Grams Beautiful Eulogy For those who were close to Lucy — family especially — (known also to us as Mom, Ma, Gram, Gramma, Gramma Lucy, Aunty Lucy, etc.) scarcely did a more special one of God’s creatures ever live in this world. She leaves behind her daughter, Lucille, and her two sons, Albert and Wayne, and 9 grandchildren, 8 great grandchildren, and 3 great, great grandchildren, as well as many adopted and surrogate grandchildren from the various neighborhoods in which she lived, and nieces and nephews, too. We all have wonderful stories to tell, and we’ll tell them for the rest of our lives, of this there can be no doubt. Here, though, is some small attempt to capture the beauty that was her life, and the deep impress she made on so many of us — those here, and those not able to be here. Here we should remember her as the truly unique person she was to each of us. And we should recall today who she was and why she was so wonderful. She was born Lucy Pagan Rodriguez on March 2, 1924, in the very small village of Kukuihaele, Hawaii to Antone and Alejandrina Rodriguez. She came to the mainland from Hawaii in February of 1946 at age 21, an immense journey for so naive and provincial a young woman, one who until then had scarcely left the confines of her little village. She carried with her a not-quite-2 year old and a 3 month old (her two eldest children) and landed in the East Bay with her husband. She worked so hard her whole life, from her time as a young girl in the sugar-cane fields in Hawaii, through her years as a home-maker, able to make any home a home, to her time as a domestic in a more up-scale house than we had any experience with, wherein she earned the respect due a woman of her mighty spirit. One can only wonder at how many dishes, how many pots, how many pans she washed in her long life, how many times she swept the floor. She loved the work and served as an example for all to follow, and she insisted on doing it right up till illness precluded it in her final few months on earth. Through her assiduous work ethic she transformed any place into a home. In Lucille’s words: “It seemed like no matter where we ended up living my mom always made it home, like, for example, the little two room shack on an acre or so of someone’s property in East Oakland — our rent was $10.00 per month. We got our power from an old man named Jimmy, via a series of extension cords strung across the properties. But she made it home. At that little two room house, she took care of my dad’s mother, who had suffered a paralyzing stroke.” She was always duty-bound to her family. When her uncle Ramon moved from Hawaii in the 50s, he went to live with her, and when her own father (our Grandpa Tony) moved to the mainland in the early 60s, she made sure their (his and Ramon’s) home was well cared for. Lucille says: “I remember her working so hard all of her life. I remember sitting and watching her get ready to go to the Saturday night dances she enjoyed so much! — always marveling at how pretty she looked all dressed up.” As Lucille remembers it, they moved dozens of times around the East Bay — like gypsies, but always feeling at home, as Lucy made everywhere a home. Wayne tells the story of never moving more than a few blocks, which, it seems, reflects that old-world provincial attitude that one need never go too far a field. Always developing close relationships with her neighbors, Lucy worked hard at building the bonds that make a good community, just as she was the very glue that held her own family together. And so when Lucy moved to Fresno with Lucille, she was the first to go around and make friends with the neighbors, always making those around her her friends, rather than — as is so often the case in our fast-paced world — just knowing the names of the people who live on the street. She’d always find one or two in the neighborhood with whom she could converse in Spanish. She loved it, and she loved to make friends. She did this in each of the three neighborhoods she and the family lived in in Fresno, until finally settling into the home in which she lived her last years — 27 very good, very, very happy years. She made that house her home, and made the neighborhood a wonderful place to be. She never learned to drive — never had any desire to do it. Hence, her whole world was quite small, but her impact on that world was entirely out of proportion to her size and means. She was la Doña (the Boss) in her domain. Lucy was a giver, typical of those of her generation, but even more — dare I say — than most. What little she had, she was always ready to part with. She was always the organizing force in her household, the reliable bill-payer, the one who put things away, who cleaned up after us all. She loved to have her stuff organized, the photographs, the drawings, the news clippings of our youth: She kept it all. She was the keeper for the family (in uncle Ramon’s old suitcase!), of our mementos, and of the special keepsakes she held onto from her grandma, or her father, not as mere relics, mind you, rather so that we would have some sense of our history, of whence we have come, and whence the generations to follow will have come. Understand, though, she was not a “hoarder”, and in fact we always had to keep an eye on stuff we wanted to keep. She kept a well-ordered house and liked things where they belonged, which