Memorial Service
The closest I probably ever was to my mother was during those years in Alexandria, Virginia when we returned from Moscow, when I was four to six years old. We used to spend hours reading Mother Goose and Silver Pennies, reciting nursery rhymes and children’s poetry. I thank those many hours spent at Mom’s side with my lifelong love of reading and poetry. It certainly fueled my imagination and creativity which was essential in my career as a teacher. When Dave was going through Mom’s extensive library with the intention of dividing up her books, he found a little handwritten note in a book of children’s poetry. Mom wrote: “When Janis was small and we lived at Wellington Heights I used to iron in the kitchen and read or recite poems from Silver Pennies and Janis would memorize them. I have always liked to iron, perhaps because it reminds me of those happy hours with Janis.” When I saw this, I cried for Mom, but I also cried that she never told me this herself.
Gardening was one of Mom’s passions that I try, feebly perhaps, to emulate. She had an amazing knowledge of plants and even knew them by their botanical names. When she came to visit in Saint Simons, we had a lovely lunch at the home of my old childhood friend, Beth Williamson Fennell. Beth is quite the gardener herself and her yard is filled with beautiful planting beds full of flowering plants that thrive in subtropical climates like ours but very unlike the plants of California. Nonetheless, Mom was able, in spite of her failing vision, to identify each and every plant! Beth doubted one identification so she used her phone‘s app that identifies plants. Sure enough, Mom was correct! Beth loves to retell that story. It meant a lot to Mom that Beth had invited her, and as they walked the garden I was flooded with memories of Mom literally dragging me up the street to meet the new girl from Arkansas who had moved into the house next door. I was embarrassed and resistant, but something nevertheless clicked with us as I stood on her porch in our Lake Barcroft neighborhood meeting that short, skinny little girl with the silver tooth and the long dark ponytail hanging down her back to her waist. I am eternally grateful for Mom’s stubborn insistence that I meet Beth, my one and only almost-lifelong friend.
On one of my visits to California, Mom dug up a dozen beautiful purple iris for me which I carried back to New Jersey and planted in our yard in Middletown along the split rail fence between our house and our neighbors, the Mullaneys. Those iris were gorgeous, and they thrived even in the very different climate of the East Coast. I still mourn them, blaming myself for not digging them up and taking them with me to Red Bank when I moved.
Travel was another of Mom’s great passions that I have inherited, even though circumstances have limited my opportunities for it. Although my various trips by car with Mom were relatively uneventful compared to the great adventures of most of her other travels, they were treasured times I was able to spend with her. On our trip to Santa Barbara when I was driving her car through the mountains and the engine burned up, leaving us broken down on the side of the road, she was calm and unflappable. She even enjoyed driving the one hundred miles crammed into the front seat of a tow truck that only came after hours of waiting. Once when we went on a trip through the Sierras with Barbara and Peter, we stayed in a rustic cabin and laid out on our backs in the dirt yard to watch the meteors into the dead of night. Mom was always eager for an adventure, and she longed for the ones that took her off the beaten path into places that most tourists would avoid.
I am most grateful, however, for the two-week-long trip to celebrate Mom’s 99th birthday for which she flew by herself to meet me in Honolulu for our cruise through the Hawaiian Islands. She had wanted to do a river cruise down the Columbia River from Washington to Idaho through the deepest gorge in North America. Besides the roughness of the river, all of the side excursions involved steep climbs in mountainous terrain.
She had already been to Hawaii, but I deemed it a safer trip for her and one that did not take us outside of the U.S. in case of a medical emergency. I have wondered if I made the right decision. She never complained, and we had a great time in Honolulu where we spent time with June Ann and her family. Then we departed on the huge cruise ship where we were booked into a beautiful extra large handicapped room with a balcony overlooking the sea. I had traveled by ocean liner many times in my life, but I didn’t expect to love cruising. We enjoyed the bouncy trips by tender to the various island stops as well as the sight-seeing excursions that we took on land. Mom must have walked two miles the day we explored the seaside town of Kona. Then we cruised across a very bumpy Pacific to Vancouver. Neither of us got seasick, but I did begin to fear for our lives when a loud alarm sounded in the middle of the night, and the captain announced a detour for a medical evacuation. Mom slept right through it!
