Good Morning,

I'm Joan McElearney Walsh and I'm joined by my daughter Katie to say a few words about my mom. But I would first like to thank Father Angel for allowing us to have this service at Holy Name Church. It is the parish where we grew up, attended elementary school, received the sacraments and paid tribute to my father at his funeral mass.

Thank you, too, to Father Flavian from Our Lady of Angels parish, my mother's parish following her move from Holy Name and for joining Father Angel in co-celebrating this mass.

As I look out at my youngest son, James----all 6 feet of him----I have a physical reminder of how long my mother battled Parkinson's disease. James, the 8th of my mother's 12 grandchildren, never knew his Nana WITHOUT this neurological condition.

As a tribute to my mother and as a memory for JAMES, and the younger grandchildren, I offer this retrospective of the mom I grew up with:

Just prior to coming to the church, some of the grandchildren saw the neighborhood where we grew up….1247 35th Avenue between Lincoln and Irving. It was one of those neighborhoods where everybody knew your name, where we would play one foot off the gutter and stay out until the street lights came on. The house you saw was where Nana and my dad raised us. Prior to our living there, my grandparents called it their home.

My mom was a HOMEMAKER……and what a home she made! As was my mom's custom, each room, bit by bit, had a makeover, whether it be with a new coat of lilac paint in the downstairs bathroom, or wallpapering one of the upstairs bedrooms or sewing curtains for the dining room. She did it ALL! If there was HGTV in her day, she could easily have written, directed and starred in such programs as "DESIGN ON A DIME", ROOM BY ROOM" or DECORATING CENTS" My son tells me he thinks there's a genetic marker for this, because I do the same thing. There was always a project…..always something to keep her creative talents occupied.

Out on the AVENUES, or the Sunset district as it is known, the houses are pretty close together, but my mom managed to lay out a plan to squeeze a redwood deck that overlooked our Kitchen that was between our house and our next-door-neighbors, the Gilmores. As with all carpentry work completed at our house, an off-duty fireman was there to do the job. On this narrow redwood deck was a beautiful garden of mostly potted plants….you know…..the fog-loving plants like ferns, azaleas and rhododendrons. Also located on this deck was my dad's WEBER BBQ. My dad was the outdoor cook and my mom was the indoor cook.

I remember discussions around the family dinner table where my father would often compliment my mother's cooking, COMPARING HER to some of the best chef's in San Francisco. Mixed in with that conversation were comments like, "You kids don't know how lucky you have it" …..and he was right. When I moved to Oregon, the first dinner that I cooked for my new friends was my mom's recipe for Veal Scaloppini. They were duly impressed!

Another recipe that my mother was famous for was her Shari baby cookies. It was a concoction of her own creation that basically consisted of all the makings of oatmeal cookies…….but with a secret ingredient thrown in. That secret ingredient was corn flakes. But when I made them another time with her, the secret ingredient became Special K. And then I found out that, really, the secret ingredient was whatever box of cereal that we were lowest on at the time and that no one was touching, because it didn't make a full bowl. Of course, the best part of this recipe weren't the ingredients. It was the fact that she named this creation after the "baby" in the family, my sister, Sharon.

And the other fun part of this is that we were supposed to sing & stir, sing & mix, while singing in our BEST falsetto voice….that Frankie Vallee hit song…..

SHARI SHARI BABY

My mom loved to plan dinner parties with the firemen and their wives. She would always be crazy-busy beforehand….right up until the last minute. Everything was prepared fresh….. These were what I would call, the "dress-up" parties, where all of the women wore dresses, not pants. Sometimes I got to pick out her jewelry and when she was done getting ready, there would be the scent of Chanel No. 5 in the room.

Although I rarely wear perfume, when I get dressed up, I always wear

Chanel No. 5 I have it on today.

A couple of other memories:

Those of us who were of a certain age in 1963 can say definitively where they were when President John F. Kennedy was shot. I was in the 4th grade at Holy Name school and I remember the grave look on the nuns faces as they marched us to the church to say a prayer for the fallen Irish Catholic President. But I also remembered that my mom had promised to bring me a hot lunch that day. ----and-----in my little 4th grade mind, I raced across the schoolyard thinking that I was going to give her some important news that she did not know. But as she handed me my hamburger, wrapped in aluminum foil, I could see by her tear-streaked face that she already knew. To this day, I associate President Kennedy's death with being at Holy Name school and having my mom bring me a hot lunch.

