Eulogy for my mother

In the last week, I have attended funerals for the mothers of three good friends. Their pain at losing their mothers has brought back the sadness—always close to the surface—that I feel about losing my own mom two years ago.

So I thought I'd post the eulogy I gave at Mom's funeral. I don't have any photos of the mass, but suffice it say there were as many priests there as at any Kennedy funeral.

Eulogy for Marjorie Anna Brehm Lamb, March 2008

When I think of my mom, what always comes to mind first is her abiding and genuine kindness. She never gossiped about people, and always gave even the nastiest person the benefit of the doubt. “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all,” was her personal mantra as well as her frequent gentle reminder to my own acid-tongued younger self.

At a party, she would always talk with the most socially awkward person in the room, asking him so many questions about himself that he would soon forget to be shy. She taught us that manners were not so much about etiquette but about making others feel welcome and wanted.

Although Mom was herself a socially gifted introvert who preferred to stay home with a good book, she entertained frequently. To her entertaining was a kind of service, a way of including people and folding them into our family and home. Because we never lived near our own relatives, Mom was especially sensitive that on holidays her friends shouldn’t be alone, and thus we never quite knew who would be there at Thanksgiving dinner.

Through the years she hosted numerous staff receptions and dinners, book clubs, high school cast parties, graduation fetes, Xmas eve masses, and more wedding receptions than she actually had daughters.

Mom and Dad also took in friends of ours, sometimes for entire summers, and our friends were always welcome for dinner or our regular Sunday morning pancake breakfasts. All of our friends loved to spend time at our house, basking in Mom’s warmth and rapt attention. On one memorable occasion, she braved my student slum house off Regent Street, racing between two kitchens on two floors as she helped me and six roommates cook a Chinese banquet. Needless to say my roommates, like everyone else who met her, adored her.

But it wasn’t just her own family and friendship circle that enjoyed Mom’s kindness. She was an inveterate volunteer, serving as a religious education teacher, a church secretary, a meal server, a food pantry staffer, and much more. She was never a social volunteer, organizing pretty receptions and fundraisers, but instead she toiled behind the scenes, directly serving people, willing to literally get her hands dirty to help the homeless and hungry of Madison.

What else was my wonderful mother, Marjorie Anna Brehm Lamb? She was a gourmet cook and baker, an inveterate reader, an art lover, a world traveler, a top-notch tennis player, an avid walker, and a first-rate grandmother. She was an Iowa farm girl without a snobbish bone in her body. She was a feminist before her time and utterly without vanity, qualities that made her a great model for her three daughters. She was a devoted liberal Catholic who walked her talk. She couldn’t sing or tell jokes, but she enjoyed—or at least tolerated—the musical and comedy stylings of other family members.

She knew Latin and she knew crops. She remembered Catholic feast days and the birthdays of every grandchild and friend. She was a 30-year breast cancer survivor who heroically battled numerous other health problems over the years without complaint.

She was a mother who had infinite patience for and great interest in her children, and the sensitivity to let us be who we truly were. She taught me to love language, and encouraged me to pursue a career in journalism that I have enjoyed for 30 years.

I was well into my twenties before I understood what an extraordinary mother I had, and how lucky I was to have her. I’m glad her suffering is over, but I will miss her kind and loving spirit more than I can say.