The term eulogy comes from the Greek prefix for 'good' (eu-) and word for speech (logos.) Our normal tradition is to speak well of the deceased by pointing out a number of that person's laudatory qualities and their funeral or memorial service. And I'm moved this morning to do just that. My mother was a complicated person, however, who lived a life outside of the mainstream, and thus her life and her eulogy will, by necessity (and I don't think she'd be displeased by this) be a bit different to your garden-variety memorial. In the end, though, this will be a eulogy, as there was much good in my mother to speak about. In writing this speech, I’ve done a lot of reflecting on my life and my mother’s place in it. And when it comes down to it, it was from her I got many of the attitudes and values that are central to who I am. I’ve been trying to think of a central theme for the person my mother was and strove to be. While her rhetoric was not always matched by her actions, she taught me the importance of setting high moral goals for yourself. And the highest underlying principal I think she taught me was empathy. I think about the best of who my mom was and it was as an empathic person. There are a number of ways this manifested itself, and these are the ways I most remember her. Everyone who knew Calli knew of her love for animals. From as far back as I can remember, our house was a sort of menagerie. We always had at least two animals, often more. When I was doing some research for my sister Kelly, when we first were introduced, I went through many pictures from my mom’s younger years. In most of the pictures she has a cat nearby, a cat named Fluff that my mom loved and my grandfather pretended to tolerate (but almost as many pictures of Fluff were taken with him!). When I was about 5, we got Duffy (the cat, named after a political candidate—on that, more later), followed by Aristophanes and Grover, the basset hounds. Nor did it stop at dogs and cats: I remember Jonathan the guinea pig and Felony the ferret (so named for a penchant for stealing jewelry). Right after my parents separated, she got one of her most beloved animals, and that was Sherman. For those of you who didn’t have the joy of knowing Sherman, he was a Springer Spaniel/Bassett Hound mix. He was a unique dog in that when he was sitting down, he looked like a normal Springer Spaniel. When he stood up, however, he didn’t get any taller. He just became more horizontal. A huge, mischievous personality endeared him to everyone. God she loved that dog, and truth be told, we all did. And this was something we learned from her. Animals were more than just animals; they were members of the family. They were to be treated with the same care and respect that everyone else was. They were end in themselves, as the philosopher Kant would have said, not means to any end. Pets were cherished for their personalities not molded into what we wanted them to be. The bond my mom had with her dogs taught us all that life and love aren’t confined to beings who speak in human languages. I suppose some might say that she anthropomorphized the dogs and cats that shared our house with us, but I’d say anyone who thought that never met our animals. And this is where the empathy came in. There was nothing my mom hated more than anyone who was cruel or unkind to animals. The fastest way to gain Calli’s extreme and probably permanent dislike was to suggest that treating animals disrespectfully was acceptable. To many people this might seem like a minor thing. But it had a central and lasting effect on our family. It’s no surprise then, due to the respect we have for animals, both Michael and I are vegetarians and have been for twenty years. We both married vegetarians (Michael, more than once!) and my children, 8 and 11, have never eaten meat. And we both have animals that, like our mom, are central to our family’s lives. Look at either one of our Facebook pages and you’ll see what I mean. Lots of pictures of pugs and Great Labradanes. One last thing about our mother’s animals. After Michael and I had left home, my mother got another Springer Spaniel (this one not vertically challenged) named Max and we’re pretty sure he was the son she always wanted. I know that some of the happiest times of her life were spent at Salmon River in East Hampton playing a version of fetch with Max. I say a version of fetch because he never brought the thrown item back, as I remember. I think she just thought that proved what a smart and independent dog he was. Michael and I used to kid her that if someone broke into the house and said he was going to shoot me, Michael, and Max but she could save one us, we knew that the human kids not be getting clemency. I used to think this was pretty funny until I realized my own kids feel that way about me and our dog. I’m sure in a fire, Gabe and Isabel would make sure Jake was the first one saved. This empathy extended much further than animals, however. Anyone who knew her knows how important politics, particularly politics defending the weak, the oppressed, the poor, were to her. Most of my memories of my early