often changed based on her own moods and perceived needs: So we can all remember asking, quite often, in fact: wheres my jacket? or wheres this? or that?, only to hear the invariable: Eh! I put em away, where it belongs. Or “I gave ‘em to the Goodwill!” Lucy’s ability to make do with what was at hand usually resulted in the finest cuisine some of us can recall having eaten. Curtis says he remembers, as a child, thinking much of it odd, even offended sometimes at how frying a bacalau could stink up the whole neighborhood, and at how much she loved her sladina (sardines), but as he grew older, he came to appreciate and marvel at her work in the kitchen. Her versions of Spanish, Puerto Rican, and Hawaiian dishes are near legendary: garbanzo stew, gondulli rice, pasteles, epanadillas to name a few; or just the way she could fry up some chicken with a few veggies and make it into something special, something that you could get nowhere else. She could whip up a chicken sandwich to die for: and when asked, “Gram, how do you make it so good?” She’d say, stating the obvious: “Oh, you know, you take the bread, then you put the chicken, then the tomato, then the …” And we could only say, with a smile: “thanks Gram.” (“Thanks Gram” became code for stating the obvious.) Who among us who lived with her did not experience the miraculous healing powers of her chicken noodle soup? Lucille tells the story of how Lucy’s “brothers-in-law always said she could make a meal out of the smallest amount of ingredients.” It seems she always had a way with the culinary arts. She liked watching the food channel because she always liked to learn more. But one cannot help thinking she had more to teach the chefs on those shows than they her. But it wasn’t always smooth going with her. Standing 5 ft. tall, and weighing in at about 100 lbs., she was like an atom: tiny by first impressions but pure energy inside that wee package. She always had to be doing something. She had to be working, and this is how she defined herself. She could be ornery, especially, as Jim (Nick’s dad) used to observe, when she was wearing red. We were always scolding her for climbing in the garage, or for climbing to reach the top shelf of the cupboards, or to clean the ceiling fans. “Gram!” or “Mom!” we’d say, “you can’t just go climbing around like a monkey; you’re 82 years old.” Her response: “And why not?” She was mostly fearless, with two or three exceptions: she was afraid of the water, and so never learned to swim (how odd for a little girl who grew up right on the ocean), and she was afraid to learn to drive, though this never kept her from being one of the world’s great back-seat drivers! She was not without a sense of adventure, however. Always willing to jump on the back of a Harley Davidson, or a horse. And, as already noted, never afraid to scale the heights around her house. Lucille likes to tell the story of her getting stuck in the crepe myrtle tree out in front of the house. She had knocked over the little stool, which she shouldnt have been standing on in the first place. She loved her yard, and she had a magical way with plants. Everything she touched flourished. If ever you had a sick plant, you’d give it to her to nurse back to health. A few years back she planted a fig tree in the front yard. Anyone who has seen the quantity and size of the figs it produces will understand our nickname for it: Gram’s magic fig tree. She was a vital influence on the three grandsons she lived with for much of her life. She taught Curtis to write in cursive at age 4, how to read, and how to iron clothes and cook. She was always so good at stating the obvious, but there was a lesson there always. Those of us who never learned Spanish, nevertheless, picked up a little here and there, and we’d have good fun with it. From her more than any other, we all learned how to respect our elders and how to be generous with what we have. Most of all she was everyone’s grandma — anyone who needed or wanted a grandma could find one in her (from that rabble of hoods and misfits who frequented our house on Victoria Ct. in San Leandro to a house full of Fresno State football players, and, of course, Nick’s buddies, Chad’s buddies, and all the rest. No wonder she became an honorary member of her grandson Nicholas’ local chapter of his truck club. They gave her her own jacket, and she was so proud of the name on the front of it, “TROUBLE”. She loved us all so much that it seemed she loved us as one whole, usually confusing our names completely: Wayne, I mean Albert, I mean Ricky, I mean Curtis, ... Nicholas, I mean Chad... Oh well... God bless them all. She could really make us laugh. I mean a fall-on-the-floor, belly-laughing-till-it-hurts laugh, and then she’d get going, too, and we’d laugh for 15 minutes straight, so hard it hurt. She was a funny woman. Once, after working especially long and hard making gallons of persimmon pulp—mashing them barefoot in a plastic kiddie pool, just like an episode out of “I LOVE LUCY”— completely exhausted — she said: “Shhhhh… don’t tell nobody, but I’m gonna run away.” Right up to the end she kept her biting sense of humor. Once when she was in a deep, deep sleep in her chair and could not be stirred, Lu and Nick called 911, thinking the worst. When the firemen arrived (fully decked out in their gear), they moved in really close to check