My eulogy for Mom (Eleanor Coomber) — September 1, 2023
A verse from Second Corinthians: “For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” (4:18)
You might have heard of The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning. It’s a book that I haven’t read.
But when I heard the title, I looked it up and learned that the idea of death cleaning is based on an actual Swedish tradition. People clear out unnecessary belongings, the goal being to do so before others have to do it for you.
My family, it turns out, is not Swedish. We don’t have this tradition. And the reason I’m now infatuated with the idea of Death Cleaning is I spent this spring and part of the summer clearing out the house where my parents lived for the past 32 years.
On March 7, Mom and Dad moved into the Touchmark retirement community in Fargo, with many of their favorite and most useful things. On March 8, while Dad cared for Mom at Touchmark, I entered the front door of their house and started figuring out what to do with the rest of their belongings.
The rest was a lot. Not only my parents’ things but, given that we’re from a fairly small family on both sides, we’re talking grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ too.
You probably know that my mom had great taste, and she loved her stuff. If I want to make myself smile, I imagine Mom in conversation with Marie Kondo, the author of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. One of Kondo’s tips for clearing out belongings is to pick up each item, hold it and see if it sparks joy. If it doesn’t, get rid of it. I venture to say that Mom could have picked up almost any item in her home—from paperweight to dining room table—and told Kondo that it sparked joy for her.
She loved color. And pattern. And texture. A couple of Thanksgivings ago, we did a gratitude exercise as a family, answering questions on paper. One question asked, “What do you love to do? Not nouns, or objects, but VERBS that give you joy …”
My mom wrote one word. “Design.”
Did you know that she used to be an interior designer? She and the woman she worked for developed a questionnaire that helped people define their individual style profiles. They then used these profiles to help clients select furnishings and paint colors, carpets and draperies for their homes.
In our family home, she carefully selected and placed everything. Furnishings and table settings, flowers and vegetable gardens, cupboard contents and displays of ornaments. She curated closets and drawers of clothes and jewelry—many I’d call statement pieces—each imbued with meaning and history. A jacket from Mexico featuring wild stylized animals, a blue sweater her mom knit half a century ago. She added pins and earrings, some boldly shaped like coyotes. She sparkled.
This is all to say that when the time came for me to clear out the house, I faced what seemed an insurmountable task. I couldn’t adopt all of these things. My brother Matthew couldn’t either. Even though most of them were in mint condition and many had memories attached and truly sparked joy, even for me.
So from early March through mid-July, I worked to unload all of these items. I stuffed a local consignment shop, I filled shelves in an upscale thrift store, I donated to other thrift shops, I had a garage sale and numerous giveaways, I filled a dumpster. Matthew came to help a few times, a friend flew in from Washington for a week, local friends joined me as elbow buddies for a few hours here and there as I dismantled not only my mom’s lifetime of collections but also some of our ancestors’.
Along the way, I’d ask Mom questions. “How did you end up with such a beautiful fur coat?” I know I’m not supposed to like fur, but it truly was stunning. Plush and black, lined with scarlet satin embroidered with flowers.
“Well, I lived in Saskatchewan,” she said, giving me a look intended to remind me of the long, snowy winters in the province where she grew up.
“I know, Mom, but it is particularly gorgeous! What’s the story?” I pressed.
She looked at me as if the answer was obvious.
“My parents loved me,” she said. End of story.
This not-so-Swedish Death Cleaning process has been hard. I quit my part-time job to do this. I stepped back from freelancing. I stopped cooking. I had moments (weeks?) when I was a bit ticked off that this responsibility, all of these choices and decisions, had fallen to me. My little family lived in Washington for 19 years. We moved back in 2020, thinking it would be good for our son to live closer to the rest of our family. We very easily could have missed this whole experience.
And yet. Almost every day I spent at my parents’ house, I also went over to Touchmark to spend time with Mom and Dad.
You might know that my mom and I had a somewhat fraught relationship. We are similar in many ways, but through much of my adulthood all I could see was how differently we approached life. She spent hours planning menus and considering how a table would be set, while I would just put out plates and silverware at the last minute. She was fascinated by family lore and history, and I was more interested in current happenings. She liked to curl up with a cat and a good book, I liked to be out skiing or checking out local attractions. When we spent too much time together, we found it pretty easy to rub each other the wrong way.
But something quite remarkable happened in April. Mom was hospitalized for three days, and Dad and I were right there with her, meeting with doctors, nurses and specialists. Matthew was sometimes on the phone. You might think three days in such close quarters and under that kind of stress would fray our nerves. But actually, we all just settled in. We visited and reminisced, and pumped medical staff for information. Along the way, Mom’s and my potayto-potahto bickering disappeared. That three days in the hospital shifted our relationship.
For the last three months of her life, we got along. We visited, we looked at pictures, I brought random objects from home and listened to her talk about them. We shared memories. We shared salads. We enjoyed each other.
I had time to reflect on all she had taught me in life. I know her love of kitchen gadgets, the more highly specified the better. The color combinations that rubbed her the wrong way, like purple and orange. The guilty pleasure she got finding treasures at TJMaxx. The flowers she shunned, like hollyhocks. And her lifelong pride, being Canadian.
And I reflected on the lessons she taught Matthew and me from our very youngest years. How to appreciate the flowers and trees and birds, how to be kind but not let people walk over us, how to enjoy a good meal like a symphony. And how to slow people down when they’re hiking too darn fast: Just start asking questions: “Is that Queen Anne’s lace or cow parsnip?” “Listen to that bird—is that a grouse?”
Somehow in the process of clearing out my parents’ house and spending time with them, I think Mom and I gently death-cleaned our relationship—it was as if God answered a prayer I hadn’t even thought to ask.
It’s as if the unnecessary frustrations were cleared away.
So now, when I think of my mom, she sparks joy.
Sarah Coomber 