Being a teenager anywhere means that your parents are bound to embarrass you. My mom was no exception. A particularly red-faced moment for me came when I was dating a guy in high school that my mom was actually quite fond of. She and my Auntie Bina thought it would be pretty funny to have a song that I had never heard of sung in chorus the next time this guy came to pick me up for a date. They taught this song to various members of my family and low and behold, when my date showed up….whose name happened to be Harry……they sang:

I'm just wild about Harry…..and he's just wild about me…(Joan)

the heavenly blisses of his kisses fill me with ecstasy. (Katie)

He's sweet just like sugar candy (Joan)

and just like honey from a bee (Katie)

oh, I`m just wild about Harry (Joan)

and he's just wild about, (Katie)

cannot do without, (Joan)

he's just wild about me . (both)

Well……….I don't know who wanted to run faster from that room…..him or me.

JAMES----remember how I dragged you around to your brother & sister's soccer games……well, that's what my mom did to me, too. She dragged me to my sister's volleyball games and my brother's swim meets. She was a fan of us.

My mom was the ultimate planner. She did all the heavy packing for our trips to Whispering Pines and to Arnold. Due to my dad's shifts at the firehouse, he would often have a few days off in a row and we would take off for some random trip in the summer. Mom was the navigator and she made sure that wherever it was we stayed, it HAD to have a pool. She knew how much we loved to swim! It had to be in the 90's, though, for my mom to get into the pool…..couldn't mess with the hair.

When my father died suddenly at the age of 48 after working at the scene of a fire, it was a tragedy that my mom never fully recovered from. A year later, when Sharon was graduating from Holy Name and I was graduating from Star of the Sea, my mom moved to Burlingame to be closer to her sisters. She now had a new home, and once again, room by room, she did a makeover. Remember those orange and yellow flowers from the 70's…..that's what our kitchen wallpaper looked like until she changed it to the pink and blue country style wallpaper in the '80's

When John and I decided to get married, I didn't think twice about asking my mom to make my wedding dress. She had, after all, years of experience of sewing all of those matching outfits we wore at Easter. I had every confidence that she would do a great job without considering the fact that I lived in Oregon and she lived in California and that I really wasn't all that available for dress fittings.

I heard an audible SIGH when I told her that I had taken up jogging to lose a few pounds to look wedding dress perfect. It was the only time that I did not hear her supportive of my weight loss plan. I was messing with her dimensions for the dress.

It was all about the dress and that dress just better fit.

OH, and gardening…..mom had a gorgeous garden. How many of you have ever had a personal visit from the water company due to a significant increase in your meter reading. Well, mom did……the water company guy told her that he thought a pipe might be broken, but as it turned out, she was doing an awful lot of planting and watering during the months of July and August in preparation for my wedding. She knew photos would be taken in the backyard and everything had to look just so.

When her first grandchild was born, she was thrilled beyond compare. That 10 pound baby, Jeff, gave her a whole new lease on life. When blonde-haired, blue eyed Scott soon followed, it was double the pleasure.

Katie: BUT WHEN I WAS BORN as THE FIRST GRANDDAUGHTER, ……NANA, a grandma who LOVED TO shop, finally got to go shopping in the girls section of the baby department. And as we all know, there are twice as many outfits for girls than there are for boys.

When Alyssa was born 2 months after me, Nana, of course, was thrilled that she now had 2 girls to dress in matching outfits.

My brother, Kevin came along, and took away some of the attention that Nana had saved just for me.

Nana was there to greet Cecelia Suhila when she was born……she waited and waited and waited all day in that waiting room.

Courtney came along 3 months after Cecelia and the competition for Nana's attention was getting more challenging for me.

Then along came "Jamie", as we used to call him, my big bruiser of a little brother.

4 months later, Nana welcomed Seamus into the world.

Beautiful brown-eyed Shelby was next

Followed by another brown-eyed beauty, Bridget.

Making it an even dozen was my sweet blonde-haired, blue-eyed cousin, Amy.

When each grandchild was born, Nana made a special Christmas stocking with our name on the top in glitter and a special seasonal decoration below. Every Christmas, we got together for the massive Christmas Eve get together with the cousins, where Nana had filled each of the stockings with something special for each of us, and being the shopper that she is, the Christmas gifts around the tree left little room for walking.