In Vancouver, our ship docked at the same time as four other cruise ships into a city with taxis only enough for one ship of passengers. Mom refused to get into the wheelchair that was offered and would have allowed us a shortcut to the head of the line, so we waited in that taxi line for three hours, standing and pulling our luggage the entire time. When we finally got into a taxi, we soon realized that our hotel was only a few short blocks away. We could have easily walked there! Mom was unperturbed! We had a great few days in Vancouver before she flew home by herself. That was in May. In June, Mom had the stroke and fall that began the long decline of her final year of life.
Postscript:
I think, in the end, we gave Mom a proper farewell and one that would have pleased her. There were no ministers, no prayers or hymns since she had lost her faith over the years. We returned her ashes to her native soil in Hudson, that beloved town in Ohio where she grew up and where so many of our fondest childhood memories took place. In the sweet little chapel in the Markillie Cemetery, two sons, two daughters, and five granddaughters, spoke from the heart of their memories of Mom. Then we proceeded to the gravesite where the gravestone was already installed. In addition to the beautiful spray of white roses, eucalyptus, and hydrangea which we laid at the foot of the stone, we each laid a long-stemmed white rose over the buried ashes. When Barbara and I returned to the gravesite the next morning to say goodbye to Mom before leaving town, we found that the deer had eaten every single rose! Barbara was sure that Mom would have been most pleased with the visit of the deer. I hope so.
Janis
Many of my mother’s expressions stuck with me, here are three of them. They display her laconic wisdom and absurdist sense of humor and are enigmatic enough to sustain several interpretations simultaneously.
“Marry in haste, repent at leisure.”
Was she warning about the perils of being impulsive in love? Was it a general exhortation to be careful, like the rule “measure twice, cut once”? Or did she say it in rueful self-reflection?
“She who tooteth not her own horn, lo her horn is untooted.”
This wasn’t self-aggrandizing; she wasn’t someone to brag. Instead, I think she said this to urge her progeny to be self-confident.
“Save the Taj Mahal to visit later in life.”
This answered my question to her whether to pass through Agra on my way back from Nepal to the US. The immediate implication was that it was enough to get back safely with my sitar. But more generally it meant not to hurry – that life is long and one should save some adventures for when they might be more significant. I think the hallmark of all of these examples is that they all expressed vast wisdom and mischievous humor in the fewest words. In this she took after her father; a wise man of few well-chosen words.
James
I’m so glad we all made it here safely! No erupting volcanos, flash floods, rip tides, broken bones, or leeches on bottoms. I’m especially thrilled that all five of Mom’s granddaughters are here! You gals have been amazing — taking her on one of the biggest adventures of her life, and now gathering here to say goodbye. Mom would have been so touched.
So here we are in Hudson, the home of Mom’s incandescent childhood, a place that she returned to all her life — in person, in cherished memories, and now to rest.
She called Hudson the most beautiful town in Ohio, and she was boundlessly proud of her roots here. Although it turned out that none of her children shared her sense of rootedness, we did benefit from hers. I think the extraordinary courage she had, for her era, to explore the world as she did was due to the strengths and qualities she acquired here. She was fundamentally secure in her sense of self, and so she was able to embrace all kinds of opportunities that opened up to her and her family. That courage and love of life and adventure lasted a huge, long lifetime, in spite of all kinds of setbacks and heartache.
Mom’s best qualities are easily sourced. Her family’s two-acre garden and the woods where they had a cabin gave rise to Mom’s profound love of nature. With her mother, she loved reciting nursery rhymes and poetry, gaining a love of language. Her father’s wonderful library contributed to her intellectual curiosity and love of learning. Her first-grade friendships were so strong they remained close all their lifetimes, and she never had trouble making new ones. Having family friends who were farmers gave her a passion for farm-fresh food. Her parents’ worldwide travel surely gave her the idea she could explore it too. Likewise, her big, lively family led to her own abundance of children. Her beautiful home at 161 Aurora St. gave her an intuitive talent for interior design, and she created her own warm and wonderful homes over and over and over again.
