Mom's Eulogy

My mother passed away Feb. 28, 2011. The picture above (one of my favorites!) was taken during a trip to Florida a couple of years ago.

I had the honor of giving my mom's eulogy at her funeral and I'm sharing it here:

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Good morning. I’m Tracy Garrity Rasmussen, Joanne Garrity’s second child, the one she affectionately (usually) and loudly (once in a while) referred to as Tracy Ann.
I think everyone here either knew my mom or heard stories about her. There were lots of them. Many have been shared in the last week via email, letters, phone calls and facebook and our family appreciates that.

They noted her accomplishments – and there were many. There was the Somers School Board and the BOCES board. There was the county school boards association, the State school board association and the National school boards association. Mom was a CCD principal, girl scout, active in the League of Women Voters, busy with local clubs and organizations like the historical society and the friends of the Somers library.

And that was all before she moved to Florida, where again, she got busy with school issues, active in the League again. She belonged to book clubs and bridge clubs and played Bingo and Dominos and lots and lots of golf. She had tickets to the Rays and the Lightning and the symphony and made annual treks to Dartmouth football games to renew friendships more than 50 years in the making.

She was, as her dear friend and colleague Dr. George Port wrote to us: not only a wonderful School Board member but a wonderful friend as well. A nicer person I never met, he wrote. A more wonderful wife and mother I have only met with my own wife.
But really to us, she was just mom. The woman who would wake us in the middle of the night to bail out the basement which always seemed to flood when Dad was on a business trip. The woman who taught her daughters to be strong and independent and her son to be sensitive and compassionate. She was a woman who would shun the title feminist, but who wore an Equal Rights Amendment bracelet until it broke in two and who lived her life as an example of what women could and should do.

Mom was a woman who was a really bad poker player, who was saddened by the demise of the light brown M&M because that was her favorite flavor, who once during a spirited discussion about Michael Jackson let us know that no matter how weird WE thought he was SHE thought he was a great ..... basketball player. And that is what we will miss, but also celebrate. Her irreplaceable smile, the deeply frightening and always must be obeyed Mom Look.

I didn’t get to a lot of school board meetings, but I do remember one particularly contentious meeting where mom silenced a whole room with a few words and the Mom Look. It was a beautiful site to behold, as long as she wasn’t directed it at you.

I see that Mom Look in my sister Terry once in a while. And it makes me realize that as much as Mom is gone, she lives on not only in the progressive accomplishments of her volunteerism, but also in the children she raised. In Tally I see her ability to get things done, her organizational skills and her direct approach to problem solving. In Terry I’ve seen the Mom Look, but also her compassion and empathy. Tina shares Mom’s defense of the underdog and her tireless work ethic. TA (or Tom as most of you know him) carries on my mother’s legacy for community service and her love of a good story.
Me? I got her gift of gab, and I’d like to think her abilities as an advisor. I also share her inability to easily leave a party.

My dad often says that my mom NEVER had an exit line. They’d go to parties or political obligations or, you know, the supermarket and my mom would keep chatting with friends until my father would gently – or not – guide her to the door and tell her it was time to go home.

I think God probably had the same problem. During the past year of my mom’s life and even a couple of times before that we thought He was calling her home. We sat by our phones, called each other and her to get those last wishes of love in, those last words of wisdom from her.
Only to hear her on the phone the next day or the day after saying, “Hi Tracy Ann, I’ll be home from the hospital in a few days.” She didn’t leave the party. She couldn’t leave. There were domino games to be played, arguments to be soothed, political discussions to be had, Republicans to be voted for. Life, in fact to be lived.

And so it went. Until last Monday night when, after 79 years of service to her community, her church, her family and her friends God gently took her by the arm, guided her into the light and said “It’s time to go home, Jo.”
So rest in peace mom. No one has earned it more than you.