A week ago, my brothers and sisters, and my father-in-law, entrusted to me the responsibility of writing and delivering the Words of Remembrance (commonly known as a eulogy) at the funeral of my mother-in-law, Rosemary Ahmann. The words posted below, are that which I said yesterday, at her funeral Mass. I hope I lived up to and honored the expectations of my other family.
ROSEMARY AHMANN
I came to know Rosemary through her daughter, Ruth. The funny thing was that I didn’t even know that Ruth had parents for over 9 months. I was a junior in high school and had transferred to St Bernard’s from another Benedictine run high school in Chicago, when my father’s company relocated him to St. Paul. Ruth was the first one from St. Bernard’s who welcomed me and talked to me. Dark-haired, beautiful with a radiant smile, I fell for Ruth the moment she greeted me. It took me quite a while to have the courage to ask her out on a date. After all, I was a junior and she was a senior. Ruthie told me that she and her sister, Annie, lived with her Aunt Evie and Uncle Harold on Marion St in St. Paul. I assumed they were orphans. It wasn’t until Ruth graduated from high school and I received an invitation to her graduation open house that I knew that Ruth had parents who were living. I always thought Ruth to be a street-smart, urban girl who lived in the rough and tumble world of Rice Street, St. Paul. And suddenly I discover that she is really a farmer’s daughter. It was at her open house that I first met her mom and dad, Paul, Gary, Jeannie, and Teresa, and, Babe the horse who greeted me by stepping on my right foot.
Over the months of that summer, I regularly made the drive up to the farm under the pretense of catching fish on Bone Lake which was just across the road from Ruth’s farm. Rose, who did grow up in the rough and tumble world of Rice Street, St. Paul, quickly saw through my fishing charade and knew that it was not fish in which I was interested, but, rather, it was her daughter, Ruth, I was hoping to catch. Over the next five years, as Ruthie and I continued to date, and then became engaged, my status changed gradually from outlaw to eventually in-law. Rose accepted me and loved me as one of her own, which meant I couldn’t pull the wool over her eyes any more than could Paul, Gary, Jeannie, Annie and Teresa. I don’t count Ruth among our motley crew, for she is and remains, after all, the perfect child.
All the anecdotes about Rose’s remarkable ability to use a wooden spoon to stir spaghetti sauce and simultaneously swat the buttocks of a misbehaving child, her annual week vacation with her best friends forever playing penny poker, and drinking frozen daiquiris whilst floating on inner tubes, welcoming and feeding the numerous people who stopped out at the farm, including many friends, nieces, nephews, neighbors, the friends of her children, and her grandchildren, and the cloud of methane that would linger over the farm from the consumption of enormous quantities of corn beef and cabbage at her famed St Patrick Day celebrations, I will leave to those better qualified than I to tell.
We read in the very beginning of the Book of Genesis, that God is in relationship with all that God created. Martin Buber, rabbi, poet, philosopher and theologian, restates the first line of Genesis in this way, “In the beginning, was in relation.” God has been in a special love relationship with all of humanity, with you and with me, and, the mission of our life is to not only welcome and embrace our relationship with God, but to model the same kind of love relationship with all those around us, family, friends, neighbors and strangers. Rosemary was exemplary in not only embracing her relationship with God but in sharing that love relationship with all she knew.
It is said that the hearth is the heart of the home. I think it safe to say that Rosemary is the heart of the Ahmann home. All of us gathered here have been recipients of Rose’s love, and know the depths of her love for us. Her relationship with us was primary over and above all things.
As we are doing today at this funeral Mass, we commune with our God at the celebration of the Eucharist. This is the place in which we meet God face to face over a meal of great Thanksgiving. Al and Rose have been faithful in making this community meal with God primary in their lives. And, Rose, having been fed at this Divine meal, made it a point to go home and recreate within her own household a similar eucharist, a similar meal of Great Thanksgiving, albeit her eucharist begins with a small “e”. Whether that meal consists of just coffee with neighbors, a shared apricot brandy or Irish Mist; whether that meal consists of hot dagos, German potato salad, that wonderful cold tuna fish salad, or hot buttered popcorn, those of us who have shared a meal with her know that that meal was a sacred one in which the God she loved so much was so very much present.
Less one think that I am painting a picture of Rose as another Mother Theresa of Calcutta, well, we all know better. She grew up on Rice Street, with her brothers, Austin, Bud, and Bill, whom my kids knew as Uncle Honeydumper, and her sister, Ev. This was a household that was not isolated from the world of Rice Street two blocks away, but was filled with the stories, and laughter, mischief, a few bawdy songs, and the raucous goings on of that famed street in St Paul. As Evie would frequently point out, her brothers, Austin, Bud and Bill did lose their marbles on Rice Street. Though a complete lady, Rose had an earthy sense of humor and the gritty side of her life growing up on Rice Street would show itself from time to time. No, Rosemary is not Mother Therese of Calcutta, I rather think of her as St Rosemary of Scandia.
It is common to think that when someone dies, the person dies with their body. Nothing could be further from the truth. Last Thursday, Rose’s body, sick and worn out, died, but Rose did not die. Rose is very much alive and probably feeling better than she has in years. The love she has for us has not died. Rather, her love for us is all the more present to us now that she is not confined by a body to being in one place at one time. I remember as my sister was dying in the hospice wing of St Joseph’s Hospital, my sister greeting all the dead relatives in the room and turning to my mother and I, saying, “They are playing my song, but I am not ready to hear it yet.” She died two days later. Rosemary has not died, rather she remains every much present to us now as she had when her body was alive. And when the time comes for us to pass from this life to the fullness of God’s life, we will find her there welcoming us home.
I would like to end these words with an Irish song that I first heard on an old Clancy Brother and Tommy Makem album, many years ago. I understand it is usually sung at closing times in many a pub in Ireland. It is called The “Parting Glas”s.
Oh, all the money that e’er I spent,
I spent it in good company.
And all the harm that e’er I’ve done
Alas, it was to none but me.
And all I’ve done for want of wit
To memory now I can’t recall.
So fill to me the parting glass
Good night and joy be with you all.
Oh all the comrades that e’er I’ve had
Are sorry for my going away
And all the sweethearts that e’er I’ve had
Would wish me one more day to stay.
But since it falls unto my lot
That I should rise and you should not
I’ll gently rise and I’ll softly call
Good night and joy be with you all.
