Delivered by Elisabeth Gasparka, Andreas Albeck, and Will Albeck on Friday, April 5, 2024

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Thank you so much for being here today to celebrate our Mom, Laura. This week, we’ve heard from friends from all over the world, and people who knew our mom across or in different periods of her unique, international life. We are so grateful. We’ve been uplifted by all the memories and reflections shared about her. 

 

It’s said that grief is just love with nowhere to go. You may remember that from around 2008-2013, our mom’s go-to catch phrase was “good grief.” It was a catch all; something she’d say in response to literally anything– good news, bad news or neutral information. Our mom was never afraid to be herself around us, and had a lot of idiosyncratic catch phrases that she employed over time.  

 

A selection of our mom’s catch phrases, in no particular order:

 

Cheap and cheerful 

Shut up! 

Shut the front door

Let’s not and say we did

Is that wrong? 

Chitchky-tchotchke 

What the what?!

Gossip crusaders

Nah-uh 

It wraps!

Home, James 

I break for tag sales

Ready, Freddy?

I know something you don’t know

Who are you?

Who knew!

 

Our mom wasn’t a strict rule follower… she was, in fact, a bit of a trickster. She loved to play pranks and to lay down zingers. I suspect it’s because she had to learn new social codes, new ropes, moving every couple of years growing up all over the world while her dad served in the U.S. Navy in Korea and in Vietnam. The disarming humor she wielded was a tool she could employ to find her people fast, whether it be administrators in Mamaroneck School District, on the beach at the LYC pool, waiters in diners and, later in life, physical therapists and nurses in the medical facilities where she received care. I can’t tell you how many times staff people made a point to pull me aside to say just how much they adored and looked forward to interactions with our mom. 

 

Our mom was a special person full of contradictions: at once, gorgeous and a little camera shy. Fiercely intelligent, capable and self-deprecating. Hilarious even while weathering personal challenges. Comforting and sweet as cocoa with marshmallows, but with a fiery streak. An old soul, with certain girlish ways. A sensitive artist, enraptured by aesthetic beauty in all its forms, but tough as they come. Sarcastic and acerbic, but deeply loving, generously affectionate and endlessly encouraging of her children, husband, and friends. Worldly, but comforted by routine. Our mom had an insatiable taste for whimsy and was simultaneously obsessed with morbid dramas, including the series Mare of Easttown. She teased Ali and I for years with threats to “murder her durder” if either of us got too bossy. She was an ardent fan of Law and Order SVU, harlequin clowns, and a collector of many antique items including handheld meat grinders, novelty rolling pins and Victorian era baby accessories. Who knew? Our mom was a mysterious, captivating woman whose smile contained depths and multitudes. 

 

As her big, fabulous life with my dad progressed and grew more complex, she was challenged to care for herself the way she did for those she loved. As someone who cared deeply for her, it could be painful to see this disconnect. But what others may not have seen as closely as her kids were the ways that she, no matter how hard things got, leaned into small joys, into laughter, and into love. She pushed herself to show up as much as she could, even when she was in immense pain, even when things were very dark or difficult. She always extended herself, and a hand to hold on to, along with three squeezes to say “I love you.”

 

I want to invite my brothers now to share some reflections about our mom. 

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You've heard just now from my sister on the lighter side of our Mom’s personality - her Loki-like pranksterism and playfulness, her dry and sarcastic wit, and of course, her voluminous and fabulous lexicon of sometimes hokey, always original, and unforgettable catch-phrases.

 

I, too, share many memories in this vein - of a pre-adolescent Halloween mere blocks from here in Larchmont, where she waited patiently in a coat closet for 45 minutes for me to descend the stairs to go trick-or-treating, adorning a creepy mask and bursting out with a roar, all to get a good, old-fashioned jump scare in.

 

Or then there was the time we were on a family vacation, somewhere in the Caribbean, on a cruise excursion with exotic flora and fauna surrounding us. The tour guide was telling us about the local five-finger philodendron plant, which our mother immediately remarked sounded like “five fingers full of dandruff”. The guide then told us about the local variant of venomous banana spiders native to the islands. Mom, sensing opportunity, waited a few minutes and stealthily and softly tickled the back of my ear with a palm frond, again earning an epic jump scare.

 

But she was also the classic doting mother to all of us - fiercely proud, cheering me on whether it was at a rec league soccer game, a geography bee, or my college graduation. 

 

She was also always there for us in times of adversity, regardless of whatever privations she herself may have been facing at the time. In London, I remember her kicking a soccer ball around with me after a disappointing result on a grammar school entrance exam, flouting the stuffy “no ball games” prohibition of our communal garden with wild abandon.

 

In my first year out of college, while working in Manhattan, I caught a nasty case of the flu and was bedridden. As is the case for most 22 year-old males, being ill-equipped to properly care for myself in such a situation, Mom jumped into action. This being in the pre-Uber days, she booked a black cab to pick me up in Jersey City, ship me home, and embarked on a several-day care regimen consisting of plenty of chicken soup, saltines, and warm hugs until I was back on my feet.

 

But besides the cherishing of these fond memories, I think it is equally important to acknowledge something far more difficult: the sheer duration and severity of the suffering she endured in the later years of her life.

 

As some of you know, and many I suspect do not, far predating the affliction that claimed her life, our Mom had significant and persistent health challenges. There were major and minor surgeries, falls and fractures, extended stays away from home in a long and blurred list of hospital ERs and ICUs, and outpatient rehab centers. She largely lost her physical mobility, her world becoming inexorably smaller, while her dependence on others, inversely greater. On top of all this, almost 8 years ago, she lost her husband of 42 years - our beloved father Johannes - after a 2 year battle with cancer. He as well, leaving us far too soon.

