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ciroccojI think I'll be updating sporadically as I try to process the whole funeral experience. The bare bones of it is that it involved a lot of smiling and nodding and hugging and thanking, and some crying, and endless reams of people I mostly didn't know (a lot more than I expected, too), and being on the spot for most of the night as one of the two main mourners, all of which sounds awful.
And it was, in a way. But it was also tremendously healing, and I don't really know why yet. Other than the usual trite platitudes like "it's a rite of passage" and "the community coming together helps the process of grief" and "rituals provide comfort" and all of that stuff that you could probably find in any two-page funeral home pamphlet called Mourning and You.
Probably because they're all true, to a certain extent. And there's a reason why we have these rather morbid things called funerals, other than blind masochism. Because they do help.
Anyway. For anyone interested, here's the
(BTW, Chris' parts are in bold, mine in regular. More or less.)
When I first met Julia, we didn't hit it off well... OK, she didn't much like me (I have that effect on many people). She didn't think I was a good match for her daughter, and didn't really approve of our relationship. Many people can hold an opinion like that for years, but it has really impressed me how Julia has, completely and without reservation, opened her heart and her home to me, treated me like a son, and never once made me feel unwelcome in her family. She was a rare and joyous lady, and I am honoured to read her eulogy today. Jimena wrote this, but knew she'd weep too much to give Julia the tribute she deserves, so please imagine Jimena's reading it.
Julia Neale was born in Chile, the youngest of three daughters born to Alberto Neale and Adela Sepulveda. She and her sisters Dory and Mary were still fairly young when they lost both of their parents. She went to university and met Jaime Bordes. She became a child psychologist and he a pilot, they got married, and had one daughter, Jimena. They left Chile in the early seventies, lived in Morocco for a while, and eventually settled in Canada.
In fact, her entire immediate family left Chile; Julia ended up in Ottawa, Dory and her husband George in LA, Mary and her husband Hans and their children Ingrid and Hans Albert in Germany. Julia and Jamie divorced around 1986 – although actually it's hard to tell exactly when they divorced, because what with Chile's divorce laws being somewhat quaint and convoluted, for all we know, they may still be married there to this day. In any case, Julia stayed in Ottawa. Since Julia's qualifications as a child psychologist were not recognized in Canada, she went to work at Wardair as ticketing agent, and stayed through its change to Canadian Airlines and Air Canada while her daughter went to university, married and had two children, moved around some, then moved back to Ottawa to be with her mom. Julia worked at Air Canada until her illness forced her to take a leave of absence.
That's her life in a nutshell, and doesn't do her justice.
I've tried to think about what defined my mom, made her unique. What people would probably remember the most about her.
There's something that kept coming up this week, as I heard from my mother's friends and family expressing their condolences. When I was young, my mother told me once that she wanted to always be thought of as a lady. Which seemed kind of silly at first, and brought forth images of Scarlett O'Hara and corsets and all of that. But that wasn't what she meant, obviously. Her idea of a lady was of a woman who acted with courtesy, discretion, kindness and generosity, and carried herself with dignity and grace.
And over and over again in the last few days I've been told, "Your mother will really be missed. She was a real lady."
It made me smile to hear that. Helped to make her loss more bearable, to know that she had left the impression that she so wanted to leave. That her efforts to keep to a code of conduct that we don't seem to value much these days were noticed and appreciated.
Of course, there's more to a person than how she presents herself to others. There will be many other things that we'll remember about her, besides her attitude towards manners and courtesy.
She loved to cook, embroider, and keep a clean and beautiful home. Martha Stewart could've taken lessons from her – especially since I don't think being a lady involves committing perjury. Just about anybody who was ever invited to Julia's home for dinner could probably tell you stories about stuffed quails or beautifully presented salads or tables adorned with lovely bouquets and napkins folded as though you were in a restaurant. And it's possible that every child who was born in the last twenty years that she had any connection with eventually got an embroidered pillow from her. Beautiful things that she made with love and care. As her grandson Daniel said when he was two and got his embroidered pillow from her, "I want to sleep with my pillow that Luli made. It's like sleeping with Luli."
She loved gardening, especially loved herbs that she used in her cooking and flowers that she used to cheer up her home. The many flowers we see here today would have made her so happy. When Guy and I were planning her funeral, there were many things that we didn't think would've mattered much to her – monuments, that kind of thing – but when it came time to think about flowers, we knew she would have wanted lots and lots.
I don't know what drew her to flowers so much – they're not really my thing, so I was often puzzled by the many, many photographs she took of them. Every year, she'd go down to the Tulip Festival and take endless rolls of pictures of them. I often wondered what the attraction was. They're just flowers. What's the big deal?
