. Wednesday was “Holy Hair Day” and she would schedule trips, visits and visitors around her weekly hair appointment. If something important conflicted with hair day, well the wedding or funeral would just have to be rescheduled. In the hospital, the nurses made the mistake of suggesting that she roll over on her right occasionally. They quickly learned that was impossible, for it mussed her hair way too much.
The other luxury was her alternating weekly shopping trips to Manchester and Nashua with Ruthie Joyal. For decades Ruthie and Mother scoured the streets of those cities in pursuit of sales, steals and deals.
She balanced those luxuries with her devotion to God. She accepted Jesus Christ as her savior, and her faith sustained her, and through her, us, when Dad died. She did not wear her faith loudly, did not preach it, but, in character, with integrity, she lived it. When my wife Betsy interviewed her for a college paper, Mother said that her one hero was Mother Teresa, a person she admired because she was so willing and able to give to others. Mother did not pray the loudest or contribute the most in collection, but she had a great Christian heart that served her well. Dianne speaks of the look of total, radiant contentment on her face as she received the Rites of Healing from Father Dan last weekend.
That contentment is echoed in the last stanza of the Ralph Waldo Emerson‘s poem, Terminus. In it, Emerson concludes his extended analogy of a ship’s journey at sea to a person’s life.
As the bird trims her to the gale,
I trim myself to the storm of time,
I man the rudder, reef the sail,
Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime:
“Lowly faithful, banish fear,
Right onward drive unharmed;
The port, well worth the cruise is near
And every wave is charmed.”
Millie made sure that every wave of her life was charmed by her indomitable will, her courage and her compassion. We have all been touched by her here, and those of us who have her blood in our veins are duty bound to keep her memory alive by living what she stood for: integrity, family and unconditional acceptance.
It is appropriate we hear the words of Emerson here because of his great idealism and optimism. I don’t think Mother read much of his work, but she lived his philosophy. Her great heart opened to the ideal in life and she always found the good in people.
And people responded to her. I remember sitting with Mother three years ago in the St. Joe’s Hospital cafeteria, getting a snack while visiting Dad. A young Down-Syndrome girl came up to her and gave her a great hug. Mother talked with her quite a while, stroking her arm occasionally and obviously enjoying her company. I asked Mother later who she was and how Mother had met her, and she said her father was a patient there and the girl had approached her and started talking to her. After that, the girl always sought mother out, to hug and talk to her. It seemed to me at the time that that girl, free from Adam’s sin, responded to mother’s nature instinctively, opening her arms as if to a golden light. Innocence will find Goodness.
Why was that goodness taken from us? Perhaps Robert Frost provides an answer in his short poem, “Nothing Gold can Stay”:
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day,
Nothing gold can stay.
Nothing gold can stay. We will miss Mother, but she left us her memories to cherish, as I hope this eulogy has helped. What remains for us now is to say our final farewells and proclaim our love. We look to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who stated it well:
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
for the ends of Being and Ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints — I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! — and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
Well, Millie would be thoroughly embarrassed by now. She would rise and say, What is all this fuss about? Go home and be with your families. And, that is the best way we can honor her, to be with our families, show others compassion and open our homes and our hearts.
That is what she did, and we love her for it.