teen years revolve around her involvement with various kinds of demonstrations: she was a passionate believer in civil rights, equality for gay and lesbian people, against warmongering and war profiteering, and she took stands against nuclear weapons and nuclear power. I don’t have any friends who got to go to demonstrations every other month and spend a couple of weeks during the summer attending their mom’s trial for demonstrating at a nuclear power plant. She opened our house to a fascinating group of lefty activists who taught me so much about both people and politics that I’ll never forget. And she personally was adamant about raising us to never hate anyone because of their race, religion, class, or sexual orientation. In Hartford, CT, 2009, in a Unitarian Church, this may not seem all that revolutionary. But in Colchester in the seventies, it did require courage and the willingness to stand apart, to question the prevailing opinion, and to stand up against common, though often unspoken, prejudices. She had an open mind and an open heart for everyone, and that lack of prejudice is one of the things I am most thankful for about her. Michael and I grew up knowing it wasn’t ok to dismiss anyone for any reason beyond their character, and you were not allowed to say hateful things in our house. This openness and indeed exposure to all sorts of people when we were young have allowed us to have so much richer lives than we otherwise would have. That openness saved my life, I’m sure, when I got sober in 1988 in Baltimore. The only AA meetings in my neighborhood were gay meetings and had I not been raised by Calli Joy, I may have thought twice about taking a seat in those meetings. Those guys saved my life, did the same for my brother a year or so later, and many are still my friends to this day. Had we not been taught that being gay (or not) was an absolute non-issue in terms of who you might want in your life, things may have turned out very differently for us, then and now. Her political involvement got derailed in the mid and late eighties by her drugs and alcohol problems, but her heart always remained with the liberal political worldview, that of absolute equality and kindness for all. It always remained one of her favourite things to talk about, and I can’t tell you how many of our conversations included the phrase “did you see the Daily Show last night?” as, between Jon Stewart and Keith Olberman, she had finally found the media voice for her perspective. She was an early and enthusiastic supporter of Barak Obama for the presidency and, after all the disappointment she had had in the political system in her life, she cried when he was elected. I’m really glad she lived to see him take office so that she had a sense that sometimes people make choices based not on fear, hatred, and parsimony but on hope, love, and generosity. And that’s really what empathy is all about…generosity of spirit, of believing that what we humans have in common is more important than what separates us. And that is a lesson that both my brother and I strive to live in our lives and, indeed, that I try to teach my kids. And even though we (ok, I) had some political detours as young adults, both Michael and I are very much in our mother’s image politically: liberal, equalitarian, democratic, and zealously against bigotry in all its forms. More than that, we are both interested and involved in politics, and many of my conversations with other people start: “Did you see the Daily Show last night?” So, here’s the part of the eulogy where things get a bit dark but ultimately redemptive. And even the dark bits are instructive, I think. Most of you knew that my mother was an enthusiastic party person from her younger days. Growing up, I remember that much of her recreation and other time was given over to drinking, smoking pot, taking LSD and the like. It was frankly kind of a chaotic atmosphere to grow up in. I know from some very honest conversations she and I had in the last years of her life that she didn’t realize how destabilizing it was for us kids. But that period was relatively benign for her personally until the early eighties when she discovered cocaine and, eventually, heroin. It took a while but the wheels came flying off of her life when she started using cocaine regularly and eventually she made a series of bad decisions that saw her leaving her boyfriend of several years and marrying a fellow addict who ended up being physically abusive to her. After her boyfriend (Roger, whom she stayed with until his death early this year) took her back, she discovered heroin and in a short time they were both addicted to that, as well. The end of the 80s was a bleak time for her, indeed. So this woman who had been raised in an upper-middle class family in West Hartford, who was articulate, intelligent, and had many advantages in life, had found her way to living day-to-day, a voluntary victim of the enslavement of addiction. For many people, the story would have ended there. Or her life could have limped on pathetically as it does with many addicts. But she didn’t give up and didn’t accept