her vitals, and she, sensing something strange, awoke in a startle. She yelled: “What the ‘F’? [But she, of course, did not abbreviate.] What are you guys doing?! Im not dead yet! She was not yet ready to go. We all got a good laugh outa that one. Just a few weeks ago, when she was having trouble with her appetite, she had a particularly good night eating her dinner. When asked if she wanted some more, she said, “Of course! Whatt’re ya trying to starve me?” She was not yet ready to go. But finally, she was ready, and so we’re brought here to celebrate her life and influence. This humble place, her humble life — a peasant girl from Kukuihaele, who worked in the cane fields, where — as she’d always remind us — the centipedes were as long as your forearm (no wonder she’d squish black-widow spiders with her bare thumb, saying simply, “ehh, just keeeel ‘em”). This place, this hall, stands, in some sense, in profound contrast to her majestic spirit, which even now we can feel about us. She really deserves to be enshrined in a jewel-be-decked tomb in some splendid church in some great old world city. But in other ways, it is all very appropriate, as this is how she lived her life — simply and kindly. She taught us that life was not about money, which was a good thing since we never had much of it. She taught us this not so much in saying it, but in everything she did. Her passing on Christmas Eve is not so much sad as it is her last gift to us all. We will never have to wonder for a moment when it was she left our lives, and each Christmas we will have one another, and her many lessons to reflect upon at that time of year when we are all together. Lucy is like the Ur language of our family —the mother of our varied modes of expression. Each of us is who we are because of her. We will never be without her, because she is an intricate and inextricable part of each of us. Yes, we had many names for Lucy: Mom, Gram, Mongoose, Trouble, (some we cannot even recall), but the name that best describes this tiny, little force of nature is the one given to her — by Providence, it seems — at her birth: Lucy. The name comes from the Latin for light. And that is what she was; more than anything she was our light, and she remains a brilliant illumination for us all. God, it seems, looked down on this sometimes-wretched world and said: “let there be goodness, and let there be light!” He said: “let Lucy be!” And all was Bright. She brought light everywhere with her through the sheer force of her will. It takes a lot of energy to make so bright a light, and it is doubtless that that energy still lives. After all, as modern physics and scripture alike tell us, energy never dies: it becomes a different energy in a different place. This energy was made manifest while Lucy was with us through her inexhaustible love and her interminable work ethic. Vergil, a Roman poet, wrote a poem celebrating work as a necessary aspect of the human condition, and in it he employed the wonderful metaphor of a man rowing a boat. Life is a continuous struggle and one ought never relax too long, lest one be carried back down stream. Lucy was a living example of this ideal. It takes constant work to be so loving and so good. Let us all strive to be like Lucy. I’m reminded of a poem by the ancient Greek Lyric poetess, Sappho, who wrote a beautiful meditation on aging and death. I always thought of Gramma Lucy when teaching this poem to my students: [For you] the fragrant-blossomed Muses lovely gifts [be zealous] girls, [and the ] clear melodious lyre. [But my once tender] body old age now [has seized]: my hairs turned [white] instead of dark. My hearts grown heavy, my knees will not support me, that once on a time were fleet for the dance as fawns. This state I bemoan, but whats to do? Not to grow old, being human, theres no way. Tithonus once, the tale was, rose-armed Dawn love smitten, carried him off to the worlds end, handsome and young then, yet in time grey age oertook him, husband of immortal wife. — Sappho, no. 58 Lucy understood this wisdom, as only one of her energetic industry could. She never wanted to become like Tithonus (shriveled and useless, nothing but a tiny squeaky voice); that was, in fact her greatest fear — to be not merely a burden, but not to be the most useful to those she cared for. She was the one who gave, the one who cared. When she realized she was just worn out from her long life of labor, she accepted what was to come in that undiscovered country, the one whence no traveler returns. We all will miss her so much but are so grateful for the times we shared together. But we must know that she lives on, and she will, on occasion, perhaps remind us of this. Doubtless, she is already one of God’s angels. Perhaps this explains how Wayne experienced a flash of light on the day she passed, or why Lucy and Mark saw an upside-down rainbow, and so were certain it was her saying that all’s all right. No wonder I dreamt sometime in the middle of the night that Christmas Eve that she was with me, saying: “goodbye, for now” in the moments before I learned she had passed. In Lucille’s words: “She was a mighty little warrior — a peaceful warrior — to the very last & she always will be on into eternity!”
Posted on: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 02:54:41 +0000
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