Elogy. The word
in Spanish, I discovered while a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mexico, is a part of
everyday speech. Elogia – or elogias in
the plural – are words of praise bestowed onto the beloved. Nombre, are the Latinos good at that!
Well that’s what I’m
here to do today for my mother. It’s not so easy for us in this culture to
accept praise. But as uncomfortable as
it may be for you mom, here goes…elogias
para ti, Mama.
To begin, just a
bit of background…
Rosemary Copp was
born in Springfield IL (land of Lincoln) on August 23 1931 and died in Peoria,
IL (Land of Vaudeville) June 26th, 2014. In-between, Mom lived in
Washington, DC (Land of the Do-Nothing Congress) along with my dad, her late
husband, Angelo Pellicciotto and their three children – myself the eldest, my
sister Jane, next in line, and brother Nick.
She and dad met
in the Chem department at St Louis U in the mid-fifties, graduated, married and
headed to Washington in the tumultuous sixties to join the fledgling
bureaucracy - Dad working for the DOD and mom for the VA.
Jumping ahead a
few decades, my Dad, sadly estranged from the family, met his un-timely death
in 1987. At the time I was still young,
just out of college, and for various reasons, I was unable to sing my father’s
praises at his funeral.
I am older and (I
hope) a bit wiser now. My relationship with
my mom was very different; it had a chance to evolve over the years,
fortunately, beyond mother-daughter to friends.
So I hope I am
able to provide a window – only one view – into the life of Rosemary: a Challenging, Engaged, Open-minded, Courageous,
Forward-thinking, Inquisitive woman.
1. Challenging
People say my mom
was an easy-going, go along with the crowd type. But I don’t see her that way. She was a
challenging mom – a mom who challenged. She set high standards, though she was
generally tight-lipped about them. You knew by a look and a feel whether she
was disappointed or proud.
I’ll focus on the
proud…
I think we
children did our best to make her proud – in different ways of course -
bringing home good report cards, stories and ideas, interesting friends. I
liked to bring mom trophies, evidence of my triumphs in swimming, tennis,
running. When I lost, I stomped up to my room and slammed the door, mom liked
to remind me. But when it was a win…I’d walk into the house with a big smile
and she knew right away. The prize hidden behind my back: which hand? I’d ask.
She liked that, up
to the end. Just two weeks before she
died, I brought mom home a wood plaque in the shape of the State of Illinois –
first place, 4-mile Steamboat Classic, master female category. She laughed
giddily, as I perched the plaque on her dresser. You’re still winning, Anne,
she said. And it STILL felt good to make her proud.
As I said, Mom was
usually tight-lipped about her expectations of us. But there was this one time she put it right
on the table, delivering an unforgettable line to my husband-to-be (and now my
ex, John Gerschefski): ‘I have great things in mind for my daughter and I don’t
want you fucking them up.’
2. Engaged
Yes, mom did put
the pressure on, in her own usually-subtle way. But she didn’t simply
set expectations and sit on the sidelines. She was engaged. I remember hours
spent on the linoleum floor of our kitchen – from playing store and learning to
make change when we were little – to memorizing the periodic table of elements
in high school – well this WAS her forte. I had the hardest time understanding
the concept of a mole, the amount
of a chemical substance that contains as many atoms, molecules, ions and
electrons as there are atoms in 12 grams of Carbon. Huh? I could not accept this without
understanding why? And she repeatedly begged me: ‘Please don’t ask Why,
Anne?! That’s not the point.’
Mom loves to
share this story about Jane who, in high school chem, after hours toiling over Avogadro's
Number, attempting to calculate the rate of a reaction, said to Mom: ‘What do I care about the RATE of the
reaction? I don’t even care about the reaction!’
I imagine Mom, at
that point, to be both frustrated and wholeheartedly amused. What would become
of these progeny? Both of our parents were chemists – practical, rational,
employable. And their three kids were heading in divergent directions: music, art and design, writing and English
lit, hmm, business.
3. Open-minded
But thank god,
Mom was open-minded. She was a great supporter of my ‘creative’ life. She
managed to let go little by little over the years, encouraging me to travel
where life’s road was taking me, reserving judgment, though not ample motherly
concern.
