4.14.2008
This is the tribute I read for my mother last week at the funeral...
When I sat down to write this tribute my mind became overwhelmed with memories. I let myself become frantic with worry that I'd leave something out, that I wouldn't quite capture who my mother was to me and my sisters, and to each one of you here today. I wanted to find a way to illustrate just how wickedly funny she could be, how her commentary about life, about people, was often dead-on and eerily accurate. I wanted to let you all know just how much my sisters and I loved her, how much she meant to her grandchildren, to her partner, Lawrence, my granddaddy, her brothers, sister and friends, and just how much we would all miss her.
I woke up with stories, went to bed with stories, walked around thinking of stories, I'd chose one, discard another, but within all this shifting and changing one thing remained consistent. Ten years ago, my sisters and I buried our father. Today is infinitely harder than that. Not because we loved our father any less but because after his death we came to understand the true meaning of loss.
My sisters and I will have to figure out how to move forward from here, without our mother. When our father died, we had her by our side to help us navigate the murky waters of grief, we still have her - we understand that - in the lessons she taught us, in the examples she set, but just last week we also had her touch, the sound of her voice, her smile, her laugh.
This week we inherited the words "never again". Never again will we get to spend an entire weekend "tripping in and out of stores" as she called it, buying things we didn't need but enjoyed anyway, never again will we be able to call her with an exciting piece of news, or a story that makes her laugh, never again will we be able to walk through her front door and cry on her shoulder until whatever weight we carried became light enough so that we could walk back out into the world again.
The other day I woke up in a panic when I couldn't recall her voice. Then I spent the afternoon with Simone, her oldest granddaughter, and as she told me a story and I listened, I thought, "Oh, there it is. There’s her voice". That revelation allowed me to open my eyes and remember that Samariah has her sense of humor and that same ability to size people up in an instant. And Santana has my mother's big, generous heart and her healing hugs. Sweet Lisa, my sister, inherited her compassion and the same intangible gift of making you feel better just by being in her presence. Nichelia looks like my mother, and my grandmother, more so than any of us, and she's also an amazingly, present, and natural mother. And you can look right at Nichelin, to see, my mother's smile. It lives right there on her face whenever any of us need to see it, and she - like my mother - can always make a new friend.
And each of you here today has her story. We all have her stories. Some of you have shared them this week through phone calls and letters. We appreciate every one of them. Some we'd heard before, some we hadn't, some made us laugh, some made us cry, but they all brought her full force back into the room, made her breath again for the space of time it took for the story to be told.
I've made my living as a writer and now my most important job is to keep her story alive. These won't be the tales that pay my bills and support my family, these will be the ones that keep all of our hearts wide open, put smiles on our faces, and keep her here with us until the very end. These will be the most important stories I ever tell so that my mother walks out of here with you today, and continues to march at the side of each one of us.
A good friend once heard someone say that losing a mother was like an astronaut being cut lose from the mothership, floating in space without an anchor, weightless, tied to nothing. Lost. I am going to try and fight that. We’re all going to fight that by remaining just as important to each other as we were when she was alive. My sisters and I will be anchors for one another. That's how she'll remain alive for us, that's how we'll face life without her here in the way we've grown to know, that's how we'll honor her, when we continue to love each other the way she loved each one of us.
I started out this week focusing on everything that we'd lost, on the pain, the incredible breathtaking grief, and if I'm honest - the profound anger - and then I remembered something that happened when this illness first took hold. Lisa was sitting alone with my mother at the hospital when she woke up suddenly from a sound sleep. She was half-conscious when she began to look around the room for something that she wanted. She found them there in mid-air. A pair of scissors, a tool of the trade that had sustained her throughout life. Lisa watched as she began to hum to herself, and cut an imaginary pattern out of thin air. My sweet sister had the presence of mind to allow the scene to play out without interference. My mother continued sewing, running the fabric through the machine, taking out a stitch, looking it over until finally she seemed satisfied with her creation. Lisa asked her softly, "What you doing, mama?” and she answered "making something". Lisa asked her what she was sewing and she responded, "something for my heart. It's broken."
Well, so is ours. My beautiful mama is gone.
You'll hear a lot of stories this afternoon, some true, some embellished for dramatic effect but if you hear nothing else today, hear this, this woman, Judy Tramble, was the absolute love of our lives. We will miss her every moment that we breath, but we will make sure with your help that she continues to live. Forever.
