On my mom

 

My mom, Annie O'Connell, and me 

My mom died a week ago today. 

Here's what I said yesterday at her funeral.

Mom often reminded us that her nickname in high school was “Mouse.” A good student who was president of the Future Homemakers of America, who was a member of 4-H, and who sang in the school choir, Mom was such a good girl that when her guidance counselor told her she wouldn’t be happy in the big city at art school, she instead went to SUNY Oneonta and majored in elementary education.

When Mom married Dad after college and joined him at Sheppard Field in Wichita Falls, Texas, it was their apartment that became the hang-out for many of my dad’s colleagues, and that continued when Dad was moved to Hanscom Air Force Base here in Massachusetts. Mom included people; she made them welcome.

So much of what Mom did was about making sure people knew they belonged. Many of my sister Kelly’s and my friends have shared memories these past few days of coming with us to the fireworks, to the Big E, to our grandparents’ farm, to Easter dinner (or in the case of some of my college friends, to those early Easter breakfast setups), to a cookout, or to swim. Mom made circles bigger, whether at school or church or family. 

There are, I know, many here who have stashed away handmade baby clothes from Mom. There was no baby in my mom’s circle who wasn’t welcomed with something made just for them. 

And Mom loved her grandchildren; she was never happier than when she was surrounded by all eight of them, nearly all of them already taller than she, as she’d proudly tell you. She was very proud of each of you, and I hope you always know that.

When I was in elementary school, McDonald’s stopped serving root beer. When I complained to Mom about how they had stopped serving the soda I liked, she told me to “complain to someone who can do something about it.” While my letter to McDonald’s headquarters got me coupons, and not a restored root beer, her direction has, as may be clear, stayed with me. 

To Mom’s credit, when I took her advice and applied it to things like city panhandling regulation and state education policy, she never took it back.

Mom was never satisfied with simply accepting things as they were if they could be better for other people. The list of Mom simply making things happen is lifelong: Kelly’s preschool, the Sterling Education Association road race, interim Christian education director, fellowship chair, Flowers by Ann, Haven of Hope…Mom was not one to see a need and let it be. 

And from being “Mouse,” Mom became someone who asked local businesses to support a road race for the local school district, asked people to teach Sunday school, organized shared meals around common tables, ran a business that brought beauty to celebrations and times of mourning, and wrote to strangers facing cancer, all so that people would be less alone. 

This past weekend, when we were watching the invasion of Ukraine, facing the continued toll of the pandemic, and seeing so much of the continued wearying injustice of the world, I read something online about how so much injustice is interconnected, and that the good news was, then, that by unraveling our own little corner of it, we each are helping to unravel it all. Or as the Mishnah has it “It is not your responsibility to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.”

Mom didn’t desist from her work until the end; she was still spinning her proverbial distaff, sending notes for others suffering from cancer, until very recently. 

To do justly

To love mercy

To walk humbly with our God.

Micah 6:8