I imagine the slow pace of life in Hudson taught her how to live in the moment. She looked deeply into flowers, lingeringly inhaling their scents, and she loved to learn all their names. She reveled in such things as the taste of sweetcorn, a beautifully ripe tomato, or maple syrup on a buckwheat pancake. She always made time to bask in the sun, shared her bread crumbs with birds, and exercised outside every day. She always made sure she had something (often a trip) to look forward to. She was a great listener, very forgiving, and filled with appreciation for all she’d been given in life. I’d say that Mom knew intuitively what psychologists and other scientists are proving with copious studies today — that contentedness, health, and longevity are seeded in gratitude, being present, strong social connections, awe in nature, a healthy diet, activity and movement, lifelong learning, loving-kindness, and gratitude. In the way she lived, she offered all of us a roadmap to contentment and a healthy, long life.
Barbara
I don’t know how old I was when I started to realize that my family was not like other families, that not everyone’s family competitively travels, among other things. I was probably in my teens but I am aware of consciously learning that at some point. Friends of mine would describe their grandmothers and they were always portraits of cuddly warm matriarchs who baked cookies and pies, they sent care packages and loving letters. They were portraits of unconditional love and self-sacrifice. My granny was not that. While I do believe that she loved us, her love took the form of engaging with us as individuals with our own unique interests and occupations. She taught me to play hearts and gin-rummy, she taught me to do ciphers, we painted together and did puzzles, she taught me the names and families of all the plants she knew (though admittedly I’ve forgotten most). It was quiet. We did not bake cookies. There was no cuddling. She had no toys at her house, no children’s books, I don’t think we ever watched tv there. Her one nod to cuteness and frivolity was her froggy mug which we always got to drink out of when we were at her house. She allowed us to play with her rock collection and mess around on her piano (but not too much). She was not effusive or emotional. I don’t think I ever saw her cry, there was a stoicism about her.
I don’t have many memories of her as a young child, probably in large part due to our geographic distance until I was 9 but also probably partly due to her lack of real interest and engagement with very young children. Now, as a mother of young children myself I find this pretty relatable. I do remember her coming on hikes with us in Australia, being the first of our group to try inner tubing somewhere in Canada. I also remember being convinced that she and Tina Turner were one and the same. My father is largely responsible for this, but it also probably had to do with some highly energetic performances of “Proud Mary” that I’d seen on tv. I would watch her music videos and performances mesmerized. The fact that I was convinced of their sameness says something about how I saw Granny: fit, energetic, proud, beautiful, daring, stylish and how with the distance my child’s mind filled in the blanks.
When we moved to California and were physically closer we spent more time with her. When I got my first pair of rollerblades she happened to be at our house and wanted to give them a try and she did, it wasn’t for long but she got a kick out of it and had a good laugh- she would have been roughly 74 at the time. I remember interviewing her for a school project when I was 10 and asking her what the greatest moment in her life was. I remember her saying “well I suppose I should say my wedding day or the day I gave birth to your father, but it was getting to 17,000 feet on Everest”. Granny was well aware of what was expected of her and how to conform to that expectation but also when and where she could break the rules in order to honor her own interests and desires. She was quiet and in my memory didn’t say much unless asked directly, but I remember her slightly mischievous sense of humor and her truly joyous and authentic laughter. She was competitive, her hiking, swimming, card playing, and country collecting attest to this.
