Hello Everyone, I am Heathers daughter, Victoria. Mum and I talked about funerals and eulogies a few weeks after her diagnosis, and she said that she hated when people paint someone up like a saint just because they died. She said she wanted us to remember all of her, the bad and the good. My mom placed a high value on truth, so today I honor my mother with the truth.
My Mom was the most vibrant (she would call it Technicolor) person I ever knew. She was larger than life. Growing up, I worshipped her. When asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would say that I wanted to be a stay at home mom just like my mom – and I am. As a teenager, I kept wondering when I would get as saucy as her (at 30 - I’m still waiting). And as a woman, wife and mother, I have only just come to realize how extraordinary my mother is.
Whether it was popular or not, my mom was true to herself. If she felt someone was wrong – she said it, loud. If she wanted to wear fishnet tights and a corset – she did. If she loved something or someone – her enthusiasm made it impossible not to love it too. This made her controversial to some, and to others, a hero.
My mom saw the world in black and white. And once she decided on something she was almost immovable. If she saw something as wrong then it was filthy black as midnight and there was no telling her it was grey, and if she saw something as right then there was no tainting it by looking at it in another direction. This was intimidating and frustrating, but her strength of belief also made her the fiercest fighter in this world. She was such a warrior. Sometimes it was a gift and sometimes it was a curse. She scared me more than anything else in the world when she was mad, even as an adult. But I saw her use that same power to wage war, even against some of you here, for truth, against injustice – and for many of you, for your own freedom. I know that so many of you here sat with my Mom for hours and talked about the darkest hurts of your life, about your heart and your journey to find wholeness. She loved helping people find their way through the dark in their own hearts, and she was good at it.
My mother’s passion was for the broken hearted and lost. She had such compassion and pity for people who had suffered. And she was like a magnet for them. So many times she’d tell me how she was just working and some woman would walk up and start sharing about how she’d been abused or how she was in a bad marriage and right there in the isle of Shoppers, or at the cosmetics counter in the Bay, she’d counsel the woman (Mum just said she’d talk to her about learning to love herself or whatever, but it was counseling). This happened her whole life, over and over again. It was her gift and it was extraordinary.
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My mother was my rudder. Her opinion carried such weight with me that I learned as I got older that I had to be careful when to ask for it, because once I knew her opinion it was hard to see things in any other way.
The single most influential person in my life has been my mother. I guess that’s the nature of motherhood. I don’t remember a time when she wasn’t there and when I look ahead at a future without her I feel so lonely it hurts. And it isn’t like our relationship was without it’s own trouble or ups and downs – it’s just that for better or worse, she was my mom and we shared a bond that no one can ever replace. She saw into me and as I grew older, I saw into her.
Everyone knows my mom for her style, her shoes, her sassy attitude and while those are really fun parts of her, they are just the fluff compared to what was in her character. I want to talk to you about her character today. I want to honor her for what made her truly extraordinary.
My mother should have been a statistic. She suffered terrible abuse and neglect as a child, and I have no qualms about saying her own mother was a terrible person, the worst woman I’ve heard of this side of fiction. And yet my mom rose above the path she knew, above the abuses heaped upon her and made no excuses. Where she hadn’t been shown the way, she made her own way. She was resilient and resourceful. She was fierce in her determination to live, and not just survive.
When at 18 she gave birth to me, by all rights she should have been just another teen mom. But she wasn’t. She was extraordinary in the most self-sacrificing, everyday way. She’d been homeless, but she made a home. She’d been drinking and doing drugs, and she stopped. She was a wild child, and she gave up that life to create stability for me. She had been neglected and abused, and instead of repeating the cycle of abuse, as so many of us do, she fought everyday for a different fate for her daughter and son. She fought her own dark to give us light.
She had been treated like a nobody, but my whole life, she told me I was somebody.
She was robbed of more than any person should have to give, but all her life, she willingly gave.
She made spectacular mistakes, but through them showed me how to repent and move on.
She was a fierce creature who saw the whole world in black and white and never budged an inch on what she believed in.
My mother taught me how to stand apart, and to stand on what I believed in.
The beautiful, vivacious, louder than life woman we celebrate today had every reason to fail, and it is to her credit and I believe her eternal reward, that she refused to surrender to the dark in the world, though she saw it at every turn, and fought for better.
If you loved my Mom for even a second, I ask of you to celebrate her life by living yours. Let’s all fight her premature death by letting go of our hurts, our fears and by loving God and good cheese. By finding something to laugh about and a pair of wild high heels to wear. By fighting for our families and standing on our principles no matter what the cost. And if you are the daring sort – by daring to live a live in flaming Technicolor. When you reach the gates of heaven, I think you will find yourself in good company.
