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off-briefer · 7 years

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On Saying Goodbye

The following is the eulogy that I read in front of the 500 people that showed up to my mother’s funeral. I loved my mother more than most sons. She was my life in a lot of ways.

First, seeing all of you here fills myself and my family's hearts with joy. My sisters and I know that my mother is loved, but seeing you all here leaves no doubt that Judith Margaret Biancalana left a positive mark on this earth, a feat that not all are able to claim. You are all a tribute and testament to, and ultimately, the result of a life lived unburdened by regret, the “what ifs”, or could-haves. My mother lived a full life, one with many happy, glorious times, memories we all share. Thank you. The pain of our immediate loss is dulled and is washing away at the sight of all of you. She's looking down and thinking she must have done something right. In fact, I believe that’s how she would have put it, “I guess I did something right.” To me, that would be my mother grossly understating the truth. To me, she did near everything right. But she'd never boast, she'd never shine a light on her life's achievement. If she was anything she was humble, honest, and set in her ways. But she really did do so many things right.

Father Donal, thank you. We have known you for more than 30 years and are beyond pleased that you’re our celebrant today. My mother is happy, I can assure you, as are we all. Through her time at the hospital recently and well before, you were and are such a wonderful friend to Mom.

To Mrs. Pat Casey, one of mom’s lifelong friends, for being there every single day my mother was in the hospital, 55+ days, for being a source of comfort to our whole family and to, most of all, mom. No one but she had her dedication and love. Pat was there 27 years ago when my father passed, and she was there for Mom. Her consistent presence and counsel will never be forgotten.

And one more but not least thank you to the team of doctors and medical professionals that helped my mother over the years, specifically Dr. Aileen Whelan, Dr. Donald Ho, Dr. Fred Lui, Dr. David Kursrock, Dr. Khan and Dr. Lee. Were it not for their dedication, expertise and guidance, my mother would have truly been lost, our family without a path or plan. You helped extend mom’s life and we’re all so thankful to have had those days and memories.

The poem says "grieve if you must" but if you all can, remember mom at her best, funniest, her most lively. What I’ve written tries at that.

Aristotle once said, The roots of education are bitter, but their fruit is sweet.

Judith Margaret Baldassare was born on November 9th, 1940 in a bit of a shanty called McKees Rocks, just outside of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. She was the daughter of Joseph, who worked for the “local men’s group” running numbers for them, booking sports and betting. Without too much detail, my mother was raised to be street smart. Whatever she learned in school paled in comparison to the education she received from life in those years, living above a pool hall with her aunt and uncle, their children and her father and her sister.

My mother was older sister to Eileen, who was the polar opposite of my mother. Aunt Eileen was brash and crazy and untethered. My mother was responsible and studious and obedient. My mother and her sister Eileen were very much alike though in that they were both a joy to know, a joy to be around. They accepted each other much the way my sisters and I accept each other. And today, we remember our Aunt Eileen as well.

Mom moved to San Jose to live with her aunt and uncle in the mid fifties and attended Willow Glen High School. She was very involved in activities, was her student body president and was a beautiful example of her own will and drive to affect her world in a positive manner by participating in athletics and school programs as much as time would allow. She was smart about her money at a young age and bought her first car, a 1957 Chevy with money she earned herself. In 1958 she graduated.

Famed sportswriter Ring Lardner said, “The family you come from isn’t as important as the family you’re going to have.”

In the early sixties, Mom went to work in San Francisco at an insurance agency as an administrative assistant. It was there she met her best friend, Barbara Fenich, and it was Barbara that set my mother up on a date with a guy named Mario. She fell in love and they married in 1966.

Soon after they married, in 1968 they had Diane, 1970 Debbie arrived and in 1972, my fathers last try for a boy, I was born. My mother wrote me a letter after my father passed letting me know how much she loved me and that that day I was born how proud they both were, delighted they had a son. I can remember feeling more proud reading that letter than I have ever felt. Under that strict exterior was a heart as big as her, and in all her children she saw unlimited potential. She saw humor, athleticism, intelligence and poise. When we were awkward she was stalwart. When we faltered she let us solve the problem and fix it, and when we succeeded she was the first to congratulate and beam with pride. She pushed us to take chances, to achieve. To work hard, to persevere, and to never give up.

Angelita Lim is quoted as saying “I saw that you were perfect, and so I loved you. Then I saw that you were not perfect and I loved you even more.”