‘Maybe it’s time
to come home,’ Mom told me often, as I regaled her with stories of adventure
and woe over Skype from the Peace Corps.
She was scared for me – the drug cartels, parasites, cross-cultural
communication roadblocks. But she knew I couldn’t abandon the cause. I had
something new and important to learn from my PC experience.
Mom never got
in the way of learning.
I did complete my
service, landing back on US soil after a harrowing bus ride from Rioverde
across the border; and mom was there in Austin, TX to meet me. Her relief was
palpable. I was in one piece. We celebrated with a bottle of mescal I’d brought
from Oaxaca, which had remained in one piece too!
Soon after, when
I announced I was embarking on this Kickstarter campaign to turn my Mexico stories
into a published book…that got her shaking her head once again in joyful
disbelief.
'Kick what?' she
questioned, then went right online to research this new crowd-sourcing wonder.
Once convinced, she got behind me once again, as my biggest funder and moral
supporter, sharing the link with her friends, and boosting me closer to my mark
at the most crucial time in the campaign.
4. Courageous
Of course we all
have stories of mom the scardy-cat. Oh my god, she was terrible in the car. I
remember one road-trip with my ex John out to Yosemite, and the woman was
literally crouched, whimpering, in the foot well in the back seat as we drove
through those expansive breathtaking mountains.
There was the
raft trip down the Blackwater River in WVA.. We had to almost tie her into that
rubber boat; and she was stone silent for the first six rapids, all class 2s,
maybe a 3. But finally, on the 7th , the fear broke. Drenched and
delighted, she turned to the guide, grinning like a kid. “How many more?’ she asked eagerly. Sadly, he
replied: ‘That was the last one.’
I know you all have
your own stories like that. Janet I know you have many into the car for a trip
from DC to NY so we could all take advantage of that Riverside Drive mansion
where I was cat-sitting. You did make it; and we did have fun.
But Mom had this quiet
courageous side too.
The way I look at
Mom, she was a Y2k woman raised in the repressive 50s. Her options HAD been
limited. She wanted more for her daughters. And she managed to have a
breakthrough herSELF!
Once she’d divorced
and we kids emerged out of the nest, Mom got out of the ‘rat hole’ (she called
it) of the NIH lab and into Corporate America! She landed a job with Abbott Labs
as a tech rep for their diagnostics division.
Despite here directional challenges, Mom spanned the Midwest region in
her Ford Taurus (company paid) – Peoria to Paducah to Kalamazoo – installing
blood analysis machines in doctor’s offices and training their staff. In 1997 she made the prestigious President’s
Club for her stellar customer service, and invited me along on the no-expense-spared
trip to Ireland where we had a chance to travel the Ring of Killarney, sheer
sheep, golf an Arnold Palmer course on Dingle Bay, browse bookshops and gulp Guinness
in Dublin, all on the company dime.
In those Abbott
years mom caught the buzzing current of the technology – becoming proficient
with email, reporting her progress to Headquarters via Lotus notes, uploading
test results via the world wide web, researching on the Internet and even
making her own e-trades.
Mom would have
and did say she got lucky with that Abbott job.
She retired at 71 and her stock options had split many times. But I say she made her luck; she took the
plunge late in life; and it paid-off for her.
But where I saw
my mom’s real courage in life was in the final stage. I know death is not an
easy topic, but I think an important and relevant one. As many of you know, my mom was hit unawares
by this tumor in her colon and rushed to the emergency room last April 2013. I was just back from the Peace Corps a couple
weeks and still did not have a phone, so she sent me an email to alert me.
She recovered quick
and strong from the surgery; we even had an Easter brunch at her house the day
after she left the hospital. But the
cancer had already spread to the liver.
So Mom bravely
took the plunge into the dark waters of chemo, and to the credit of an
otherwise strong and healthy body and keen mind, she fared well through 3
different regimens of the therapy. By
all standards she had a very good year – she traveled and visited her children
– hosted a Christmas gathering – got her affairs in order. Then it hit – on Mother’s Day while mom was
visiting Nick and Lauren and grandson Noel in Austin – it would be for the last
time.
