A tribute...

Well done, thou good and faithful servant… enter thou into the joy of thou lord.

For honoring your father and mother… loving them, respecting them, and never shaming them… caring for your father in his own home as he was consumed by cancer… seeing to your mother’s care as she succumbed to dementia…

Well done.

For being a model friend to all you knew, even like a sister to a cousin who had no other siblings… for being a peacemaker and an advocate for those who were marginalized… for seeing the faults in others but loving them anyway even when nobody else would.

Well done.

For being a loving and supportive wife even through great trials of financial adversity and personal tragedy… for struggling with depression your entire life but never giving up on the people you loved even when you doubted their love for you… for helping those around you see that they were the cure for, and not the cause of, your unspeakable sadness…

Well done.

For bringing five children into the world from 1968 to 1974… for teaching them to have an unwavering faith in the Divine, an undying hope in all that is good, and an unconditional love for the world and everything in it… for giving each of them the certainty that you loved them and were proud of them… for helping all of them be the kind of kids who would never rebel against what is right, never be ashamed to be seen with you, and never seek comfort from cigarettes, alcohol, or other drugs… for being the one thing that each of them could count on in their own moments of darkness and desperation…

Well done.

For helping a young couple with a new hemophiliac child, providing years of daycare for him when nobody else would or could… for caring for your mother-in-law as she was claimed by cancer… for becoming a surrogate mother and grandmother to countless lonely people while your children observed that it never seemed to make your heart more crowded…

Well done.

For being brave when your right leg was taken as the result of diabetes… for never complaining over the next few years as you often struggled even to breathe and simply couldn’t do most of the things you used to do… for, in spite of these limitations, finding it within yourself to travel the country and visit all of the places you often said you would "some day"…

Well done.

For assuring the ones who adored you that you were ready to enter your well-earned rest… for making sure they were at peace with it just as you were… for leaving them with the strength to survive and to heal after you were gone…

Well done.

In the hospital room the afternoon of August 5th, seven days shy of your 62nd birthday, as I watched the monitor showing your blood pressure plummet and as I saw your chest cease drawing breath, I trembled and in my mortal weakness begged God to spare you. "What will I do?" I asked the Almighty. "What will I do? Please, God, what will I do without her?" But I knew the answer to the question even as I asked it. I will have faith as you had faith. I will have hope as you had hope. And without you here to love me I will finally learn to love myself.

Even so, I shall miss you forever and always and mourn bitterly for those who never had the honor of knowing you.

Well done, Mom.

Well done.