No Mass

Joyce
Originally uploaded by Jay_wood.

In the past three days, I have been to two funeral masses — John Kalinski, brother to my oldest friend Peter, and Pauline Kelly, mother of one of my newest friends, Mike Kelly. And it was just as much fun as you'd expect.

John Kalinski was an educator, family man and general prankster. I did not know him all that well, frankly. His viewing and service was packed, quite easily the most well-attended funeral I've ever attended — at least 400 people. I drove away wondering if there was enough time in my life to have that big of an impact on the lives of others.

Pauline Kelly was also a teacher. I didn't know her at all, but her family said Mike takes after her quite a bit, so I guess I missed out once again.

My own mother passed away nearly two years ago. I've been meaning to post the eulogy I gave her, and now seems as good as time as any.

Be well, friends. And if you can help it at all, please don't die for at least a couple of months. I could use the break.

Joyce Woodward, July 10, 1933 — July 4, 2004

There are times when we are at a loss for words. We’ve all felt this: moments when we are so filled with gratitude we become tongue-tied, instants when we are blinded with anger and all our stinging comebacks are lost, hours such as this.

Joyce Woodward never, not once, struggled for something to say.

If you wanted to know my mother, all you had to do was listen. Take, for instance, something as simple as a piece of apple pie. If she liked it, it was “Wonderful!” “Delicious!” “The best I ever had!” And if it wasn’t very good, it was, “Horrible!” “Awful!” “Just plain rotten!” She was decisive in her thinking, her words filled with boldness and sparkle. She owned a strength you wouldn’t expect in a woman a notch above five foot, an intensity that belied the softness of her blue eyes. Simply, she spoke with a passion and a candor we long for in our politicians.

She brought that same energy and courage to every aspect of her life. At an age most girls were still occupied with saddle shoes and the crooning of Frank Sinatra, she married my father and soon began a family. Together, they had two daughters, one handsome son, and one outrageously handsome son. And if the worth of a mother is measured by the happiness of her children, then Joyce was a wild success. We all have good jobs, comfortable places to call our own, educations both formal and self-taught, families that we cherish. This was our inheritance from her, and we received it well before she passed.

Of course, us kids weren’t her only accomplishments. She was a loving grandmother and great grandmother, a devoted daughter, a fine sister, a nutty aunt who livened up birthday parties and baby showers. I can’t remember her having many friends, but the few claimed were unusually close. Her work in people’s homes improved the lives of children and the sick. In the larger scheme of things, her and her contemporaries defeated the great tyrants of the last century and created prosperity even our founding fathers would find difficult to believe.

But of all her achievements, her greatest was her marriage to my father. Alfie and Sweetie Face would have been married 56 years tomorrow. From flat-broke kids to pensioned old folks, they stuck together through the layoffs and the house payments, the first days of school and the walks down the aisle. Some months it was all they could do to scrape by, but they made it, they always did, with hard work and a little bit of luck. Being Woodwards, they didn’t always make it easy on themselves, or each other. Dad was a bit of a pistol is his younger days, and Ma was not a woman to back down from anyone. I know I’m not the only one here today who wondered sometimes what kept them together. It was love. Love. My parents’ marriage was proof that even the most complex relationships can have the simplest foundation.

There are many things I will remember about my mother — the clatter of Yahtzee dice on the kitchen table; the way she wiggled the same little Twist to pop music; her love of flowers and fishing and knickknacks and good coffee; the way she’d sometimes call me “Steve, I mean Jack, I mean Devon, oh hell, you know your own name”; her easy and genuine thrill opening Christmas presents; and, of course, her face, a beautiful echo of a grandmother I so sorely miss.

The newest member of our family, Shelly’s husband Mark, said that it was appropriate that Mom passed on the Fourth of July, her being such a little firecracker and all. And that’s a good way of remembering her, but for me, I will always treasure her voice, and the power and clarity of her words. I don’t think she realized how much of me being a writer was because of her.

With the last of her time, she spoke her heart. It wasn’t always easy to listen in those waning hours; candor is a rose often armed with all its thorns. Yet, in that hospital room, there was kindness, generosity and love. Naturally, hearing her gave me hope, her speech a sign of strength, but when the room finally fell quiet, I knew that what the doctors had predicted would come to pass. In the silence since that awful, early morning, I have wondered if anything had been missed, a memory I wish I had shared, a thought she had wanted us to know. On both accounts, after much reckoning, I’ve come to a conclusion, and about her entire life as well, and I hope that when all my tomorrows are yesterdays, and a roomful of family and friends gather such as you have here and now, the same can be true of me as it is for my mother: when the final page was written and the book finally closed, absolutely nothing had been left unsaid.