But one day it came to me that what she was doing was expressing a special kind of creativity, without actually being aware of it. She had always said that she and her sister Mary were not "creative" – they were "copy"-ative. Others created works of art (embroidery patterns, lavish recipes, etc) and she and Mary just copied them. And yet, the pictures of flowers… there are people who make a living doing that kind of thing. There are postcards, calendars, posters of flowers, all sorts of things made by creative photographers. And I found hers just as breathtaking as theirs – more so because I knew that for her it was only a labour of love, not to make a living or to do anything other than celebrate beauty and share it with others.
That was another thing she loved to do – share with others. Although she'd made her home in Ottawa, she stayed very close to much of her family and friends in Chile, visited them often, and often sent money or clothing or other practical things there, knowing that in Chile most people don't have the kind of easy access to material wealth that we enjoy here. To her, money was something that enabled her to share more, and help her friends and family. I can't even count the number of wonderful gifts that we got from her, simply because she wanted to make us happy and give us what we couldn't afford to get for ourselves.
And her generosity didn't just include money and material gifts. It also included her time and energy and love. For example, she and my father were divorced, and yet she was always concerned about him, willing to do all sorts of favours for him. It's a rare person, I think, who not only stays in contact with her ex-spouse, but offers to host her ex-spouses children and even his current wife as a favour to him. And not only to host them, but enjoy their presence, and make them feel welcome and loved.
It seems only natural that we would all return the favour. In the last few months of her life, so many of her family and friends come to see her, to visit with her and to say their goodbyes. People came from as far away as Germany, Chile, and Asia, just to give her back some of what she'd given so many of us. And at the very end, she was surrounded by those she loved. She died with four people who loved her holding her hands, and three more just outside the room.
For me, one of the greatest examples of my mother's generosity was her love for children – hers as well as anybody else's. She could see kids for what they were, with all of their faults and annoyances, and still love them unconditionally. She knew that her grandson Daniel could be difficult, knew that her grandson Justin could be destructive, and didn't care. She still celebrated their strengths – Daniel's curiosity and intelligence, Justin's loving nature and energy. They are so unlike her, so contradictory to so many things she thought of as important. Neither one is a reserved, polite little gentleman. But she dealt with that far better than I did, even when they disturbed her perfect home. One of her favourite stories about Daniel for a long time was that Daniel had once told her, "Luli, when you drop something into the heating vent, it goes aaaaaall the way down!" And she laughed about it, told the story to all of her friends, and didn't really worry about what it was, exactly, that had gone aaaaall the way down. (By the way, we think it was a miniature babushka).
When we found out we couldn't have any more kids, part of me thought she might breathe a sigh of relief that we weren't going to bring any more little hooligans to wreck her lovely home. But instead, when I told her, she hugged me and tried to comfort me, and commented sadly, "Oh, that's too bad… so you're going to end up with only two little savages." And the way she said that, like being a little savage was an endearing and wonderful thing to be... I should have known she would say that.
She just loved being around young people – crying babies, whiny toddlers, destructive kids, self-involved teenagers, naïvely crusading young adults… she saw all the negatives, but chose to focus on the positives instead. The wonder of a baby discovering sights and sounds all around her. A toddler exerting his personality. A child becoming independent. A teenager inventing herself. A young adult ready to take on the world and leave it a better place than it was before him. All of that was worth celebrating, to her.
No summary of my mother's life would be complete without mentioning Guy. Everybody who loved my mother, loved him, at least in part because of how happy she was with him. The last few days, one of the first things almost everybody has asked after expressing their sympathy to us is, "How's Guy?"
His patience, good humour, and kindness towards various members of her family were remarkable. And his love and care for her during her illness were wonderful to see. He made her last months as bearable as they could be, and was by her side until the very end.
My mother told me when she first got sick that if she died, she wanted Guy to stay in their house as long as he wished – the house may have been hers when they began dating, but it had become his too over the years, as both of them had poured their energy and love into it and made it beautiful. I hope he never decides to leave, because although we've lost her, there's still part of her that lives on in Guy. Guy, I know you have lots of family in Thurso, and I know how much you love them and they love you. But please don't forget, you have family here in Ottawa as well.
How can I express, with mere words, the life this lady had, the love she had for those she knew, the difference she made on this earth? How can I express the love we all have for her? I cannot. We've worked on this to the best of our abilities, and it stands pale next to her gift of love to all of us. I love you, mami. I love you, too, Luli, as do we all.
And it was, in a way. But it was also tremendously healing, and I don't really know why yet. Other than the usual trite platitudes like "it's a rite of passage" and "the community coming together helps the process of grief" and "rituals provide comfort" and all of that stuff that you could probably find in any two-page funeral home pamphlet called Mourning and You.
