Eulogy for Mother :: Eulogies Eulogy

Eulogy for commenceThe Cost Death is not also high a price to buy off for having lived. Mountains never die, nor do the seas or rocks or endless sky. Through countless centuries of time, they stay eternal, deathless. Yet they never live If choice were there, I would not waver to choose mortality. Whatever Fate demanded in return for life Id give, for never to have seen the fertile plains nor heard the winds nor felt the warm sun on sands beneath a salty sea, not touched the hands of those I love without these, all the gains of timelessness would not be charge a day of living and of loving come what may. - Dorothy N. Monroe - It is hard to give a eulogy for ones parent. More than the death of a schoolmate or sibling, the death of a parent is not only a loss, but also a reminder that we are all following an inescapable path. We are all Outrunning Our Shadow as her friend Fred Hill so provocatively titled his book. As Dorothy N. Monroes poem, printed in your program, says Death is not too high a price to pay for having lived. When my father died, I was too young to participate in a meaningful way, so at roughly level this is my eulogy for him, too. Mother was born on November 7, 1917 in Louisville. Her mother was an unmarried 17-year-old and Mom was put up for adoption. That may be a surprisal to you. It was a surprise to me when I learned about it as an adult. As an infant Mom was adopted by Clyde and Maude Johnson, who named her Doris Eileen. When Mom was about ten Clyde tumble-down his family, and she and her mother moved in with Maudes sister in the Port Fulton neighborhood of Jeffersonville. My Unc and Aunt Smith became Moms surrogate parents, and she lived with them until she married. A few years later Maude was institutionalize at Craigmont, where she lived for the rest of her life. There is a third marker on the cemetery lot where Mom and Dad are buried for our Grandmother Maude Johnson. Mother never talked much about this or other aspects of he r life. Nor did she want to know the details of others lives. She practiced Dont Ask, Dont Tell long before it became a catch phrase.