12/04/2025
Throw Back Thursday. My mother Rosalie Rosalie and me over the years
"I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them" said by Andy Bernard in the finale of The Office.
Here is my eulogy for my mother which I spoke at her funeral.
Eulogy for My Mother
There’s a Dolly Parton line I’ve always loved: “It takes a lot of money to look this cheap.”
But if my mother had her own version, it would be: “It doesn’t take a lot of money to look this classy.”
My mother didn’t have a lot of money—far from it—but you’d never know it for a second. Her hair was always done, her makeup perfect, her clothes coordinated like she was stepping out for a photo shoot. People would stop her to compliment her, and she loved every moment. She was, in every way, a class act.
One of the greatest gifts she gave me was the permission to laugh at myself—at my quirks, my neuroses, all the things that get me into trouble or make my life more complicated than it needs to be. She taught me to lighten up. But the irony was that she couldn’t laugh at herself. Any joke I tossed back landed like a narcissistic injury. It wasn’t safe terrain.
But near the end of her life, I finally cracked her.
She was talking about how anxious she’d been her whole life. I asked why, and she said, “Because my mother walked the halls at night like a security guard when your grandfather worked midnights selling newspapers.”
Later, I said, “Well, I’ve been anxious my whole life too.”
She asked, “Why?”
And I said, “Because my mother walked the halls like a security guard—because we didn’t have a father in the house.”
I laughed. And she turned away, trying not to smile—but she did. She cracked. After a lifetime of her refusing to laugh at herself, I finally got her. It was a tiny moment, but it felt like a victory and a softening all at once.
Another story—one that shaped both my life and who I became—was when I told her I might be gay.
First at 11, then again at 14.
Both times, she said, “Don’t worry about it. We’ll deal with it.”
Not “fix it.”
Not “change you.”
Just: We’ll handle it.
And she got me into therapy—not to straighten me out, but to help me understand myself. It was probably the best thing she ever did for me. It started a path that led me to becoming a therapist, and it helped me become the man I am today.
Then there was her geriatric supermodel phase. She had lost weight, she looked fabulous, and I always teased her with that nickname. She loved it. She absolutely ate it up. And when we went out together, I’d joke with people, “We’ve been together 62 years—can you believe it?”
People would look at us, trying to figure out how we both looked so good. She ate that up, too.
But the moment that meant the most came just 4 years ago.
My mother spent my whole childhood telling me, “Someday you’ll be a celebrity.”
She said it constantly—well into my adulthood. And as a boy, it used to bother me. It felt like she wanted me to become something for her, instead of just seeing me as I was.
Then I took her to a Diana Ross concert.
It was a sea of gay men—of course—and a bunch of my clients recognized me. They came up to me, hugged me, said hello, introduced themselves to her. And when we got home, I braced myself. I thought she was going to say it again: See? You’re becoming a celebrity.
But this time, she didn’t.
She said, “I’m so proud of you. You did this. You made a name for yourself all by yourself. I didn’t have the knowledge or finances to help you. Every acknowledgment you got tonight was because of what you did. You made your own name. You did that—not me.”
And then she walked away.
I just stood there.
I couldn’t move.
Because in that moment, I had finally been seen by her.
Not as who she hoped I’d become.
Not as someone she needed to shape.
But as myself.
As the man I had become without her guidance, without her blueprint, without her living through me.
That was the moment I felt the mother-to-adult-child recognition I had been waiting for my entire life.
My mother was funny, complicated, difficult at times, strong, glamorous, anxious, and a fighter to the very end. She was imperfect and determined. She survived things she never talked about. She raised us with what she had, and sometimes with what she didn’t have.
She gave me her humor, her resilience, her grit, her style, her contradictions, and her fight.
And in those final days—and even in the years leading up to them—something softened between us. Something healed.
I will carry her stories, her complexities, her stubbornness, her beauty, and her love.
I will carry the moments she couldn’t laugh—
and the few precious ones she finally did.
I will carry the times she saw me—
and the moment she truly saw me.
I will carry her with me.
