Today we are simply heartbroken and mourning the loss of a special wife, mother, sibling, aunt, and friend.    Our void in the physical world is the gain of Nana, Papa, Aunt Pat, and Uncle Arthur and others we have loved who have since passed.    

Mom never sat and spoke to me about dedication and loyalty to family…..as she didn’t have to.    All my sister and I had to do was observe her.     Being born to her and my father, I realized very early and once I ventured out on my own, that my sister and I had hit the parental lottery.   Mom prepared us for the great big world and wherever it took us.   By taking my mom’s lead, we had no choice but to succeed, work hard, be happy, and appreciate all the simple beauty this world has to offer.

Mom was many things to many people.    Long before her life as a wife and mother, mom was a fiercely independent woman, had a wide circle of friends, a solid job, her own car, traveled, bowled and had quite the life.   This was in the 1960s, which was a very different time for women than it is now.   She spoke of many trips to the Cape, overseas, out West.    When she and my father paired up to form the super team, she began her lifetime devotion to him.   They combined their love of the Celtics, Red Sox, and especially Bobby Orr and the Boston Bruins and politics among other things.   Mom would pass on my fathers suggestion she drink beer from a glass and not the bottle to be more lady like. Like her mother, she was usually the most perceptive and sharpest person in the room, but would never show it.  As pretty as she was, she didn’t have an ounce of vanity or pretentiousness.    Working in the school Westerly school department, I was always proud to visit her at work, and sensed people really just LIKED my mom.   Right now I vividly hear her voice in my head as I used to call her for no particular reason at work to bug her or even call prank her…..”Bradford School…..Joanne speaking”.    She was VERY proud of her job and was lucky enough to LOVE what she did.

She was then as she was until she got sick…..perpetually in motion.   I recall a moment when at 69 years old, I came by for a visit and she was on a ladder outside power washing the home.   At 69.   If she wasn’t trying new plantings in the garden, taking up guitar or photography, sanding and refinishing floors, upholstering some piece of furniture, she was taking care of our family.   She was the ultimate homemaker yet still held onto that character that made her so attractive to my father.   I look back fondly on her 1984 Dodge Caravan, the first year of the minivan.   This only allowed her to get into even more mischief.    I recall her sneaking my teenage friends and I past the police checkpoint after hurricane Bob with our surfboards hidden in the van so we could surf.    She used the van for good, helping friends move from places NYC to Boston and lots of places in between.    I tagged along with her for meals on wheels.   Taking us and the St. Cyrs down to Florida.  And of course carting her children all over the face of the earth.   To the beach to surf, basketball, my sister with dance, band practice.

Mom was creative, crafty, and skilled.    She refinished floors, loved building intricate flower beds, grew vegetables, stenciled, painted every inch of our house, several times over, and made the home great place for friends and family.   She also, in my dad’s words, enjoyed “collecting and keeping everything known to man, which eventually has ended up in our basement”.   During many lean financial years, she made it work and protected us from the stresses of potentially losing our home.   Leaving the utopia of Westerly was not an option for my folks.   Never did we miss a warm home-cooked meal, no matter the circumstances.    Her frugality came in handy too, as she and I would venture through the woods at Smith’s flower shop where she would hang me by my ankles over their dumpster to gather discarded flowers.    To save, she would cut my hair, and looking back on photos, it looks like she used a spoon.  She wasted nothing, and of course did very little for herself.    When it was ACTUALLY time for herself, she retreated to Seaside Beach Club, where on that gorgeous sandy beach we made friends for life.   Is there a better place for kids anywhere?   Or adults for that matter?   Our family’s memories from Seaside are priceless.

Many of you sit here with the shock  of our loss.   For my sister and father, this is a day we anticipated with the cards my mom was dealt more than two long years ago, but we are nonetheless, still unprepared.   To all the people who helped her and us along the way and during her final moments, we cannot thank you enough.   You know who you are.   The strength and resilience mom showed was just stunning.    She never complained.   She just kept digging deeper and deeper into her bottomless well of strength.    Her faith has served her well, as she never missed Sunday Mass and did adoration on Mondays for many years.   As difficult as it was watching her slowly slip away, caring for her as she had done for us, and professing our love to her has been the ultimate gift.     But how it all ended is not her legacy.   So ask each of you to rewind to those fuzzy moments in your mind, photos, and visit the places you shared with her.    Find that special place when we had mom.    Me, I’ll be looking teary eyed at so many of the great family photos she took with her Nikon.    I’ll be listening to her Beatles and Ray Charles records she had given me and dancing around the house holding my son, as she did so many years with me.     She had always loved to dance, aspired to be a Rockette, but was going to settle for the Westerly Dancing with the stars until her hip gave her trouble.

I still can’t believe she’s gone, and I fear living the rest of my life without her.   But I, like all of you am lucky we were touched by this beautiful person.     And I leave you with this……mom was always was concerned about others, and never liked being the center of attention as she is today.   So try to do her right be finding your happiness through all this, and taking the time to look back and then forward.