Thank you for coming.
When I sat down to write this tribute my mind became overwhelmed with memories. I let myself become frantic with worry that I'd leave something out, that I wouldn't quite capture who my mother was to me and my sisters, and to each one of you here today. I wanted to find a way to illustrate just how wickedly funny she could be, how her commentary about life, about people, was often dead-on and eerily accurate. I wanted to let you all know just how much my sisters and I loved her, how much she meant to her grandchildren, to her partner, Lawrence, my granddaddy, her brothers, sister and friends, and just how much we would all miss her.
I woke up with stories, went to bed with stories, walked around thinking of stories, I'd chose one, discard another, but within all this shifting and changing one thing remained consistent. Ten years ago, my sisters and I buried our father. Today is infinitely harder than that. Not because we loved our father any less but because after his death we came to understand the true meaning of loss.
My sisters and I will have to figure out how to move forward from here, without our mother. When our father died, we had her by our side to help us navigate the murky waters of grief, we still have her - we understand that - in the lessons she taught us, in the examples she set, but just last week we also had her touch, the sound of her voice, her smile, her laugh.
This week we inherited the words "never again". Never again will we get to spend an entire weekend "tripping in and out of stores" as she called it, buying things we didn't need but enjoyed anyway, never again will we be able to call her with an exciting piece of news, or a story that makes her laugh, never again will we be able to walk through her front door and cry on her shoulder until whatever weight we carried became light enough so that we could walk back out into the world again.
The other day I woke up in a panic when I couldn't recall her voice. Then I spent the afternoon with Simone, her oldest granddaughter, and as she told me a story and I listened, I thought, "Oh, there it is. There’s her voice". That revelation allowed me to open my eyes and remember that Samariah has her sense of humor and that same ability to size people up in an instant. And Santana has my mother's big, generous heart and her healing hugs. Sweet Lisa, my sister, inherited her compassion and the same intangible gift of making you feel better just by being in her presence. Nichelia looks like my mother, and my grandmother, more so than any of us, and she's also an amazingly, present, and natural mother. And you can look right at Nichelin, to see, my mother's smile. It lives right there on her face whenever any of us need to see it, and she - like my mother - can always make a new friend.
And each of you here today has her story. We all have her stories. Some of you have shared them this week through phone calls and letters. We appreciate every one of them. Some we'd heard before, some we hadn't, some made us laugh, some made us cry, but they all brought her full force back into the room, made her breath again for the space of time it took for the story to be told.
I've made my living as a writer and now my most important job is to keep her story alive. These won't be the tales that pay my bills and support my family, these will be the ones that keep all of our hearts wide open, put smiles on our faces, and keep her here with us until the very end. These will be the most important stories I ever tell so that my mother walks out of here with you today, and continues to march at the side of each one of us.
A good friend once heard someone say that losing a mother was like an astronaut being cut lose from the mothership, floating in space without an anchor, weightless, tied to nothing. Lost. I am going to try and fight that. We’re all going to fight that by remaining just as important to each other as we were when she was alive. My sisters and I will be anchors for one another. That's how she'll remain alive for us, that's how we'll face life without her here in the way we've grown to know, that's how we'll honor her, when we continue to love each other the way she loved each one of us.
I started out this week focusing on everything that we'd lost, on the pain, the incredible breathtaking grief, and if I'm honest - the profound anger - and then I remembered something that happened when this illness first took hold. Lisa was sitting alone with my mother at the hospital when she woke up suddenly from a sound sleep. She was half-conscious when she began to look around the room for something that she wanted. She found them there in mid-air. A pair of scissors, a tool of the trade that had sustained her throughout life. Lisa watched as she began to hum to herself, and cut an imaginary pattern out of thin air. My sweet sister had the presence of mind to allow the scene to play out without interference. My mother continued sewing, running the fabric through the machine, taking out a stitch, looking it over until finally she seemed satisfied with her creation. Lisa asked her softly, "What you doing, mama?” and she answered "making something". Lisa asked her what she was sewing and she responded, "something for my heart. It's broken."
Well, so is ours. My beautiful mama is gone.
You'll hear a lot of stories this afternoon, some true, some embellished for dramatic effect but if you hear nothing else today, hear this, this woman, Judy Tramble, was the absolute love of our lives. We will miss her every moment that we breath, but we will make sure with your help that she continues to live. Forever.
Thank you for coming.
Labels: Family, My Mother, Tributes
