Eulogy for mom

Mom painted her kitchen yellow in 1979, because she said a kitchen should feel like morning all day. It is still yellow. Most of the important conversations of my life happened in it.

I'm Andrew, the second of Patricia's four children. My brother, my sisters and I agreed that I would speak today, mostly because I'm the only one who promised not to cry. I'm already breaking that promise.

Mom grew up in Toledo, the oldest of six, which meant she was raising children long before she had her own. She became a nurse at twenty-one and worked the night shift for twenty-five years so she could be home when we got back from school. I don't think she slept a full night until 1998.

People who worked with her called her Pat. They told us this week that she was the nurse you wanted on your worst night: calm, honest, and funny at exactly the right moment.

To us, she was the yellow kitchen. When I failed my first college exam, I drove four hours home without telling anyone. She didn't ask why I was there. She put on coffee and made grilled cheese, and at two in the morning she said, "You're not a failure. You're tired. Go to bed." The next semester, I made the dean's list, and she stuck the letter to the refrigerator, where it stayed for twenty years.

But she had a life that was entirely hers, too. She took up painting at sixty. Her watercolors were, let's be honest, not very good, and she knew it, and she painted anyway, every Tuesday, with four friends she met in that class. Two of them are here today. Thank you for Tuesdays.

Mom leaves four children who know how to show up, nine grandchildren who all know how to make grilled cheese at two in the morning, and a kitchen that feels like morning.

Mom, you told me I wasn't a failure, I was tired. You were right about that, and about most things. Rest now. You've earned the longest night of sleep there is. We love you.

When Dad died, Mom was forty-two, with three kids and a mortgage. She never once told us it was hard. We only understood years later, when we had kids of our own, how hard it must have been.

Mom taught all four of us to drive in the church parking lot on Sunday afternoons. She would grip the dashboard and say, "I'm perfectly calm." She was not perfectly calm. We all passed.

Carol married my father when I was nine and my sister was six. She didn't have to love us. She chose to, every day, including the days we made it very difficult.

My mother and I did not always understand each other. But I know this: she taught me to work hard, to stand up for myself, and to never leave the house without a coat. On cold days, I still hear her.

Mom, you prayed for each of us by name every night. Tonight, for the first time, we'll pray for you. Rest in God's peace.