Dear friends,
My family joins me in sending our utmost gratitude and love to all of you for your condolences, your warm embraces, and your messages of understanding and compassion. My mom, my sweet, sweet mom, passed peacefully during the night in her own bed. I like to think that the last thing she saw was my Dad's photograph on her dresser. Her death was exactly what she always spoke of wanting and we are happy for her and horribly sad for ourselves.
Our family and friends have been completely amazing and rallied around us during this extremely difficult time. I want to especially thank my Uncle Richard, my mother's brother who
married my daughter and son in law just 4 months ago, and my brothers
in law, and most of all my husband, for taking charge of the situation
when we daughters were incapable of nothing more than tears.
Today we buried our mother in a soft October rain. On the day of my father's funeral, it also rained, and my mother wrote into the guestbook from the wake, "The Earth Wept"'
I will never be able to adequately describe the feeling that swelled within me when my mother's casket was carried into the church by my son, my nephews, my son in law, and my brother in law. As our entire family walked down the aisle of the church behind my mother, I was overwhelmed with the realization that she and my father were responsible for creating all of us and the connections that we shared with aunts and uncles and cousins and nieces and nephews and brothers and sisters who walked with us. It was just too bittersweet, to painfully joyful for my heart to bear.
I am sharing with you the eulogy that I wrote for my mom. My beautiful niece Laura read the remembrance for us at my mother's funeral Mass.
EULOGY FOR GRANDMA
The
passing of a mother at any age is not something that can be comprehended in a
day, or two, or three. A mother’s
passing is not a singular, isolated event, but a rolling percussion of thunder
and lightening that threatens to destroy that fragile roof over our heads that
we call “family”. The height of the storm will eventually pass, but the sound
and fury will echo through the hill and valleys of the rest of our lives. And
it will take the rest of our lives
to wrap our arms around her absence and enfold it into the smallest chamber of
our hearts.
For
our family, Marietta is the last link with the generation of women who wore hose,
white gloves, and pillbox hats whenever they left their house; who worked as
homemakers and made do on a dime; who scraped up the money to send their kids
to Catholic schools; and who remained faithfully married until death do they
part.
There
is no one left to tell us stories of living on Second Street, in the house
where she was born, where her grandmother made her own tomato paste on a screen
set in the sun, and where 3 generations lived on separate floors like a layer
cake filled with family. She took with her the stories of Uncle Baker and
Cousin Dolly, the cottage on Rocky Point, and the moving of the house on
Cleveland Court to make room for the construction of the New England Thruway.
She is the last one who understood how important it was to know that there are
THREE different recipes for the Taralla cookies, and of course, her’s was the
best.
She lived
her life by very simple rules and she demanded the same of her children and
grandchildren. She went to church every Sunday, even if on vacation. If weather
or illness kept her from church, she would not leave the house that day for any
reason. If you played cards or Scrabble with her then you best know all the
rules because she did not give any slack for age or ignorance.
The highlight of her week was her mah
jong game with Marianne, Ellie, and Lida. These ladies have played mah jong
once a week for 45 years. We always knew when it was her turn for mah jong
because she told us about it a week in advance, going through the list she had
in her head to vacuum, clean the bathroom, and to buy a piece of cake to serve.
She was very sad when the New Rochelle Women’s Club disbanded in the spring,
and she had framed a picture taken at the last luncheon of all the surviving
members.
Despite
her age, she read voraciously, learned how to download books from the library
onto her Kindle, sent us email reminders about family birthdays and
conversations with relatives, and played Words With Friends on her Ipad with
all her grandchildren. Just a few days before she died, she drove to Glen
Island because, as she said, she could not stand sitting in the house one more
day. On Friday, she went with Alicia to have her hair cut, to the grocery
store, and to the bank. She was fiercely independent, and would not even
discuss any other living arrangement than in her own apartment, surrounded by
all her “stuff”.
There is
no doubt that the single most important event in Marietta’s life was meeting
our Grandpa Bill, when they were both worked at Wares Department Store, the site
of the old Bloomingdales on Main Street. A few years older and a soldier
returning from the war, he scandalized our great grandmother, Mae, which we are
sure was part of the attraction. Despite Grandma Molea’s initial reaction, they
were married in 1946 and lived with Grandma’s family for 14 years before buying
their house on Claire Avenue.
They
loved to spend Sunday afternoons “taking a ride” and they thought nothing of
driving for a long weekend to Montreal or to Nova Scotia for a summer vacation.
They went to dinner dances, had monthly card games with their friends, and both
loved to read and play Scrabble. They took two trips to Italy with their
friends and Grandma fulfilled a lifelong wish to visit Sciacca, the town in
Sicily where her grandparents were born. She even found the very church where
her grandmother was baptized.
When our
grandfather passed away 22 years ago, they had been married 44 years. Since
then, our grandmother never stopped wearing her wedding rings or signing her name
was “Mrs. T. W. Benedetto”. She
has been waiting for these 22 years to be reunited with him and his picture has
remained on her dresser as the last thing she saw every night before she went
to sleep.
The
rings on Grandma’s fingers up to the day of her death are a symbol of the
greatest legacy that she left for her family. Their marriage was the model for
her daughters that marriage is love and hard work and happiness and tears, and
above all, forever. Their parenting was the role model for us that parents set
rules and enforce them and that parents love you and deserve your love and
respect.
This
legacy was only possible through their great faith in God. They both believed
that they would be reunited and spend their lives together in eternity. When my
grandfather was diagnosed with cancer and died within only 3 months, neither of
them ever expressed a doubt in their faith in God or accused God of abandoning
them. Both were
steadfast in their belief that God would support them in their trials; that He
would give them solace in their sorrows; and reward them in the next life.
After she died, we found on her dresser
a little box that held a tiny wooden rosary. Under the rosary was a yellow
post-it note on which she had written,
“Rosary that we bought in Assisi that Daddy held in his hand when he was
dying.” We’ve placed that with her so that she may have it with her for
eternity.
We are
quite sure that God has lifted her up in the palm of His hand and that she is
dancing on the face of the moon with Grandpa, listening to Frank Sinatra
without her hearing aids, and surrounded by all the family that she missed so
greatly. We cannot express in any greater way our love for her than to say that
we pray that the Holy Spirit raise up in us the great faith that our
grandparents had that we will all meet again. We ask that God support us as he
did Marietta and Bill with strength to face this life without her presence as
mother, grandmother, sister, aunt, cousin, and friend.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rest in peace, my sweet, smart, loving, knowledgeable, curious, strict, and courageous mom. I dread tomorrow more than I dreaded today. Because tomorrow, we begin our lives without you.