A celebration of life is the best antidote to grief

On the day we honored my mother's life, a day I had feared would be unbearable, there was so much love to carry us gently across the threshold of a life well lived.

In one of my earliest memories, I am sitting on my mother’s lap with her arms around me, looking at a book together. As much as the story must have captivated me at age three, what is most present for me in that memory is the feeling of safety and love in her embrace. As I sift through every memory with my mother, it is this pure essence of love that is the common thread running through all the moments of our lives together.

My love of books nurtured from a young age by mom and my maternal grandparents, Marion and Leonard.

This is how I began my tribute to my mother at her Celebration of Life on Memorial Day Weekend—a fitting weekend to memorialize her 87 years. My brother, sister and I were honoring the request she had made to me a few years earlier. Driving her home from a doctor’s appointment in 2021, the specter of her dementia diagnosis a dark cloud in our lives, she told me she wanted the same send-off we had arranged for my father in 2010, a small family celebration, a reading of poems and tributes, and then casting his ashes into the Atlantic Ocean in Narragansett, Rhode Island where we had spent many happy summers as a family. A lifelong Northerner who had reluctantly moved to Florida to be with her daughters, Mom made it clear that her remains would join her late husband’s in Rhode Island—a wish we will fulfill next year.

Last Sunday we honored the first part of her request with a celebration of life rather than a sombre funeral—a day of storytelling, fond remembrances, joy and laughter mixed with tears. Mom knew that having her children and grandchildren surrounded by extended family and friends to celebrate rather than mourn would temper the sadness and grief. And, as with all things, she was right.

This was my mother’s joyous spirit we wanted to honor.

“To live is to be marked. To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know.” 

—Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

Around the function room we had set out dozens of photos and mementoes, memory boards we had created together, a teddy bear “hugging station” for a woman who fulfilled in her 70s a lifelong wish to amass a teddy bear collection as well as her beloved collection of Scandinavian trolls (she chose the ones that others might consider too ugly to love), and a crossword puzzle tailored to questions about her life, devised by her oldest granddaughter. Her favorite music was playing: Frank Sinatra, Johnny Mathis, Tony Bennett, Nina Simone.

Just as she would have wished, there were hugs, laughter, and smiles amid the tears, as my brother shared stories of his bar mitzvah and how happy that made Mom and his maternal grandparents. Granddaughters Marielle, Sara, Cheyenne and Sierra each took turns sharing how their grandmother had inspired them and taught them to reach for their dreams and not be dissuaded by other people’s views or expectations of them. Marielle sang “I’ll Be Seeing You,” a favorite of her grandmother’s (Billie Holiday’s version) and read a beautiful poem she had written the night she learned of her grandmother’s crossing. Sara, my youngest, spent hours reviewing hundreds of photos to create a slideshow of Mom’s life and also shared how there was no softer hug in the world than that of her beloved Grand-Mère (Mom loved that Sara used the French term for most treasured status in life). We also showed video clips of interviews I made with Mom in 2021 about her childhood and early years. I am so glad we captured those stories early in her dementia journey.

And there was not a dry eye in the room when the four granddaughters and the two-year-old great-grandson Conan performed Mom’s favorite song, Kermit’s “Rainbow Connection.” And in honor of a family tradition from the Swedish side of the family, we adapted Mom’s favorite song “Moon River” to lyrics about her life, composed by her granddaughter Marielle.

When my youngest sister was overcome with emotion as she spoke of our mother’s enduring love, that she didn’t know how she’d go on without her, my brother and I stood on either side of her, leaning in with love and support. My mother, an only child, had three children precisely for this reason. She knew the sibling love she had not been fortunate enough to have would help us get through the hardest of times.

Looking into the faces of my my siblings, my nieces and daughters and so many who loved her, I found the strength to read aloud my tribute to my mother:

She was the mother who understood a daughter who was shy and loved her books and dolls more than the company of the neighborhood kids. She gave me free rein to play in the world of my imagination. From those first books we read together, she instilled a love of reading in me, and from that came my love affair with language, with finding my own words and creative expression.  There was no bigger cheerleader for my writing accomplishments than Mom. We shared book recommendations throughout our lives—reading fiction was her passion, and Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun, an anti-war novel written in 1938, was her favorite book. She was so happy to be part of a book club here in Venice and I am so touched to see some of its members here today.

She was the mother who was patient and encouraging when as a child I developed a stutter. Once when I came home from elementary school eager to tell her about something that had happened that day, I couldn’t get the words out, stammering over every syllable. In tears and frustration, I pleaded with her to let me write down what I wanted to tell her. Sitting next to me at the kitchen table, she took my hand and gently said, “Amy, I have all the time in the world. I want to hear you tell me yourself.” It was a powerful lesson in the importance of using my own voice, even when, especially when, it is a struggle.

She was the mother who showed me how to use my voice in the way she advocated for the causes she believed in. She felt that compassion should be matched with courage to fight the injustices of the world, and she felt these injustices deeply.

