To all of you who have come today, family and
friends, to those of us who have known Bea for a lifetime, and to those who
have known her for a few years only, or maybe only briefly, to all of us whom
she loved and loved her too, good morning and thank you for coming. We
gather to celebrate the joy of having known her, to have called her Mom,
Grandma, sister, and friend, and to mourn her passing that her loss leaves to
us all.
For all of you here there is no need to
describe what an incredible, strong, unique, and independent lady she was. You
would have known that within the first moments of meeting her ... you would know
of her fierce spirit, her loyalty and generosity, and the incredible heart she
offered up to everyone she knew.
My brother Richard and I knew her as Mom.
For us there could not have been one more protective, caring, and as
strict and difficult to deal with, more fun or adventurous, and, when left to
raise three boys by herself a thousand miles from family, more determined to
provide for and raise on her own, mother.
Bea was born at a time when women were
expected to adhere to traditional rules of behavior and roles, a limitation she
resisted all her life. She not only resisted, but pushed aside those
limitations by the nature of her character and out of necessity.
As a girl growing up, she wanted to play on
the boy’s baseball team. She would begin to work at 14 years old to provide her
spending money for clothes and the car she wanted badly. She would repeat
stories of how once she obtained it, she enjoyed drag-racing and out-running
the Kansas City cops, to the point they realized it was game.
Rebellious and independent as a teenager, she
also would tell the story, laughing a little, of the day she married my Dad.
She stood at the altar and checked to see if the window of the church was
open far enough so she could leap through it before it was too late!
As small kids we would learn of her sense of
spontaneity and adventure. We could fall asleep in Kansas City and wake up
driving in the car somewhere in Louisiana, moss covered trees overhead on the
road, on our way to New Orleans, for no other reason than she and her sister
Margret had decided to go the night before. The same would later be true for a
small town in Kansas for a bowling tournament, or, when we had moved to
California, to Yosemite and San Francisco.
When her father passed away, she moved us from
Kansas City to southern California, and, as soon as she could manage it, a
picture-perfect home in the suburbs. She did it all on her own. Despite being
told she could never do it, she did do it, and with determination and pride.
When we had grown and established ourselves,
she would move again, this time to a beautiful new home in Wildomar, too big
for her to handle but she would do it anyway, because that is what she had
wanted.
All of us who knew her well will know nothing
made her happier than traveling. Korea, Europe, Thailand, even into Laos,
back to Korea, and Europe again. Even up until her last days she was planning
her next trip overseas, even as it became clear to us it would probably not be
happening.
If she had one flaw, and we all do, she would
feel everything intensely; love and empathy for her children and friends, but
also even anger. She felt and expressed nothing half way, but always with
the entirety of her heart. That tough exterior would fade before sympathy
or the nursing of a hurt, either real or imagined. But the one hurt she
could not overcome was the pain of loss.
When my brother William became ill, she
maintained a vigil at his bedside. For nearly 6 long months she would drive
daily to the hospital in Simi Valley, staying overnight and returning home to
Wildomar to come back to stay with him again. When he was moved to a hospital
just a few miles from her home, she was at his bedside from morning until
evening every day.
When we lost him, she would not recover. The
pain of that loss was too much for her.
Her health began to decline, along with her
memory, and that proud, defiant, independent spirit began to fade. We would
stay close to her, my brother Richard and I, her close friends Patti and
Connie, but it was clear she was declining, even as she tried to maintain her
self-reliance and her personal freedom. That dignity meant everything to her.
She had fought for it all her life, even to her last day.
The day she passed she was at her home, doing
what she was determined to do, even though we had asked her to refrain from
taking on tasks and leave those things to us. Maybe we were still
comfortable with her being by herself, not only to allow her that, but because
we thought such an indomitable, tough lady could never pass away.
But she did and now it is her loss that we
must bear. Words can’t express how much we loved her, and how much she will be
missed, and the lasting impression she will have had on all of us who loved and
knew her, even as I know she is free from pain, both of the body and the pain
of a broken heart. She is with my brother William and her beloved father now,
and all whom she loved that have gone before.
At the same time, life has blessed our family
with the birth of a new generation, a great grandson, Ryker William Freeman.
I wish she could have lived to meet him. Had he had known her, he would
have been the richer for the knowing. But we will tell him about her, and I am
sure she will look over him with the same fierce protection and love that she
gave her boys during her life.
When my brother William passed, I wrote his eulogy.
I remembered the words my Grandmother would always say the night we left Kansas
City for California, and every time she would visit or we would visit her. As
we hugged and prepared to part, she would always say, “I won’t say goodbye,
I’ll just say so long.
Bob - a beautiful tribute to you mum who obviously shaped your life and had an enormous sway for the good.
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