Sometimes, music is required

This past Thursday I attended a funeral. Judy Eubank, the mother of one of my best friends, died unexpectedly.

I’ve known Judy for nearly as long as I’ve known her daughter, my dear friend Carrie. Carrie and I first met when we were both fresh out of college and new in our careers. Carrie was job hunting and was referred to me for an informational interview. Instead of talking about job opportunities, we gossiped about our respective employers and when our allotted appointment time ran out, we agreed to meet for lunch to continue our conversation. We became fast friends, developing a bond that has only deepened over the past 15 years.

I met Judy only a short time after meeting Carrie. Carrie was still living at home and I was instantly intrigued and enamored with the strong relationship she and her mother shared.

Over the years I came to know Judy in three distinct ways. She was first and foremost the matriarch of the Eubank family. At bridal showers, weddings, baby showers and holidays, she presided over the gatherings with the pride and confidence of a mother lion. One of my favorite memories is of sitting along side Judy and Carrie at Broadway Church on Sundays. Judy was a strong and independent woman, and to be included in her family brood, as I often was, was to feel safe and loved.

I knew her most recently as her banker. Judy called me several years ago to talk about her car, which was in need of replacing. I was both flattered and terrified when she called. That she was willing to trust me to help her through a financial difficulty was something I took very seriously. We worked out a rather creative arrangement and she moved her banking relationship to my bank. Over the ensuing years, she called to let me know each and every time interest rates rose. She also called regularly to ask questions about the minutest details of her account. To say she was high maintenance would not be an overstatement. But I never stopped feeling flattered that she trusted me to answer her questions.

I knew her most intimately through Carrie’s eyes. Judy, as a mother, was a strong force of a woman who loved her children with a fierce intensity. She was a mountain stream – beautiful and powerful, shaping and molding with her intensity all those within her embrace. As the youngest of 3 children and the only one who remained in Kansas City, Carrie has spent most of her adult years negotiating that fine line along which she is both an accomplished adult with a family of her own, and yet still and always her mother’s baby girl. Carrie has for the last 20 years, spent equal amounts of time trying to become closer to and stand independent from Judy. It is the dance mothers and daughters have danced throughout the ages and I’ve watched from Carrie’s side, mesmerized, and a little bit envious.

Judy died in her sleep, without warning to those who loved her. She’d spent the previous two days enjoying having her entire family in town for a reunion she'd organized. Always the matriarch, even unto death.

The funeral was bittersweet. The suddenness of her death meant that her friends and family were fresh with grief and shock. Photos of Judy throughout her life lined the back wall of the church. She was stunning as a young woman. A photo of her as a teenager sitting on a railing next to a sign that read, “Do not sit on railing,” was surely a sign of the independent path she would forge as an adult.

The service was filled with Judy’s favorite things. She loved simple pleasures: music, poetry, fresh flowers, a cool glass of water with a twist of fresh lemon. We listened to poetry that Judy had written over the years, and to classical music, a country song, and a beautiful, sad guitar piece that Tommy, Judy’s musician son performed.

I sat in my old pew at Broadway Church, and felt as if it had only been last week since I’d last sat there. (In truth it’s been more than 10 years). The space felt as warm and inviting and safe as ever. Paul and Marcia – co-ministers of the church – had aged, but their message was the same. “You belong. You are safe.” Its no wonder Judy loved this place as she did. And I loved it too, thanks to her and to Carrie.

I sat together with Carrie’s other best girlfriends. Each of us understood that this was big, very big. Judy's passing was a seismic event. There was just no other way of understanding it. We wept as Judy’s best friend read a letter that Carrie had written to her mom. Tommy’s band mates sat a few rows ahead of us. I watched as these big guys cried openly while Tommy’s song “Glassy Headlights” played.

I had a clear view of Carrie as she sat in the front row, flanked by her siblings Tommy and Mindy, her husband and her children. She was grieving, but throughout the service she was first a mom, holding her kids on her lap, comforting them, just like Judy would have done.

Mindy’s husband Scott took little Jackson to the bathroom and Tommy stretched his arm across the space between them and gestured, “Come here, come closer.” Mindy did, and perhaps the biggest flood of tears for me came as I watched Tommy wrap his arm around his sister’s shoulder and hold her tightly. Judy’s fierce love lived on.

As I looked around I was struck by the fact that for the most part, we had mostly first known each other as kids, or young adults. And now here we sat, with kids of our own, with grey in our hair, some of us with extra pounds around our waist, with mortgages and car loans, obligations and responsibilities, and we were burying our parents. Our parents! How did this happen? When did we become this grown up? Did we ever really believe the baton would be passed? That the role of family matriarch or patriarch, would fall to us?

I watched Carrie’s children, Sophie and Mikey, and remembered my own grandparents’ funerals. Had my parents wondered how it had come to this? How they could be burying their own parents?

Following the service, we gathered on the front steps of the church as Judy’s seven grandchildren – ranging in age from 6 months to 9 years – each let go of a single balloon in memory of their grandma Nani. Simple. And beautiful. As Judy would have wanted it. The seven balloons rose up in unison, free of earthly tethers, floating away into the crisp blue sky, undaunted by the blazing sun. I watched until they disappeared.

After everyone else had gone, I stood on the front steps talking with Carrie and her girlfriends until I was baked through from the heat. When we finally said our goodbyes, I decided to go home, even though I should have gone back to work.

At home, I peeled off my sticky clothes and stood under the cool spray of the shower. I redressed, went downstairs, poured myself a glass of water, with ice cubes, and lemon. I sliced a fresh tomato and ate it with a little vinegar, salt and pepper. Simple pleasures. Simply enjoyed.

Thank you Judy, for reminding me that in the end it is about how much you have loved, and that the greatest joy can be found in the simplest things.

You will be missed.


When spirits speak,
few words are needed.
Sometimes, music is required.

Judy Eubank
1942 - 2007