I learned many things from my grandmother, many facts, many skills, and many life lessons. She taught me to develop my own intellectual pursuits; that it’s okay to be interested in whatever I’m interested in and that there’s no age limit on learning. She taught me to take risks within reason, that you can push the boundaries without being loud about it, you can push them while respecting them. That certain conventions were to be honored (table manners for example) but that others were meant to be ignored. She taught me to care for my physical body (it is no accident that she lived to 100) and find joy in what it can do; when I hiked the Inca trail at age 19 I got myself through the toughest part (a mere 14,000 ft) by telling myself that she had done this when she was 60 (it turns out that wasn’t quite the story but it got me through). Though there are probably moments when I wanted a more traditional, cuddly, cookie making, one-dimensional font of unconditional love. A “normal” granny. I am realizing now that perhaps the most important lesson I learned from her was one of nuance. Nothing and no one is just one thing. Through her life and her person she showed me that when life gives you challenges that you don’t necessarily want, it can be freeing. When people aren’t exactly who you wanted or expected them to be they still bring value to your life; sometimes more than you wanted or expected. That a person, a woman, a mother, a grandmother doesn’t have to fit neatly into that role in order to do it well, in order to have a fulfilling life. She showed me how to be a full multi-dimensional person with my own interests and desires, my own strengths and shortcomings regardless of my current role. Now, at a time in my life where I sometimes feel the roles and expectations placed on me are quite demanding and easy to get trapped in - where it is very easy to get caught up in being what a mother is, what a therapist is, what a wife is, and get trapped in any one of those identities, I am particularly grateful to granny for allowing herself to be herself and to show me how to do that.
Sarah
My whole adult life I have looked up to my grandmother as a role model of how to live a long, healthy, and fulfilled life. This was particularly crystalized for me when we went with her on her 90th birthday trip to Sicily with her five granddaughters, which by the way I am so glad we did because it is one of my very favorite memories. One of my most favorite things about that trip were the conversations we had with Grandma, particularly the ones every night when we would sit around the villa and ask Grandma questions about her life, which – thankfully -- Meg had had the foresight to record. And while I remember so much about those conversations, I recently relistened to the audio and was struck by what Grandma was doing in those conversations. She was telling us five girls the keys to a long and healthy life. So for the purposes of this little message, I have distilled them down to the five major keys that Grandma talked about.
1. Eat healthy. Grandma talked about how important it was to her to eat locally grown, fresh fruits and vegetables and how she would walk on a daily basis to the farmer’s market to buy her produce. She also said that even when you all lived abroad and it was difficult to find fresh food, she still made it a priority.
2. Be active. We asked Grandma what her proudest accomplishment was and she said that some of her top ones are her physical accomplishments. She talked about climbing Mt. Everest and her Colorado River trip and her master swimming class. She said that during the 11 years of that class, she swam 1100 miles in that pool and that at one point she was a nationally ranked swimmer for her age group. She also was featured in a newspaper article with the headline “Still Swimming at 65.” She said that she wasn’t necessarily the fastest swimmer, but she was known for her stamina and endurance – and I would say someone who lives to 100 is certainly known for that.
3. Be a lifelong learner. Grandma talked about how for years she took college courses at Sonoma State and loved learning about all sorts of interesting and varied subjects like Southern Literature, opera, famous law cases, Islamic Art, and geology.
4. Travel. Of course, this is something we all inherited from Grandma – that love of traveling to different places to experience different people, cultures, climates, terrains, but perhaps what resonated most for me when Grandma was talking about her travel experiences were her travel companions. When you are 90 years old, many of your contemporaries are no longer alive or are not able to travel like she was, but Grandma didn’t let that stop her. She befriended women 10, 15, and 20+ years younger than her to travel with. And I am sure she was quite a role model and mentor to them. She said that they were often amazed by her and what she could accomplish. So those intergenerational relationships I believe really helped keep her young.
5. Celebrate the milestones. We asked Grandma what were some of her favorite memories over her lifetime and she said many of them were the big birthday celebrations. She talked about her 70th birthday balloon trip over Napa Valley with Barbara and her 80th birthday dinner at Chez Panisse. And of course, the 90th birthday trip to Sicily with her five granddaughters. And I’m sure she would have included in that list her 100th birthday dinner. Having just celebrated my 50th birthday, I couldn’t agree with Grandma more. It’s so important to celebrate those major milestones in your life with the people you love. And so I intend to do that and to live by all of these keys so that one day I’ll be celebrating my 100th birthday and looking back fondly on my 90th birthday trip with my grandchildren. I also just want to say thank you Grandma for teaching me all of these wonderful life lessons.