As the only child of Marion and Leonard Goldman, she grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts in the shadow of the Second World War and the Holocaust. She witnessed racism as a teenager and it angered her. She abhorred war and marched for peace, supporting the 1968 Presidential campaign of Eugene McCarthy. In elementary school, she put a black armband on me in protest of the Vietnam War and sent me off to school. When I was 12, she took me to my first political rally, the Presidential campaign of George McGovern. Mom never stopped fighting for her beliefs. She campaigned door to door for Barack Obama, even facing off a New Hampshire man who told her and her friend “to get off my porch” in no uncertain terms. In Florida, she marched in a rally for gun control after the massacre at Parkland High School, bearing with pride her homemade sign, “Grandmas Against the NRA.” Well into her 80s she was always on the lookout for a good protest she could join.

My mother and I at a protest in support of gun control following the Parkland, FL school shooting

She was the mother I longed for when I left home for college, homesick for our kitchen table conversations, where she made me feel better about whatever hurt or heartbreak or worry I had on my mind. On my visits home during college, she would invite me into her bedroom, hand me a grownup glass of wine, pat the bed next to her and say, “Tell me everything,” and I did. With her intelligence, humor, empathy and wisdom, and her unconditional love, I knew that whatever I had to tell her would land in the softest, safest spot possible.

She was the mother who gave me her blessing for me to move across the ocean to Sweden to marry and to raise her granddaughters even though it must have broken her heart to have us so far away from her and my father. We made the most of every visit with her and Dad, whether in Sweden or in Providence Rhode Island where they lived. She and Dad saved the money to afford a week’s rental of a large beach house in Narragansett R.I. for many summers, gathering my brother, sister and all five of her grandchildren. As devoted a mother as she was, there was an incredible joy she found in being a grandmother. I am grateful that my daughters had the same closeness with their Grandma that I enjoyed with my maternal grandmother Marion—the kind of relationship where you can share your most tender dreams and deepest secrets.

She was the mother who loved her daughters so much that she agreed—against her better judgement—to leave Rhode Island and move to Florida to join us here. She was widowed then and we didn’t really give her much of an option. She made the best of her Florida years, even if she hated the hot weather. A highlight was time she spent volunteering at the Marietta Museum of Art and Whimsy in Sarasota, Florida.

The heart sculpture at The Museum of Art & Whimsy, Sarasota, Florida with mothers and daughters

She always appreciated art, especially the work of her favorite artist, Pablo Picasso, and so for her, the Whimsy was a magical way to spend a day in a museum with an eclectic collection of art and sculptures. She would show visitors her favorite pieces, including the painting of the professor cat with the eyeglases (“He wore actual glasses,” she delighted in telling visitors, “because he had poor vision. And he kept them on!”) In her honor, the whole family made a pilgrimage to the Museum of Art & Whimsy yesterday on its last day of the 2024 season. And it was magical, exactly as she promised.

She was the mother who took the opportunity to travel the world when she could. Many trips to Sweden of course, but also to England and London and to Paris and the island of Malta. For her 80^th birthday we took the ferry with her sister-in-law, my sister, and my daughters to Key West so she could visit Hemingway’s House. Of course, she ignored every sign warning visitors not to pick up the dozens of descendants of Hemingway’s six-toed cats and cradled a kitten in her arms. Mom could never resist the charms of a cat, her favorite animal. It comforts me that she is reunited with her beloved final feline companion, Pablo Picasso Brown.

Finally, she is the mother who even as dementia came for her, slowly eroding her memory and her ability to live independently, never lost recognition of her children and grandchildren and the people who were special to her. She would give us her beautiful smile whenever one of us spent time with her. It is not surprising that her final words were “I love you,” squeezing our hands as if to reassure us that she would never be very far away.

And I know that to be true. She is always with me. Mom loved a good party and I feel her spirit in this room today, appreciating her granddaughter Cheyenne’s Cosmos and ready to dance with all of us to Frank Sinatra.

As the final part of my tribute, I invite you to join me in singing a song together by one of her favorite musicians, James Taylor, “You Can Close Your Eyes.” In the last months of her life, Mom often closed her eyes. I like to think that when she did, she was experiencing all the sweetness of a life well lived. To you, Mom. My home. Always.

A question for the comments: So often we don’t have conversations with our family and loved ones about the arrangements we want if we should become seriously ill or after our deaths, whether we want a traditional funeral, a celebration of life, etc. Have you had such conversations, and what in your experience has helped people who might have been reluctant to discuss it be more open to such conversations?

Four Songs for 3-D

This week, all the songs are part of the tribute to Freda Dorothy Goldman Brown. As spoken by Humphrey Bogart in her favorite movie, “Casablanca,” (and as my father is no doubt telling her now) “Here’s looking at you, kid.”

Billie Holiday, “I’ll Be Seeing You.”

Audrey Hepburn, “Moon River.”

Kermit the Frog, “Rainbow Connection.”

James Taylor, “You Can Close Your Eyes.”