Probably because they're all true, to a certain extent. And there's a reason why we have these rather morbid things called funerals, other than blind masochism. Because they do help.
Anyway. For anyone interested, here's the
(BTW, Chris' parts are in bold, mine in regular. More or less.)
When I first met Julia, we didn't hit it off well... OK, she didn't much like me (I have that effect on many people). She didn't think I was a good match for her daughter, and didn't really approve of our relationship. Many people can hold an opinion like that for years, but it has really impressed me how Julia has, completely and without reservation, opened her heart and her home to me, treated me like a son, and never once made me feel unwelcome in her family. She was a rare and joyous lady, and I am honoured to read her eulogy today. Jimena wrote this, but knew she'd weep too much to give Julia the tribute she deserves, so please imagine Jimena's reading it.
Julia Neale was born in Chile, the youngest of three daughters born to Alberto Neale and Adela Sepulveda. She and her sisters Dory and Mary were still fairly young when they lost both of their parents. She went to university and met Jaime Bordes. She became a child psychologist and he a pilot, they got married, and had one daughter, Jimena. They left Chile in the early seventies, lived in Morocco for a while, and eventually settled in Canada.
In fact, her entire immediate family left Chile; Julia ended up in Ottawa, Dory and her husband George in LA, Mary and her husband Hans and their children Ingrid and Hans Albert in Germany. Julia and Jamie divorced around 1986 – although actually it's hard to tell exactly when they divorced, because what with Chile's divorce laws being somewhat quaint and convoluted, for all we know, they may still be married there to this day. In any case, Julia stayed in Ottawa. Since Julia's qualifications as a child psychologist were not recognized in Canada, she went to work at Wardair as ticketing agent, and stayed through its change to Canadian Airlines and Air Canada while her daughter went to university, married and had two children, moved around some, then moved back to Ottawa to be with her mom. Julia worked at Air Canada until her illness forced her to take a leave of absence.
That's her life in a nutshell, and doesn't do her justice.
I've tried to think about what defined my mom, made her unique. What people would probably remember the most about her.
There's something that kept coming up this week, as I heard from my mother's friends and family expressing their condolences. When I was young, my mother told me once that she wanted to always be thought of as a lady. Which seemed kind of silly at first, and brought forth images of Scarlett O'Hara and corsets and all of that. But that wasn't what she meant, obviously. Her idea of a lady was of a woman who acted with courtesy, discretion, kindness and generosity, and carried herself with dignity and grace.
And over and over again in the last few days I've been told, "Your mother will really be missed. She was a real lady."
It made me smile to hear that. Helped to make her loss more bearable, to know that she had left the impression that she so wanted to leave. That her efforts to keep to a code of conduct that we don't seem to value much these days were noticed and appreciated.
Of course, there's more to a person than how she presents herself to others. There will be many other things that we'll remember about her, besides her attitude towards manners and courtesy.
She loved to cook, embroider, and keep a clean and beautiful home. Martha Stewart could've taken lessons from her – especially since I don't think being a lady involves committing perjury. Just about anybody who was ever invited to Julia's home for dinner could probably tell you stories about stuffed quails or beautifully presented salads or tables adorned with lovely bouquets and napkins folded as though you were in a restaurant. And it's possible that every child who was born in the last twenty years that she had any connection with eventually got an embroidered pillow from her. Beautiful things that she made with love and care. As her grandson Daniel said when he was two and got his embroidered pillow from her, "I want to sleep with my pillow that Luli made. It's like sleeping with Luli."
She loved gardening, especially loved herbs that she used in her cooking and flowers that she used to cheer up her home. The many flowers we see here today would have made her so happy. When Guy and I were planning her funeral, there were many things that we didn't think would've mattered much to her – monuments, that kind of thing – but when it came time to think about flowers, we knew she would have wanted lots and lots.
I don't know what drew her to flowers so much – they're not really my thing, so I was often puzzled by the many, many photographs she took of them. Every year, she'd go down to the Tulip Festival and take endless rolls of pictures of them. I often wondered what the attraction was. They're just flowers. What's the big deal?
But one day it came to me that what she was doing was expressing a special kind of creativity, without actually being aware of it. She had always said that she and her sister Mary were not "creative" – they were "copy"-ative. Others created works of art (embroidery patterns, lavish recipes, etc) and she and Mary just copied them. And yet, the pictures of flowers… there are people who make a living doing that kind of thing. There are postcards, calendars, posters of flowers, all sorts of things made by creative photographers. And I found hers just as breathtaking as theirs – more so because I knew that for her it was only a labour of love, not to make a living or to do anything other than celebrate beauty and share it with others.
