[LSPoorEeyorick]

Thank you all, again, everyone, for being so supportive to us during this difficult time. It's going to continue to be hard, so thank you in advance for your patience as we find our bearings.

I thought you might enjoy reading the eulogy I wrote for her funeral:

The thing about Mom was that she made everything special.

It wasn’t just a bag of apples. It was an apple-tasting party.

It wasn’t just a birthday. It was a celebration with balloons on the door and on the ceiling. With a bright red plate that reminded you were “special today,” loaded with your favorite foods. With a bag – maybe one that was just as big as you were - full of your favorite things.

It wasn’t just a holiday, it was crazy, joyful festivity, filled with more traditions than you can count – but she remembered them all, every year. Decorative frou-frou from the floor to the ceiling. Rounds of gifts in coordinated wrapping. An enormous spread with parkerhouse rolls, or kolache, or polish hornyballs. Pickles heaped on a special plate, and pickles hidden on a Christmas tree.

It wasn’t just a reunion. It was a chance to spoil those grandchildren silly. It was a chance to make you laugh so hard that your soda came out of your nose. It was a chance to playfully interrogate your new boyfriend or girlfriend. It was a chance to re-write a John Denver song so that the whole family could sing “Thank God I’m an Augustine.” It was a chance not just to tell you how proud of you she was – but to sing it out loud, maybe even with a gymnasium full of people there to witness it. It was a chance to listen to you, with her heart, and to tell you exactly what she thought (even if you didn’t want to hear it.) It was a chance for her to take you in her arms and tell her how much she loved you. And she did – she loved every one of you, with all of her heart.

Especially Bruce. Because it wasn’t just a marriage. It was a fairy tale, where the little girl passed the big house on the way into town, and said “I’m going to marry the man who lives there.” And then she did. It was a friendship, started as teenagers and lasting 49 years. It was true love – the kind that lasts for better and for worse, through the joys of courtship and childbirth and adventure… and with bravery, courage, and faith through trials and suffering. It was the kind of partnership that taught so many of us how to love each other.

Because Mom’s life wasn’t just an ordinary life. It was an extraordinary lesson she taught to all of us. She taught us to enjoy life to the fullest. Celebrate every holiday… heck, celebrate every day, savor every cup of tea. She taught us to greet our challenges with our faith and a positive spirit. She taught us to believe in ourselves, and to believe in each other, to forgive and to be forgiven. She taught us to create, to express, and to give with a generous heart. She taught us to love fiercely and unconditionally.

And on her last day with us, she gave us one final piece of advice, to remind us what she’d been teaching us all of her life: that we must always remember, remember, remember to laugh.