Lessons a Mother Teaches her Son

Eulogy: Catherine B. McDowell

My Mother died in June 2011, She was 87. Here in my eulogy which I shared with family and friends at her funeral service, I attempt to capture her inner beauty and all she meant to me as my Mother.

10:00 am / June 24, 2011

Lakemont Congregational Church

Lakemont, New York

“Take yourself to a happy place and focus.”  I was 7 and getting ready to attend my grandfather McDowell’s funeral. It was the first time she said to me “Dissociate yourself from your present environment.”

Later in preparation for my first leading role in a high school musical, again she coached me on stage fright. “Make eye contact with the audience, but look to the back of the room, speak slowly, but keep focused on entertaining.” And so I begin to share with you all the many things I learned from my mother.

“Yes ma’am. No ma’am. Thank you. Please. Write your thank you notes.” After my first year of college in North Carolina (I was a bit overexposed from a year in the south,) I drove from Long Island to Pennsylvania to pick up my sister, and I responded to one of her friend’s questions with a “yes ma’am.” And my sister looked at me and said, where did that come from, she’s my age … and we both laughed and said: “Mom and a little bit of southern living.”

“When I was scared on the subway,” She shared with me, “read the poster boards and add ‘Between the sheets’ in the tag line and soon you’ll begin to laugh. Drink Coca Cola between the sheets. Enjoy Sunny Florida between the sheets.”

So my mother,

Catherine Marston Bunn McDowell…

But for most of my life, I called her Gertie, Gertrude, Gertae, Gertie Bunn. “Who am I, your maid?” she said one evening when I sat at the table and I asked for her to bring me some water. I replied: “Yes, Gertrude!” and from there began a lifetime of laughter. She taught us how to laugh at ourselves.

Mom and I would talk on the phone and from time to time we’d say: “Oh, I need to share what I did, as only you’d understand,” It was always “don’t tell anyone,” and then we’d go on and elaborate about something we’d incorrectly ordered, a burnt cake, spilled gazpacho, something broken, something misplaced.” And we’d laugh.

When my friend, Lenore’s father’s died ten years ago in Seattle, Lenore asked me to sit with her mother at the funeral, Elva was the first wife, divorced for many years. We sat in the back of the church.  Elva started to cry and I reached into my suit pocket and pulled out a white linen handkerchief for Elva to cry into. Later, Elva commented about this kind gesture. And I replied: “My mother use to say to me ‘A gentleman always carries a handkerchief in his suit pocket.’”

“Believe in God.” How many times she would tell me to put my faith in Christ. “It works.” She’d write little inspirations on card and mail them to me. Or as children, post verses on the refrigerator. The power of positive thinking. She taught me to try to be up, and that there is nothing wrong with bringing God along with you and your journey.  Early it was her weight, later it was her determination to rise above her brittle bones, the fractures, the loss of her height, the many operations, her brain surgery. She was always positive, and she rarely complained.

Last year, I enjoyed another dinner with my friend Jennifer and as we walked back to the car we crossed the street and suddenly I was maneuvering as so often I naturally find myself doing when I am with a lady on a city street and I opened the car door. And Jennifer stopped and she said, “that is what I love about you, you always remember” and I said, “Mom always said to walk on the street side of a lady, just in case a car drives through a puddle and splashes as you walk by.” Another lesson from Gertie.

Some lessons, I am still working on.  I learned that procrastinating till the night before a school report was due was probably not the best way to excel in school. Mom didn’t like sitting up with me when I wrote my Canada report for 5^th grade. Don’t procrastinate.

As a young child, she’d often be preparing to sing a concert or a solo at some church and she’d sing and play the piano after she’d put Carol and I to bed, one of my fondest memories, falling to sleep while she sang. She had her favorite popular songs from the day and they’ve become mine:

Without a song the day would never end

Without a song the road would never bend

When things go wrong, a man ain't got a friend: without a song.

She taught me to love music, to enjoy its role in our lives and to create a soundtrack for your life.

These were the simple, the obvious, things a mother would teach a young son.

But there are were many larger things I learned from my mother, which shaped my point of view and helped me, become a man.

I got in trouble as a little boy, a stern lecture; it was a harsh lesson. I had used the “N” word. It was the 1960s and Mom, a southern lady, sat me down, talked about her father, my grandfather, his principles, talked about how to treat other people regardless of their skin color or education or size of their pocketbook and suddenly I had my first lesson in Civil Rights.

Most of us think of my mother as gentle, southern, charming. Non-political. She taught me otherwise. She was progressive, she was liberal, she was open-minded and she fostered that in her family in only her gentle, southern way.

Civil rights. Women’s rights. Gay rights.

She and my father worked hard to assure that my sister could do anything as a woman. Mom left the charming life of a small southern town, to pursue a singing career in NYC. She was a living example of women being able to do anything. Granted she’s be the first to say her daddy bankrolled it and she would have learned more if she had had to work in a department store while taking voice lessons. But it was 1946, the war was over, she went out on her own, and today I find myself with very strong independent female friends.

When my sister Carol’s career allowed her to follow my mother’s love for fur coats and purchase one, it tickled my mother pink, when Carol said. “Why should I wait for a man to buy me something I want?” Before there was woman’s lib, there were women like my mother.

She once told me early in my teens, when I first started dating, that if she ever heard that I had hit a women, she would side with the woman. About 10 years ago, I was summoned to jury duty. The case I was called up for was for domestic violence. I was being interviewed as a potential juror and raised my hand when the lawyers asked if anyone had experience with domestic violence. When the lawyers came around to me and asked me to clarify, I said, “No man should ever hit a women. My mother taught me that.” I was dismissed. I learned that sometimes it was a good thing to share with others what you learned from your mother.

There has been a bunch of stuff in the news about young children and appropriate gender roles. What parents should let their boys play with, what girls should and should not do. It gets wrapped up in the realm of Gay Rights and Marriage Equality. When her 5-year-old son dressed up in an old curtain and one of her hats and sang the entire score of My Fair Lady, my mother sat down on the sofa, took a photo and enjoyed the show. She encouraged everyone to be themselves… as God had created us.

But the biggest lesson I’ve learned from my mother and she had some help from my Dad. For it was Dad who held her up, providing for all of us, so that Mom could shine and be who she was for our family.

Dad, Thank You!

So the biggest lesson, I learned from Mom was about Love. Mom was like a big momma bear, mess with her children and you’ve messed with her. And it might get ugly.

I don’t know what it is like not to be loved. I sorta didn’t know how to interact when I first began to meet friends who came from broken, troubled, unloving homes. 

The week before she went into the hospital, I was home for a visit. And one morning, Dad was piddling around being Dad, and we sat at the kitchen table as so many of you have with her over the past year or so and we talked about my life and I said “I still don’t have that one big love” and she looked at me and said “you will, sometimes you have to wait, but what will be will be when it is time and you are ready.”

Unconditional. Unending. No boundaries. Loyalty. Trust. Devotion. Patient. Listening. Love. Passion and lust are temporary.

Love is her Hershey Pound Cake or her Boston Crème Pie on my birthdays. Love is her handwritten letters with a $10 bill inside.  Love is a birthday napkin in your lunch box or a note in your desk after “Meet your Teacher Night.”

Love like nothing else. Give yourself to your family, your friends and your community.

Love is my mother.  She was my greatest lesson!

And today… I need my handkerchief.