Eulogy for Joyce M. Ambuehl

Joyce Marie Ambuehl

Ages and Stages

On May 23, 1947, a two and a half pound fetus was pronounced stillborn before she ever entered the world. In the delivery room, her mother clutched her own mother's hand, pushed forth her infant who, to everyone's astonishment, she was alive. At the time, there was no medical technology to support such a premature baby, so the doctor sent my grandmother home with the stern warning to not expect her to live past a few weeks.

My mother spent the next few weeks sleeping in her father's shoebox with his handkerchief as her blanket.

It may be hard to reconcile this image of my infant mother with the woman we are here to say goodbye to. Her life was truly a miracle; thereby, all of our lives have been miracles. The child who by all means should not have lived did so and brought forth my life, the lives of my siblings, and the lives of my children. If she had not survived, none of us would ever have been born.

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Mom and dad's wedding, Feb 22, 1969

"She was a saint," my brother in law said recently. My gut reaction was, "No, she wasn't!" I'm her daughter; I should know. In my mind it can be difficult to separate the mother I had growing up and the woman you knew in her later life.

As an adult and as a mother, I have come to understand the strain my mother was under as a young woman and what drove her to behave as she did. I've come to have more compassion for her, to understand that, just like me, she did the best she could with what she had.

Having moved from Florida - the only home she'd ever known - to Texas with only her infant and her husband, she was isolated and alone most of the time. This was particularly challenging for her because she is descended from the Colson clan, which includes about a hundred people all of whom live within a five mile radius of each other. Then she had me and two short years later, my sister.

As a child, ours was a house divided. Where my father was so silent at times as to seem comatose, my mom was so outspoken as to seem manic. At other times, especially around the times of her migraines, she would fall into deep depressions. I remember lying in bed at night and listening to her cry on the porch outside my window. Once, she went so far as to climb in her car and drive off without telling anyone where she was going.

There were wonderful times, though, too. I had terrible nightmares as a child. In the wee hours of the morning, I would run to her bedside and beg to get in. She pulled me close, comforted me by wrapping her arm around me, and kissed my head. In time, I could calm down and fall asleep to her rhythmic breathing.

Before school, she would lovingly plait my hair - the same hair she always wished she'd had. We held dance parties in the living room the three of us girls, flitting around to Strawberry Fields Forever, tromping around to Thriller, learning the jitterbug, cha-cha, and line dancing. She sang Que Sera to us in the morning and before we went to bed just as her mother did and as I do now for my girls.

All that changed 25 years ago when my dad finally embraced the faith he so admired and he and my mom got on the same page, to share their love of The Lord with their children.

When you read about the saints, many of them experienced similar conversions.

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I have been trying all week to make sense of this.

Mom with her baby brother Ed before he died.

My dad has said that God prepared him in his thoughts and prayers throughout the past year. To be honest, God has done the same for me though I didn't know why it was happening. Every time I spoke to her recently, if I started to get annoyed with her, I would say to myself, 'One day, you're going to miss this.'

When my uncle died 18 months ago, I saw a side of my mother I had not seen in almost 20 years, not since my grandma died. For the first time in my selfish life, I saw my mother's weakness and asked, "What can I do to help?" I saw her depression and realized that she and I are the same.

When I got pregnant with Lila, My momma's 5th and final grandchild, I asked my mom to be by my side just like she was when Maya was born. Earlier this year, She missed Lila's birth by mere minutes, and I could see in her eyes immediately how sad and sorry she was. But in the five days to come while I was hooked up to machines in the hospital, my mom was the one I needed at my bedside. Though Lila may never remember her the way we will, her grandma is the one who helped form her earliest moments in the world. Her foundation. Grandma held her when mommy couldn't, comforted her while mommy slept, and became the rock upon whom We all trusted. My mother will forever be the model of motherhood I will try to live up to.

She was my confessor. She may not have been a priest, but I knew if anyone could ask God to forgive me, it had to be her. Like my sister, I have no regrets in regards to what I needed to say to my mom. I told her all in the last year. She did not judge me; she simply told me to use the rest of my life as atonement for my sins.

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Look at that smile.

People love my mother for many reasons: Her smile, her compassion, her selflessness. She was the kind of woman who would take the vegetables her kids turned their noses up at and would feed to the poor. Her special ed students depended on her for hugs because they had no one at home to hug them. My friends told me over and over again they wished she were their mother.

She was mother to many; the rock upon whom we depended; our strength, our guide, counselor, teacher, wife, mother, sister, daughter, aunt, cousin, friend.

Perhaps to make sense of her death we must look inside ourselves and ask, "What have I learned from Joyce Marie Ambuehl and how can I share that with others so that I may carry on her legacy of compassion and perseverance?"

Was her life a miracle? There can be no doubt.

Was she a saint?

You knew her, too. What do you think?