Today marks an important anniversary … the 15th anniversary of the death of Jan Gall, my mother-in-law. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about her and what a special person she was.
A number of close relatives were invited to write remembrances of her from which excerpts were read at Jan’s funeral. Here is what I submitted to the pastor, in its entirety:
Mark (Amborn) and I are at something of a disadvantage compared to many of you here today who knew Jan Gall so much longer than we did – but I’m sure Mark agrees with me that he and I are fortunate to have had as many years with her as we did. No mother-in-law on the face of the earth could have been more welcoming and affirming than she was.
Her death came way too soon – and yet it also came as a welcome blessing for the way it brought her suffering to an end. It occurs to me only now that her death also makes it easier, somehow, for us to step outside of her sad, final decline and to remember the energetic, gifted and caring person which she was for most of her life – a person who was a blessing to everyone who knew her.
One of the things I most admired about my mother-in-law was her love of learning …. her abiding interest in questions … and her zeal for finding answers. I remember one 4th of July when, for some now forgotten reason, I was paging through the dictionary trying to find the correct spelling of the word PUCE. Who knows why? Somehow, I missed it, even after carefully paging through the entire P section of our unabridged dictionary – and I mentioned my frustration to Jan. Two minutes after they had returned home, she was calling our house with the answer – but we were already on our way the fireworks and she left this message on our answering machine … unadorned by either a ‘hello’ or a ‘goodbye’:
“Puce. P-u-c-e. Deep red to dar grayish purple.” Click. End of message.
No one loved answering a question more than she did, and no one was better at finding those answers either.
She was the wife of an amazingly gifted and outgoing man – and the mother of two tremendously talented and loving daughters …. and by the time I first met her, she seemed as much as anything to be a marvelous facilitator for Bob and Kathy and Polly – reveling in their talents and accomplishments, taking genuine delight in all that they achieved, ready to be helpful and supportive in any way she could, and happy to lead the cheers for them.
It has been interesting in the years since to learn just how gifted she was in her own right – valedictorian of her high school class, a highly admired and impressive teacher, a bookkeeping whiz, a woman of considerable energy and skills, and someone who wasn’t afraid to step into new arenas. Knowing all that now, I am profoundly impressed by her selflessness. The afternoon she died, I picked up the phone and called Mark and Polly to tell them that the movie “Beaches” was on television (a well-known tearjerker if there ever was one) just in case they were interested in shedding still more tears. I made that call in the hopes of giving them a chuckle in the midst of a draining and difficult day. But in retrospect, the movie “Beaches” was amazing fitting for the moment. It tells the story of two dear friends – one of them a famous singer, and the other her devoted friend who was perfectly content to be in the shadows herself while encouraging her friend to enjoy the spotlight. The song “you are the wind beneath my wings’ is from this movie, and Jan was strong, loving wind beneath the wings of her husband, her daughters, her sons-in-law, and many others. Chances are all of us here today managed to fly just a little bit high and a little more joyously because of her.
My mother-in-law hated to be a bother to anyone. Almost every single time she would telephone us, the second line out of her mouth, right after “this is Jan,” would be “I hope I haven’t called at an inconvenient time.” She was here on earth to help others with their hassles and headaches and she hated the idea of ever being any kind of trouble to anyone else. The most ironic thing about the illnesses with which she contended in her final years is that little by little they robbed her of the capacity to help others and eventually to even be fully aware of others and their needs – and instead made her increasingly dependent on the help of others. By the end, she was utterly and completely dependent on others for even the smallest aspects of her life. I know for Kathy – and I’m guessing this is true for Polly as well – this meant a strange reversal of the way life had always been …. with them increasingly in the position of caring for their mom instead of the other way around. But never were two daughters more tender or sensitive in this kind of role reversal, of “parenting the parent” ….. and I’m sure that even with her dwindling awareness Jan received this gratefully, just as she did from all those who cared for her at life’s end.
I feel blessed to have been – as luck would have it – the last family member to be with her before she died. I did what probably other family members and friends did in one way or another in those last visits. I quietly told her, over and over, “We love you. Bob loves you. Kathy loves you. Polly loves you. mark loves you. Lorelai loves you. Linda loves you…” On and on. And at the end of a long list of names, I said “and God loves you.” Nothing else seemed more important to say than that. I trust that for all that slipped away from her in her final years of life on this earth, she came to know just how powerfully and profoundly she was loved.