This is how my mother felt about all of her children’s spouses. My mother had picked up telling me over the past decade, "you better thank your lucky stars." She refers to me thanking the stars for my wife, Laura, whom she loved, and I tend to agree. Her sons in law, Gary and Rob were beyond good and kind to my mother and she was very lucky to have them in her life. She loved her entire family equally, in law or otherwise, without fail.

Billie Jean King once said, “Champions keep playing until they get it right.”

Mom was competitive. She loved the Pittsburgh Pirates and Steelers, and of course the Giants and Niners and Warriors. She was present for every one of our games, whether it was baseball or softball or basketball or volleyball, she was there. She was involved in everything we ever did. Coaching, managing, running things. And if she wasn’t managing from the dugout, or driving the car to a tournament, she was always cheering on the sidelines. Taking carloads of friends of ours to teepee the houses of Burlingame. Mom made sure that a dull moment was never had.

My sisters would be the picture of athletic and academic achievement where I, had two hobbies, baseball and driving my mother nuts.

But no one could handle me like my mother handled me. More than once. And I expected and deserved every whalloping I got. But as tough as my mother was, she taught me what it meant to love unconditionally, to care about whatever we did, whether it was school, sports or even much later in my career as a writer — that I give everything I have to everything I do with passion and focus, and most of all, with a fire inside. And no matter how hard I may have fought against her at times, no matter how many mistakes I'd make, she let me make those mistakes, it’s my belief, for two reasons: because it turned me into an adult, helping me learn and grow and stand firm, on my own two feet and the second reason, so that she could say with no doubt, "See? What'd I tell you."

From Mother Theresa: “The miracle is not that we do this work, but that we are happy to do it.”

In the early 80s, when I and Debbie were still at OLA, and Diane was at Mercy High, she was a teachers aide at OLA, and then the school secretary in 1985. She was also a yard duty — the best yard duty, as any of the boys in my class can attest. Anyone that knew the kids in my class knew we weren’t the nicest children, we were mischievous, and my mother would have none of it. We never said no to her, she was the law and we all respected her. Because she was firm and resilient and fair. A perfect example, if two boys were fist fighting, my mother would sometimes take her time in breaking it up. I always wondered why. I found out later that she’d let the brawl go if she liked the kid that was winning.

In her time as secretary at OLA, there are many many stories to tell, but one which I truly love. On no particular day, a student walked in and said "Mrs. B. I don't feel good," the child holding their stomach. My mom said, “Okay, what's wrong?” The kids said, “Well, I threw up.” My mother, always skeptical of kids faking so they could get a free trip home said, "Oh yeah? Where’d you throw up." The kid said, "In the upper yard" thinking, there’s no way Mrs. B would follow up on that. My mother stood up, took the kid’s hand and said, "Show me where you threw up." So they walked to the upper yard. In the end, the student was back in class. My mother knew which kids were faking, which kids weren’t and which one’s cried wolf all too often. I think more children spent more days in school during her years behind that desk, because unless real circumstances were afoot, kids were staying in school. My mother treated each one of those kids as she would have treated her own.

There are more stories. But her time at OLA was about the children. It’s what she cared about most, and it is encapsulated by her incredible work ethic, never leaving her desk until every bit of work was done leaving nothing for the next day, her desk clean each night, no matter the hour. Thankfully for us, my father was an amazing cook, as some nights she got home very late. In that, she had a dedication to our catholic education, bearing three children that went kindergarten to college degree in Catholic school, my sister Diane and I finishing at St. Mary’s College of California and my sister Debbie at Santa Clara University. Even after my father passed, she made it her personal quest to put us through the best education money could buy. The two of them, my father and mother, sacrificed everything for our education, for our wellbeing, and we never wanted for anything. Our childhoods and and the years that followed were always privileged ones, in our eyes. At times we couldn’t rub two nickels together, as my mother liked to say, but we would be educated, we would be happy and we would always have family.

There’s a great line in Cormac McCarthy’s “All the Pretty Horses” — “Scared money can’t win.”