That was another thing she loved to do – share with others. Although she'd made her home in Ottawa, she stayed very close to much of her family and friends in Chile, visited them often, and often sent money or clothing or other practical things there, knowing that in Chile most people don't have the kind of easy access to material wealth that we enjoy here. To her, money was something that enabled her to share more, and help her friends and family. I can't even count the number of wonderful gifts that we got from her, simply because she wanted to make us happy and give us what we couldn't afford to get for ourselves.
And her generosity didn't just include money and material gifts. It also included her time and energy and love. For example, she and my father were divorced, and yet she was always concerned about him, willing to do all sorts of favours for him. It's a rare person, I think, who not only stays in contact with her ex-spouse, but offers to host her ex-spouses children and even his current wife as a favour to him. And not only to host them, but enjoy their presence, and make them feel welcome and loved.
It seems only natural that we would all return the favour. In the last few months of her life, so many of her family and friends come to see her, to visit with her and to say their goodbyes. People came from as far away as Germany, Chile, and Asia, just to give her back some of what she'd given so many of us. And at the very end, she was surrounded by those she loved. She died with four people who loved her holding her hands, and three more just outside the room.
For me, one of the greatest examples of my mother's generosity was her love for children – hers as well as anybody else's. She could see kids for what they were, with all of their faults and annoyances, and still love them unconditionally. She knew that her grandson Daniel could be difficult, knew that her grandson Justin could be destructive, and didn't care. She still celebrated their strengths – Daniel's curiosity and intelligence, Justin's loving nature and energy. They are so unlike her, so contradictory to so many things she thought of as important. Neither one is a reserved, polite little gentleman. But she dealt with that far better than I did, even when they disturbed her perfect home. One of her favourite stories about Daniel for a long time was that Daniel had once told her, "Luli, when you drop something into the heating vent, it goes aaaaaall the way down!" And she laughed about it, told the story to all of her friends, and didn't really worry about what it was, exactly, that had gone aaaaall the way down. (By the way, we think it was a miniature babushka).
When we found out we couldn't have any more kids, part of me thought she might breathe a sigh of relief that we weren't going to bring any more little hooligans to wreck her lovely home. But instead, when I told her, she hugged me and tried to comfort me, and commented sadly, "Oh, that's too bad… so you're going to end up with only two little savages." And the way she said that, like being a little savage was an endearing and wonderful thing to be... I should have known she would say that.
She just loved being around young people – crying babies, whiny toddlers, destructive kids, self-involved teenagers, naïvely crusading young adults… she saw all the negatives, but chose to focus on the positives instead. The wonder of a baby discovering sights and sounds all around her. A toddler exerting his personality. A child becoming independent. A teenager inventing herself. A young adult ready to take on the world and leave it a better place than it was before him. All of that was worth celebrating, to her.
No summary of my mother's life would be complete without mentioning Guy. Everybody who loved my mother, loved him, at least in part because of how happy she was with him. The last few days, one of the first things almost everybody has asked after expressing their sympathy to us is, "How's Guy?"
His patience, good humour, and kindness towards various members of her family were remarkable. And his love and care for her during her illness were wonderful to see. He made her last months as bearable as they could be, and was by her side until the very end.
My mother told me when she first got sick that if she died, she wanted Guy to stay in their house as long as he wished – the house may have been hers when they began dating, but it had become his too over the years, as both of them had poured their energy and love into it and made it beautiful. I hope he never decides to leave, because although we've lost her, there's still part of her that lives on in Guy. Guy, I know you have lots of family in Thurso, and I know how much you love them and they love you. But please don't forget, you have family here in Ottawa as well.
How can I express, with mere words, the life this lady had, the love she had for those she knew, the difference she made on this earth? How can I express the love we all have for her? I cannot. We've worked on this to the best of our abilities, and it stands pale next to her gift of love to all of us. I love you, mami. I love you, too, Luli, as do we all.
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no subject
Date: 2004-07-22 02:09 pm (UTC)::BIGHUGS::
no subject
Date: 2004-07-25 11:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-22 03:17 pm (UTC)*lots of hugs*
no subject
Date: 2004-07-25 11:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-22 04:40 pm (UTC)Thank you for sharing that with us.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-25 11:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-22 06:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-25 11:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-25 12:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-23 10:58 am (UTC)all of that stuff that you could probably find in any two-page funeral home pamphlet called Mourning and You.
This line, I think, is a sign that you're going to be okay. Your wonderful, sly sense of humor is still fully intact.
xoxoxo
M
no subject
Date: 2004-07-25 11:56 am (UTC)This line, I think, is a sign that you're going to be okay.
Thanks ;) I think my friend Karen may have actually picked up a pamphlet named something like that, but I haven't read it yet.