Beverly Meyer 1936 - 2005

My mother died last week.
It was a protracted ending to a vibrant life.
I can't do any better than offer the eulogy I wrote for her funeral as a summary of who she was:

"First of all, please accept my family's profound gratitude for honoring my mother with your presence here today.

With sadness, presence is a gift which Sue and I and the boys are unable to extend. I rest firm in the confidence of mum's judgement that it was best to come and enjoy her when she was 'well' rather than to be among you today.

So mum, we're not here - but how so much more I wish you were.

When I think of mum, one ironical idea seems to encapsulate her essential nature - LIFE.

Mum did things in a lively way. Sometime they were lively for all the wrong reasons, but lively they were.

One time during school holidays, Greg and I were bored stiff, and mum had run out of ideas and patience. I think I was about 10 years old. Greg and I hatched a cunning but cruel plan. We sat in one of the upstairs bedrooms where we were living at the time - Troon Pl, Frankston. Imagine the camera panning in to reveal two boys behind the safety of a closed door, hunched over one of those old, flat, mono tape only recorders. The kind with the flip up cassette carriage and the buttons along the front. We took turn after turn recording between 7-10 minutes of us calling her name out loudly as if we were calling for her. We then set a timer for play and snuck downstairs out of direct sight looking and waiting for a response. The first 7 recorded whines of "ma- aaaa - hm, mum", met with polite replies like "Yes - what is it" to "What do you want". The next 8 to about 15 then moved on to "RIGHT - speak again and you'll cop a belting you'll never forget" I think she lasted 3 minutes before we threw in the white towel - she was nearly in tears and still hadn't caught on to what had transpired.

No gathered falseness, no calm repose - just flat out reality pulsing with life.

There was more challenge in our entanglements than wrath. There was nothing dull about growing up with Beverly Madge.

I remember sitting in a shared bath with my brother when I was 4 or 5 years old. Mum would get us to sing songs into a tape recorder for dad who was working on oil rigs then. Saying silly rhymes and listening to her try and sing Perry Como songs really badly. Or dancing in the living room to James Last and then later ABBA. There was LIFE. I remember her trying to get us to speak to her in German after we returned from living in Germany. We never really did and she would get so frustrated. I pinch myself when I realise how I, like mum, have tried in vain to get my own children to do the same.

For mum, life WAS relationships. It's a life lesson I own now myself. The she invested deeply in others and made herself vulnerable enough to receive richly from friends she made along the journey.

She had a great sense of humour, which we have both inherited in the much the same one inherits large thighs or a big nose. Observing her watch anything by Peter Sellers was as funny as watching the movie itself. It makes sense too: In mums eyes not much humour equated to not much life.
But then there was also a less public softness to mum which she deliberately downplayed. Sacrificial giving, volunteerism, middle of the night pickups of cousins in danger of domestic violence - time after time after time - that hardly anyone knew about.

And not least for my family - support without conditions when I announced a life choice to serve in ministry, even though it would mean removing 3 of her grandchildren. She flew 4 trips across the globe to be with us in Austria and another planned to come here to the U.S. before the tests came back positive. When many weren't prepared to offer it, mum did. She voted at times like that with her presence and I cannot begin to explain how supported and we we all felt as a family because of her.

I remember the day grandma died. Not mums birth mother, an aunt - but a mother and so more to mum.
She was devastated and we couldn't work it all out. Grandma was in heaven, we were taught and heaven was a much better deal than earth.
Today, history, without much mercy, repeats itself as I see my son looking at me the same way I looked at mum.

When he is older and asks the question "What was my Omi really like" How will I answer?
She was unreasonably loyal and protective, patriotic, spirited, fun, moody at times, self-sacrificing, moved to act by injustice, opinionated, passionate, confident in Jesus, strong - and so much a euphemism for LIFE.

Noela - as an absent son for much of her end days, I'll never forget the way you stepped in and cared for mum. What a beautiful picture of Jesus you are - thank-you on behalf of the family. Dad, as I shared on the phone - I can't imagine what you are feeling today. We are thinking of you - and we remember mum with joy

Simon . . . for Sue, Karl, Nikolaus and Jonathan"