the life of a junkie. She got herself into a treatment program. She went back to college. And here’s the most impressive thing. She took her experience as the victim of spousal abuse and went to work helping other abused women. And she kept working for over fifteen years daily, through very challenging conditions, to help women who, like her, had found themselves victims of abuse. Instead of giving up or giving in to the pathological solipsism of addiction, she turned her life around and served and strengthened other people. It was, in many ways, where she was able to live up to her political ideals and be the change she wanted to see in the world. I want to talk about one last way in which my mom’s lessons on empathy were lived out in our lives. In many ways, both my brother and I have had similarly fractal lives. We haven’t taken traditional, linear roads to success. We had spectacular successes and equally dramatic failures. We generally took the roads less travelled, roads that are not always approved of by our society. But no matter what, she loved and supported us. I know, for example, that she was very proud of my decision to pursue a career in the Unitarian Ministry but was a little less clear on my reasons for leaving the ministry for a career in business. But she never judged me, never told me I ought to do something else or be someone else. Whether I was a knit-tie wearing libertarian republican (a dark period in high school and college), bohemian actor, minister, techie, or unemployed, I always knew that she loved me for me. This has given me the courage in my life to try new things, take unusual paths, believe unpopular things, and be true to myself. What a gift it is to be able to be yourself. And this is was the way in which she most lived empathically in the world. She valued people for who they were and not who she wanted them to be. If there is one lesson in parenting I hope to live out with my own kids, it’s the sense that who they are okay in themselves and to accept themselves while trying to be the best version of themselves. This was the greatest gift my mom gave me and one I try to give to my kids. There’s so much more I could say about my mom and I must necessarily walkway from this feeling incomplete. For example: • We could talk about her love for her children and grandchildren and how she tried to expose my kids to her love of animals. How she and Isabel shared a love of Unicorns and Isabel has a whole collection of unicorns care of Grandma Calli. • We could talk about her sense of humour, her quick laughter, and how she inherited an appreciation for corny word humour from her own father. • We could talk about how happy she was to have been reconnected to her daughter, our half-sister, after 43 years. For my part, I’m incredibly grateful they got the chance to talk on the phone for a few months before Calli got very sick. And though they never got the opportunity to meet in person, I know how happy they both were to have got to know each other. • We could talk about her love for, and dedication to, her friends. Her friends Maureen, Lee, Lisa, Helen, and her online friends that called themselves the Rebels, were so important to her. They gave her something that sustained her and I think made her life worth living in the dark times. There’s so much more we could talk about, and I want, at this point, to give anyone here who would like to share some memories of my mom and what she might have meant in other people’s lives. I don't think we should be sad for my mother now. We can be sad for ourselves, for the hole that is left in our lives. Many of us have had her around for our entire lives. There is a space in our lives where she was. So we might mourn our loss, might be saddened by her absence here among us. But for my mother, we shouldn't grieve. Socrates, his own death coming within minutes, said the following: what moral and upright man should fear death. For certainly there are only to possibilities regarding a life after this one. Either the just and the upright are rewarded, as is befitting a world with a beneficent God, or death is like sleep, a peaceful slumber for one who has been awake too long. Socrates word speak particularly loudly to us today, on this occasion. For in spite of her challenges and her shortcomings, Calli Joy was a good person, a decent person who strove to give back to world she lived in. And if there was ever a person who needed a rest, having been awake longer than she wanted, certainly she was that person, too. We should instead be glad of his passing for her sake. Emerson, said "Our fear of death is like our fear that summer will be short, but when we have had our swing of pleasures, our fill of fruit, and our swelter of heat, we have had our day." There is a story about a person who came to Henry David Thoreau on his deathbed. This well-meaning friend asked Thoreau "have you made your peace with God?" to which Thoreau replied "I didn't know there had been a disagreement." So, too, did my mother leave this world, and there is no doubt in my mind that my mother is happier now than he has been in some time.