She loved to play cards, to gamble. As a young family we would take vacations to north and south Tahoe in the summers and winters accordingly, always close to casinos. We kids played in the arcade while my father played keno and kept a close eye on the bank account, while my mother played black jack, 12 hours or more at a time. Sometimes she won and sometimes she'd come away empty. I remember one night we sat down for dinner at a restaurant in one of the hotels up there, maybe Harrahs, and my mother informed us that she had just played black jack with none other than Clint Eastwood. We kids wanted autographs. "Did you get his autograph" we asked excited. "No I certainly didn't. I got up and left.” We looked at her incredulously. She went on, “He sat down right next to me. He ruined the table" she said, "He screwed up the deal. They let him get up and deal the damn cards." We couldn’t believe she didn’t get Clint Eastwood’s autograph. She couldn’t believe the Pit Boss at Harrahs allowed Clint Eastwood to handle play dealer with my mom’s chips on the line.

When I lived in Louisiana for a couple years, my sister Debbie and my mother visited and we ended up on a riverboat in New Orleans one day. My mother and I were playing black jack side by side, as she won hand after hand after hand. Soon a crowd gathered. The other players at the table had stopped playing to let my mother continue, just she and the dealer. Soon I noticed as I sat next to her that two large men with cowboy hats were standing right behind her. She kept winning and they kept watching, too close a watch for me. I had my eye on these two guys in case they did something, follow my mom away from the table — I didn't know, I was worried. By the time my mother played her last hand she had 7 or 8 thousand dollars in front of her. The crowd applauded as she finished by beating the dealer a final time. We got up, my mother oblivious to the two men behind her. I hooked my arm with hers, to “protect” her (there was nothing I could Have done. I was 165 lbs. soaking wet, these guys were enormous). One of the cowboys stopped my mom, put his huge hand gently on my her shoulder and said, "ma'am, it was a genuine pleasure to watch you play black jack." I sighed with relief. We cashed out, and I remember that night being our favorite in New Orleans.

Taking trips to casinos around the Bay Area with her best friends Mary Meyer and Mary Lycett and Judy O’Rourke and in recent years friends like Molly Mitchell and Father Flavian have been her escape and minor vacations - strangely with the winner of the group usually being father Flavian, not my mother.

A.A. Milne says perfectly — “If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you.”

No quote could better sum up my mothers great love, her reason for being and source of joy and pride, her grandchildren. They became her life the day Samantha was born in 1997. Watching her hold, talk to and play with her grandchildren, you understood true passion and love. She had so much pride in, and so much peace and joy filled my mother with each of her 8 little babies - Samantha, Ashleigh, Jessica, Mario, Dominic, Daniella Lucia and her youngest Joseph. When I say grandma loved you 8 kids I understate the word “loved” by miles. No one could love you kids more. A perfect example is when Samantha was born. Mom told us she wanted to be in the background and let Rob and Diane enjoy their new baby, to give them their space and not be too intrusive and mothering. So instead, not able to hold in her pride and love, she turned to walking the hospital hallways wearing a sweatshirt that read #1 Grandma. Not too subtle but classic Mom. When my father passed in 1989 her heart most definitely broke. My sister Debbie contends that her heart began to beat again when Samantha was born.

Finally, Tennessee Williams writes, “To be free is to have achieved your life.”

And after the stories I’ve told, illustrating the life she lived, she is certainly free. In the past two months my mother endured, fought tooth and nail, clawed. She fought until her body simply couldn’t any longer.

As we say goodbye to mom, grandma, Judy, Mrs. B we remember her fondly, happily, with her set ways, with her "don't care about what other people are doing care about what YOURE doing" attitude. We remember her as the only Giants fan that didn't like Will Clark because he swore using the worst of swear words on live tv in 1987 after they won the west, “no I STILL DON’T like him”, she'd say decades later, we remember the school secretary that ushered hundreds of kids to and from class, teachers and principals in and out of OLA, we remember the mother and friend that displayed an unmatched generosity and passion that would put her in front of a bus for a loved one if need be, the mother in law that never minced words and always, always gave as good as she got, we remember the grandmother that filled a living room with Christmas presents to rival Santa’s workshop, gifts piled shoulder high making all her grandchildren lucky and insane with happiness, we remember the woman that fell in love with my father and created a beautiful, strong family that she knows will survive any hardship or bump in the road.

This is what I believe over everything:

As are with all works of art, we all have a favorite, our favorite piece whatever it may be, we cherish it because of the emotion, true feeling that it brings out in us, the way it affects us, be it a painting, a sculpture, song, prayer. And we always talk about those amazing creations in the present tense as we hold them close. Because works of art are infinite. They live forever.

In the hearts of your family and friends Mom, you are loved, you are happy, you are smiling and joyful, and you live forever. Mom, I love you. You are my favorite work of art.

#eulogy hardestdayofmylife

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