This post is obviously a departure from the normal fare, but in a way it fits the theme. That is, we can't separate all aspects of our lives (family, work, friends, values, actions) - they're all fused or at least intertwined. And we cannot control what happens when. We can only work to make the best decisions we can in the precious little time we have. Thanks so much to everyone who has expressed their condolences regarding my mother's death more than a month ago. Several people who cared for her or for her family could not attend the memorial service, so I am posting my remembrance of her here. My brother and his wife have also shared some of their reflections here.
Cathy Hartman Eulogy
A few years ago, many of you were present when I delivered my Great Aunt Helen’s eulogy. That was a joyful eulogy. She lived to 100. She had seen all she really wanted to see and more. She quipped that we’d been having parties to celebrate her age and impending death every five years from the time she reached 75 forward. And she made it to happy hour through her late 90s. There my job was simply to offer thanks for a life lived long, to remember Aunt Helen for her uniqueness, and maybe even to provide closure. In the case of a 100-year old who lived a full and rich life, that was an easy task.
As my brothers and I work through our mom’s death – at the young age of sixty-three, the task is not nearly so simple. But of course our mother would never let us step down from challenging circumstances. She would have us not just make do with the circumstances, but work to rise above them. That’s what our mother did. That’s what she did her whole life long – and it is absolutely, positively what she did with the last four years of her life, through which she continuously battled advanced and advancing cancer.
For anyone who has known our mom the slightest bit, the qualities that served her well through her final years will already be etched permanently in your minds. And those qualities are commitment to and exhibition of work and strength. We’d known this for most of our lives, had started to realize the special intensity that work and strength take in our mother some years ago, and I heard it echoed again and again as I spoke with the two doctors who have been with her for the past four years.
Particularly after her first two years with them, almost every time I spoke with them over the phone, they’d mention how impressed they were with her intelligence, strength, and commitment to getting done whatever needed to be done, whether that was in her work or in her battle with cancer. And thinking about it now, virtually every time our mom moved to a new experience, she excelled.
She did well, she dabbled, she considered various opportunities. Going through her files in the last few days we find rewards for exemplary service for her work with government and nonprofit groups in Washington DC. When she decided it was time to get involved in local school and civic life, she was rather quickly a PTO President and soon thereafter a school board member. I will admit – as she often admitted – she did NOT do well selling real estate. She always said that was because she didn’t like to push people into things. That seems fair. After dabbling in sales, however, she went on to work at Pfaltzgraf in York, Pennsylvania, where her boss quickly learned that she could write better than him, so she found herself not simply typing, editing, or checking his correspondence, but creating it. Around this time, her boys were leaving the house.
As a college freshman, Dave decided to buy what we’ve all come to affectionately refer to as the crackhouse in Pittsburgh, with the goal of fixing it up as a rental property. At that moment, Mom simply chose to learn and excel at so many points of the building renovation and rehabilitation trade, and with her boys she started a business and balanced the books.
Here and elsewhere, she did everything: She gardened, she painted, she drew, she received special recognition nearly every where she worked.In all of these things she did quite well. She filled our memories with stories of her capabilities. She excelled. But in one thing alone, she became the model for excellence. In her late twenties, she found a particular pursuit in which she performed so well that she set the standard.
She hit her stride as a mother. Mom recently completed a Brandywine High School alumni survey as part of their preparation for a reunion. In response to the question, “What is your most significant personal accomplishment?” Mom wrote:
Totally committed to my children, my most significant personal accomplishment has been raising my children -- they are great!
But it wasn’t just her own proclamations that made Mom a wonderful mother. Nor was it simply how in her later years she would light up with joy anytime one of us called or entered the room, it was a profound lifelong capacity to intuitively balance love and expectations, standards and empathy, close family togetherness and serious individual freedom.
And if ever there was a conflict among those things, or indeed a conflict or challenge in anything we had to face, Mom erred toward love, toward togetherness, toward abiding faith in the belief that she and her boys could work it out.
She always knew what to do whatever issue her children presented. If her oldest wanted to ride a motorcycle across the country immediately after high school, her 2nd son briefly idolized Donald Trump, or her youngest sometimes acted with a rash intensity, she knew how to simultaneously accept her children where they were, love them, allow them to do what they needed to do, and show them that even better possibilities were still out there.
Even though she was fond of saying that “motorcycles are inherently dangerous,” she allowed me to ride and race one with abandon as a young teen. She recently told me, “I probably should have been worried, but I just remember looking out the window and thinking you just looked so skilled going over all of your jumps out there.” She also found ways to support and be excited about our brothers’ motorcycle trip across the country together even though, I’m sure she said, “And I will say it again, motorcycles are inherently dangerous.”
As Dave pointed out in a thank you to her, she became president of the PTO even though she hated public speaking, watched his swim meets even though it required sitting in a hot natatorium, and helped her sons fix up old houses even though it required a lot of weekends and evenings spent working in old and dirty houses. She also, and this too has its inherent dangers, but she always laughed at our jokes.
She accepted our friends, welcomed them warmly, and – as has become especially clear this last week – made a distinct impression on them for her warmth and kindness.
Though Mom loved and supported in ways that so often went beyond what seemed reasonable for any person, she also had clear expectations for all of us.
- Every single day, as Scott and Dave left for school, she said, “be exemplary.”
- When I pointed out, I believe in 3rd grade, that C is average. She responded strongly and simply, “Average is not good enough.”
- She supported us in house renovations, playing rugby, and riding motorcycles, but raised us as balanced boys who could also paint ceramics, make Christmas wreaths, build gingerbread houses, and garden with flowers.