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These three things hold true for my mom: She was a devout Catholic, she was proud of her Irish heritage and she was proud to be associated with the San Francisco Fire Department. Before it became popular, she would say THERE GO THE HEROES whenever a fire truck raced by with their sirens blaring.

When mom was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease over 20 years ago, this neurological disorder became a learning experience for my entire family. For all of you sitting here today,………… imagine the impact on your life if you:

1) LOST your ability to drive and had to depend on others to shop for you, to run simple errands, to make arrangements to get to mass, to go to doctor's appt's

2) Imagine the simple gesture of walking across your lawn to water your plants and suddenly finding yourself frozen in place, not being able to move and not being able to get help

3) Consider what it would be like if you could no longer button a blouse or tie your shoes

4) ……that you could no longer walk…….that your ability to communicate becomes severely impaired.

Imagine that the medications to treat this disease have the side effects of depression, hallucinations along with a myriad of other symptoms

Just as I think many of you would, my mom stubbornly fought every single set-back she had as she strived to get back to what was once her independent lifestyle.

It was not easy. In fact, it was very, very difficult.

THANK YOU, Calista Shea, for saying that my mom did not deserve this. She did not deserve a lot of what happened to her, particularly in the last several years of her life…….AND EVEN THOUGH I KNEW THIS WAS TRUE, it was nice to hear someone else say it out loud to me. Thank you, too, Calista & Bill Shea and Jim Potts for driving to my home in Penngrove to visit mom. It was a special treat.

Katie: I've always looked up to my Nana for as long as I could remember. She was an independent, lively, strong and funny woman who loved to spoil her grandkids. And although Parkinson's took a lot from the Nana that I once knew, some things never faded. Her STRENGTH and shear STUBBORNESS were always present as she bravely fought against this debilitating disease.

I can only hope that I have inherited enough of her strength, courage, and stubbornness to get me through the hard times that I face in my own life.

AND BECAUSE THIS HAS BEEN SUCH A LONG AND CHALLENGING JOURNEY, MY FAMILY would particularly like to recognize the people who were steadfast and true, who remembered my mother as she once was-----or even met my mom during her battle with this disease and lovingly supported her.

NANCY LAVELLE : your visits meant the world to mom and to us

PATRICIA BARKER: Your 8-10 page letters describing the life and times in the small town of Cullman, Alabama kept mom reading and re-reading these stories for days

THE CONNELL-SIMONIS family….For your offers to take mom to mass when I could not, for continually being there---as you were on the last Monday night of mom's life….words cannot express our gratitude.

JUNE GRANGER, LAVERNE DUNN ROBERTA McDONOUGH: you never forgot to send mom a card saying you were thinking of her

MICHAEL DUNN: your gift of flowers on birthdays and special occasions meant so much to mom; You are a true example of how one should perform random acts of kindness

JANICE MURPHY: Thanks for fighting the 4th of July traffic to visit your godmother

RONDA & DEBORAH; You always offered to help and you backed up your offers with food……..WE LIKE THAT

PEG McDONALD………..YOU always called to say hello…and just tell her you were thinking of her.

To our good friends FROM elementary and high school days……….You've been our ROCK……..

My mom was fortunate to have compassionate caregivers, starting with my sisters,…….Hanan, …..my next door neighbor, Siobhan, who always brought home made cookies, Rosie, Tina, but most especially, TRUDY. Trudy is a living example of how we should treat the elderly…..with PATIENCE, DIGNITY, RESPECT & UNDERSTANDING. Thank you, Trudy, from the bottom of my heart.

In the last couple of days, there have been several songs going through my mind, as we have been processing this loss to our family. The Irish songs, of course (as listed in the program). But there is a beautiful song, written and sung by Warren Zevon, who himself was struggling with a debilitating disease. These are some verses from the song he wrote as he was dying. This is, I think, what my mom would want to say to you:

If I leave you, it doesn't mean I love you any less

Keep me in your heart for awhile

Hold me in your thoughts, take me to your dreams

Touch me as I fall into view

When the winter comes, keep the fires lit

And I will be right next to you

Keep me in your heart for awhile

NANA……MOM…..We'll keep you in our heart FOREVER.

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This page was last updated on 26 May 2008