Melissa
When we were in Sicily for Grandma’s 90th birthday, we asked her what was her greatest accomplishment. Most women of her generation would probably say, “oh my beautiful children, grandchildren and great grandchildren” - but not Grandma. She said her greatest accomplishment was hiking Everest, of course!
I laughed too when she said that at the time but I love it now. I appreciate her accomplishment all the more now having spent some time at altitude and having read her memoir about her Everest Trek - the 10-day climb to the base of Khumbu Glacier at 16,000 feet in the Everest region of the Himalaya mountains in May 1969 when she was 49, which is just about how old I am now.
I love how thrilled she was to make that trek. I love her independence - leaving Grandpa in Kathmandu to take the trip on her own, one of many she would of course take on her own in the years to follow. I love her confidence in her own hiking ability even though she had just simple walking shoes, not even hiking boots at that elevation! I love her determination to keep up with the young Swiss man Paul in the group and the comment in her memoir that she probably could’ve made it to Kalapattar with him, just another 2,000 ft of vert higher! And I love her subtle irritation with the Israeli ambassador’s plump wife Shoshana who she probably, secretly or not so secretly, blamed for holding her back.
I love her descriptions of the airstrip at Lukla, their Sherpa guide Ang, the Buddhist customs, the Namche Bazaar, and of course the majestic mountain views . In her words, “The grandeur of the 1250 miles of the Himalaya Range is indescribable, awe-inspiring.”
We know Grandma was a unique woman way ahead of her time, and we all have countless other examples of this, but for me, the joy and sense of adventure and self confidence that she felt on her Everest Trek truly captures her essence and what I find most inspiring about her. She liked to set goals for herself and took great joy in meeting them. What a beautiful life lesson for us all.
Thinking back on our trip to Sicily, there was this one afternoon I sat with Grandma in the main piazza in the ancient city of Cefalu - the other granddaughters had all made the climb up to the summit of the Rocca di Cefalu overlooking the while I stayed behind with Granny and we had gelato in the square - I remember she said to me, “you know, I could probably make it to the top too.”
Amanda
My Grandma Mary, who lived in at least a dozen countries (including the USSR in the 40s, Mexico and Nepal in the 60s, Bangladesh in the 70s), and visited many dozens more, was an icon of world travel. She was fiercely determined to see the world—the whole world—and she inspired her daughters and granddaughters, and hopefully her granddaughters’ daughters to do the same.
When Mary turned 90, over ten years ago, my sisters and (female) cousins and I hatched a plan to take her on a trip. Grandma loved the idea but she insisted that wherever we go, it must satisfy the dual criteria of being a place she hadn’t previously visited and a land mass with its own entry in the Century Club list. We settled on Sicily.
The day our many flights left the US, an ash cloud from the just-erupted Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull chased our various flight paths across the Atlantic, rerouting and dead-ending our itineraries well short of Palermo. Stranded and scattered across random locations in Europe, each of us schemed and maneuvered our way by road, rail, and puddle jumper to our intended destination. Grandma, who along with my cousins, had made it only as far as the Milan airport, embarked on a succession of narrowly missed Italian trains, hauling her own bag, all the way down to the tip of the boot and into Sicily, arriving just one day late. Once there, the six of us settled into a week of long lunches, seaside drives, and wildflower walks. We learned more about our grandmother and our family history those five days than we ever had and ever would.
I love this story because it embodies so much of what I love about world travel—the chaos and stamina, the high wire logistics, the best laid plans... all in search of something beautiful and unknown. But I also love this story because it embodies so much of what I love about my grandmother and the women in our family. We are a resourceful, determined, and deeply wanderlust bunch. My Grandma showed us that a woman could go anywhere she pleased, including by herself.
Mary died on August 15, 2020. She was 100 years old and she made it to 100 countries. She was a woman ahead of her time. Luckily, she lived long enough for the times to catch up with her.
Meghann