Grief is a strange beast. I rarely feel actively sad about Mom's death. Mostly I feel strange things going on in my physical self. I'm tired a lot, even though I get enough sleep. I have more aches and mysterious pains than I used to, and I'm convinced it's not just a part of getting older. Not all of it, at any rate. I was talking to someone I know who has recently been through more than his share of grief. He said that while he was in the midst of his wife's cancer, people kept asking him if he was okay. He always said he was, because he didn't realize until after her death that he wasn't. You have to keep going, and you don't recognize the effects caregiving takes on you. Then after his wife died, he said it was like all the air rushing out of a balloon. It's an apt metaphor.
Recently, I've started remembering Mom more. Up until now, it's been a lot of blankness. But now I start to think of her more often. I remember her, her life, not just the past 6 years. She was a great mom.
This may seem a bit after the fact, but I am posting the eulogy I wrote for Mom's memorial service. I guess it's time.
I would like to read from 1 Corinthians 13:
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
So I trust that, with love for my mother and my mother’s love for me, my words will be neither a noisy gong or clanging symbol.
And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Of the people I’ve spoken to in the last 3 weeks, almost all described my mother as a lady. And she was.
And she was patient, and kind, and never arrogant or rude. One of my favorite
stories’ of Mom’s was about how she met Dad. She was working in the treasurer’s office at Wartburg College. Dad was teaching there.
Mom’s home congregation in Nauvoo, IL was temporarily without a pastor.
They were getting supply pastors from all around, and one week, Dean Kilgust was
tapped to go preach there. Mom’s roommate, Arlean, told her, “Ask him for a ride; you can go home and visit your family. Besides, he’s single.” Mom, who was already in her late 20s and convinced marriage was not in her future, said, “No, I don’t want to ride with Dean Kilgust. He’s so arrogant.” Well, Arlean finally convinced her that it was a free ride home, and worth putting up with Dean for. Mom told me that on that ride to Nauvoo and back with Dean, she saw a different side of him, and found out he could be thoughtful and kind. And the rest, of course, is history.
It was not until Mom came to live with us that I found out how strongly that love endured. When words were becoming hard for her to use anymore, we would often get the picture albums out for her to look at. She enjoyed that most of the time, but the only time her face would light up would be when she would see a picture of Dad. Then she would gently touch the photo, and sometimes stroke his cheek. I always knew my mom loved my dad, but it took Alzheimer’s to show me that she was in love with him.
Language was the first thing Mom had trouble with due to Alzheimer’s. She loved to read, and always had a stack of library books next to the love seat she would sit in. She, more than anyone, modeled for me the reading that became both my love and my life’s work. It was when Mom could no longer remember what some of the words she was reading meant, words that she knew she knew, that she went to the doctor and was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end.
Mom endured Alzheimer’s with a grace and dignity I couldn’t quite fathom. When something she used to be able to do became hard for her, she would say, “Well, that’s the disease. I won’t be able to do that anymore.” She wasn’t perfect, or a saint, but
she faced her disease with more acceptance than I thought humanly possible. She never asked, “Why me?” and she didn’t complain.
As her disease progressed, people would often ask, “Does she still know you?” That was always hard to answer, because I don’t believe she knew our names, or who we were to her, but she did know us. She knew that Jeanne and I were the people who were always with her, and who cared for her, and who kept her safe. On that last day, she knew we were out that afternoon; she knew when we got home; and she knew that when we got her into bed and comfortable, that she could finally leave.
For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.
Being a witness at my mother’s death was one of the greatest gifts she’s given me. It was a privilege to be with her at the end of her life on this earth. And now she is complete again.
When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.
For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.
And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
Mary Kilgust embodied love, and I am blessed to have had her as my mother.