The intensity of her love for us is nearly impossible to capture. I have, however, heard it expressed beautifully several times this week – and over the past few months.
First, there’s a story we’ve long gotten a kick out of, that my wife Shannon brought back to light a couple of months ago when we were staying with Mom for about a week. Shannon was asking Mom something about which men on a TV show she found attractive, when Mom said she did not like long hair on men. Shannon remembered that at one point Scott let his hair grow for an entire year without cutting it at all, and asked about how Scott looked then. My mom responded immediately, and in her clear, confident, absolutely certain manner, “Well, on other men that would look sloppy, but Scott looked like a Roman Centurion.”
My brother Dave said the other night, speaking of his wonderful wife Lisa, ““I will never have as big a supporter again. Lisa likes me a lot, but she’s not crazy – about me – in that special way mom was.”
And Lisa remembered my mom this week too, when Lisa wrote this beautiful paragraph on her blog:
She raised three amazing sons and she will live on through them in ways that I'm sure she could never have imagined. I have never before seen such a bond between boys and their mom, boys who are strong and tough and independent and yet who are not afraid to show emotion or shed tears and who let their love for their mom just pour out of them in ways that leaves nothing unsaid. If my own son loves me with even just half of the intensity and devotion that Dave loved his mom, I will know that I did something right, and I will die a happy woman.
I do take comfort in how Mom experienced her final weeks, months, and even years. Dave and Lisa made her such a part of preparing for their baby’s arrival – and she got to be with the whole family for the baby shower at her house just three weeks ago.
Scott and Piper spent amazing amounts of time with her. Shannon and I got to visit for weeks at a time. Her sisters Mary and Jane stayed with her, remembered with her, bought baby gifts with her, and chatted whenever she had energy to chat.
When Uncle Tom and his family would call I’d hear the enthusiasm in Mom‘s voice as she talked to Kaysi and Britney. She loved the younger ones. She loved to hear about how her nieces and nephews were growing and about the choices they were making. And, stepping down a generation, she loved to meet the babies. When the littlest ones would visit – Grady and Anna, Sophia and Cecilia or Lilly and Brooke – her beautiful bright blue eyes would shine out from behind many years of fighting, and her smile would bring light to the whole room. I remembered in particular when Amy visited with newborn Ethan. Every time Mom smiled Ethan responded like the world had just changed. He clearly saw so much brightness and joy in Mom’s smile, as we all did.
And then there was Mom's work with her brother Bill. Mom and Bill worked together through many of the final years of her life. She liked the move to a job with more responsibilities – and Uncle Bill ended up with someone who was able to manage the office through the process of going independent and becoming Wheeler Financial. Uncle Bill’s found a few ways to thank and recognize our mom over the last several months. First he put a half-page recognition of her retirement in the paper. Then he created a formal and framed notice that declared October 5th Cathy Hartman Day. October 5th was the day that Wheeler Financial became independent, and he declared Cathy Hartman day to recognize the extent to which my mom contributed. Looking at that award made me wonder, what would Cathy Hartman Day look like?
The question for mourners always becomes how can one honor another person’s life. And in a way I think that’s a question Uncle Bill got us started on when he declared October 5th the day. If we took October 5th and made it a day to honor and remember our mom, your sister, your friend, your colleague, your Aunt, your Grandmom, Cathy Wheeler Hartman, here’s what I imagine it would look like:
You’d get up early. As she reminded us, “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man health, wealthy and wise.” And additionally, “The early bird gets the worm.” And beyond that, Mom loved the mornings. You’d appreciate the morning and its beauty. You’d appreciate the day.
I would say you’d get organized for the day, but if you were honoring Mom you would have planned, budgeted, and organized the day many weeks if not months in advance.
You’d do whatever work needed to be done. After all, as she was also fond of saying “anything worth doing is worth doing well.” And even if it were a holiday, you still have responsibilities to the world, to yourself, to your family. There are always a few things that need to be sorted. And Mom would have those things sorted first, so on Cathy Hartman day you would have them sorted first thing too.
Once you’d risen early, appreciated the morning, and taken care of your responsibilities, you’d take a moment to think about whether you’re living well and being good. Mom didn’t subscribe to any particular faith tradition or ideology, but in conversation and in the journals and letters of her life, she was continuously committed to living well and doing the right thing. She raised us with the admonition to be good. Through some conversation and mostly through example, we came to understand that phrase.
Every time we left the house or got out of the car, or often when we got off the phone, she’d say, “Be good. Be safe. Have fun.”
So in your reflection on October 5th, Cathy Hartman Day, you’d take a moment to consider whether you’re being good, being safe, and having fun. Those are pretty reasonable parameters for you and the people you love.
And that would be who you’d think about next: the people you love. On Cathy Hartman Day you – however good you are at this already – would do a better job of setting aside time for them, sharing a meal with them, talking with them, or telling them that you love them.
Honoring Cathy Hartman and celebrating October 5th Cathy Hartman Day over the years to come will boil down to this:
Live well. Keep your family connections strong and make them stronger. Raise your children well. Be rocks of stability, comfort, and assurance for one another. Be good. Be Safe. And Have fun.
If you do this, everyday but especially on October 5, you’ll be honoring the memory of an incredible woman and ideal mother.
(There was a long pause in the read eulogy here).
We’re going to have a song to listen to as we move into dinner. Feel free to move around, get up, say a prayer, or start talking with one another again. It’s a song about all of us for one another. It’s about friends, family and togetherness.
And Aunt Jane this song’s most especially from all of us Hartmans to you, our mother's twin. Whatever you need, whenever it’s necessary, we stand with you.
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