We never really got to know Rosemary as an
old lady. As you know from real life and will see from the photos, she was
always vibrant. She had a perfect brain, heart, lungs, legs, and lovely feet. She
could proudly do 20 leg lifts that final week she was bedridden – it was just
that darn bowel. But it happened the way
my mom wanted it to – relatively quickly and in home hospice. She received
visitors graciously over those 12 days, carried on animated phone conversations
with nieces, nephews, sisters and friends – voice strong and hair looking good
up to the end. And she was so touched by everyone and everything.
A week into home hospice she seemed so
content – conducting Vivaldi with her long, elegant fingers, watching the light
change from morning to dusk, overhearing her the booming voice of Gerry, next
door, chatting with neighbors, noticing the simple beauty of her variegated-leaf
ivy dangling from the basket in the corner – ‘the ONE plant I’ve managed to
keep alive!’, she marveled.
She said to me one of those days, between
bouts of pain: ‘I think I could lie here
like this forever.’
She couldn’t. But Mom knew what she wanted
those final days. While her body was ready to go, her spirit kept her in a
semi-conscious state, conserving her energy, as she awaited Jane’s arrival, so
that all of us, her children, could be by her side. Jane arrived at 11 from Portland; and Mom
passed at 1 am with a serene smile on her face, just as it was meant to be.
In a split second I think: better get back inside. Then a firefly flashes, startling me, a presence bigger than that tiny light. I start to cry.
Lying back on the cool
cement walk, looking up at the stars, faint on a hazy Midwest summer night, tears
stream into my ears like when I was a child, inconsolable.
The firefly flickers again,
in a different place, higher in the sky. And this time I smile, reach up, try
to follow it in the darkness. But it’s gone.
Mom’s light was like that on
earth: on, off, drifty, reach up, catch it in my fist, put it in a ball jar,
carry it with me.
6. Forward-Thinking
I want to end on
a high note: my mom’s desire for all of
us, this next generation of cousins and their children, to continue to be all
we can be in the world. She is so very
proud of all of us – our adventuresome and creative spirit – our kindness and
open-mindedness – our accomplishments and our attempts. We are entrepreneurs and geologists, physical
therapists and artists, scientists and social workers, flyers, leaders, planners
and doers.
Perhaps one of
mom’s favorite stories comes from that Christmas ski reunion in the mountains
of Fraiser, Colorado. We’d all assembled the first night for dinner in a
restaurant, and they had to push a number of tables together to get us all
20-something of us to fit. It was musical chairs to find a seat, and my then
partner, Tom, wasn’t sure where to go when he paused, took a step back, and
said aloud, gazing at the group: ‘It really doesn’t matter where I sit; there’s
not a dud in the bunch.’
Tom’s gone; but
that moment stuck with mom. And it sticks with me too, now.
It’s so wonderful
to see all your faces out there – here for this celebration of mom’s life. Truly, there’s not a dud in the bunch.
8. Inquisitive
And finally, Mom’s Inquisitiveness – or as
I like to put it: The Power of
Questions.
I’m sure many of you have been grilled by
mom over the years. Strangers open up to
her on airplanes and in bars because she invites them in with her questions.
And she listens with presence to the answers.
I remember her drilling into us as
kids: don’t accept anything your
teachers or the preachers tell you. Don’t
swallow it whole. Challenge them for different perspectives and share yours.
She was raised in Jesuit schools and they taught her well, in this way. This
skill has been a blessing and curse over my lifetime. I remember once being
thrown out of 11th grade pre-cal for questioning Mrs Goldman about a
calculation. I sent her from the room crying, and was forbidden from the class
after that. Oops, well, mom made me apologize for that one.
On the plus side, this inquisitiveness has
come in handy in my career as a change consultant and coach, and even while I
served in the Peace Corps in Mexico. In fact, I was invited to speak at a
conference on innovation in Mexican organizations. My topic was entitled ‘The
Power of Questions’; and the first slide was attributed to mom, my teacher and
role model; or as the Mexicans would call her, la preguntona, the good questionioner.
In conclusion, here’s to my mother,
Rosemary Copp. I will miss her mothership. But more than that, I will miss her
friendship.
I leave you all with this musical request
by mom – perhaps a bit cynical (we’ve all seen that side of mom), bittersweet,
and hauntingly beautiful, and asking the deep questions about life ‘til the
end.
Is that all there is? (Peggy Lee, 1969) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCRZZC-DH7M