 

Our Mom’s loss has torn my heart asunder, and is something that I have only barely begun to process. Now that I am a father -  my daughter Johanna is 11 months old today - this hits especially hard. Over the past two weeks, every day I  find myself reflexively reaching for my phone to share with Mom the latest photo or video of Johanna’s hopelessly cute daycare exploits, the utterance of infant babble with half-formed words, or her beaming smile and squeals of delight after tasting a new food or discovering a new toy.

 

And then it hits me all over again - that Mom is gone, that Johanna will have no memory of her living, that Mom will not get to witness our daughter grow up.

 

I shed light on these hard truths not to evoke pity or layer on gratuitous grief.

 

 I mention them because there are consolations, and they should not be underestimated.

 

Even in the depths of her pain and struggles, Mom demonstrated incredible resilience, verging on the downright stubborn. She had the fortitude to find joy in small ways and large in spite of her mounting challenges. 

 

A few of the many things that Mom undertook in recent years notwithstanding her limitations, included:

 

• Traveling to our family lakehouse in New Jersey dozens of times for holiday gatherings with her children and grandkids 

• Hosting her children in Larchmont for respite weekends from our busy city lives, whenever we needed it and without question

• Bravely trekking down to Disney World with Ali and my nieces Anna-Kristine and Charlotte, even if she never actually left the hotel

• Traveling up to Rhinebeck - twice - in the space of a few months with Ali and then with my wife Bettina and I - to go antiquing in search of more 18th century meat grinders and rolling pins

• Celebrating my and Bettina’s joyous not quite-post Covid wedding at Ali and Josh’s house in Brooklyn

 

And in the course of her tribulations one of the most treasured, perhaps accidental consequences of caring for our Mom these last few years is how it has brought my siblings and I closer together. In fact, I would hazard to say that we’ve never been more closely bonded than we are today, now partially through grief, but more enduringly, through love.

 

This is a testament to the foundation that both our parents built for us. Our Mom was especially adept at creating homes for us all over the world - no matter the geographic location or backdrop. Home is a place to be together, to feel safe, to know that you’re loved, and know that you can return to.

 

And although Johanna will grow up not personally knowing her grandma, her Ellie, she will know this lesson, this legacy.

 

Thank you, Mom.

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Early in her life, our Mother found her calling in teaching. She got her degree in special education at Old Dominion University, after a brief stint at Clemson with her brother, Murray. When my parents began their 22 year long adventure in Europe, my mother taught at an American school in Milan in1975 and at an International school in Antwerp in1977. Even after she had committed herself to raising my three siblings and me, all while supporting our father’s demanding career and exhausting travel schedule, she continued to play the role of teacher in our lives and the lives of others. She was a substitute teacher at Central school, and she was a recurring substitute teacher at our elementary school up the street, Chatsworth. 

 

Our Mom taught us many practical lessons. 

 

She taught me how to cook. I have countless memories standing by her side, keenly observing each step and passing her ingredients as she prepared many of our family’s staple dishes: chicken milanese, stroganoff, pad thai. 

 

Although I have my father’s laugh, it’s my mom who taught me about humor. Much like her father, Grandpa Bill, there was rarely a room or space she did not light up with her charm and wit. 

 

Mom taught me how to be playful, and had a seemingly endless amount of games to play with her restless children before the age of screentime. We played ‘Doodle’ on the back of placemats at restaurants, adding alternating additions to a yet unformed drawing. More recently, we’d play ‘Name Game’ where she’d lightly jab you in the shoulder during the end credits of movies every time she saw a name of someone she knew, there were hardly any dull moments.  

 

She taught me how to be creative. Our family home is adorned with beautiful hand drawn images from her youth like two marines in the rain, or places she’d dreamt of going to, like Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia. 

 

There were unintentional lessons. 

 

She taught me about loss, and all kinds of grief. The good, the bad, and the ugly. The loss of her parents struck her especially hard, but she did her best to shelter her flock from the pain and fear she experienced as it was happening. Though my Grandpa Bill passed away before I had many clear memories of him, she made an extra effort to keep him alive through countless stories, sharing how proud he was of me, his namesake. 

 

And she taught me about love. She taught me about unconditional love. In fact, she taught me how to love so much that you can lose yourself in the process. 

 

Even in the difficult times… especially in the difficult times, she taught me the importance of patience, empathy, and understanding. When we butted heads, as we did often in my adolescent years, it was not a pretty picture. But I know now that it always came from a place of love. In spite of what an irreverent jerk I could be in those years, she advocated for me, and helped me through some of the most difficult times. 

 

Then there were the most important lessons.

 

Our mother taught us her sense of adventure. She would often share stories of her unsupervised capers with her brother and her friends in these faraway lands. Sneaking away from home while her mother was at work and her father deployed to get up to the kind of innocent mischief that would give today’s parents hypertension. At 13, she regularly took the train from Yokohama to Tokyo alone or with friends, to see the Beatles’ film ‘A Hard Day's Night.’ Her adventurous spirit found camaraderie with our Father, when a year after their marriage they embarked on a 42 year journey, raising 4 children across 4 countries and two continents. 

 

Several years ago while traveling, I learned the untranslatable Portuguese word “Saudade” which refers to a melancholic longing or yearning.  

 

Miguel Falabella said: 

“Saudade for a brother who lives far off.

… for a childhood waterfall.

… for the flavor of a fruit never to be found again.

… for the father who died, for the imaginary friend who never existed…

… for a city.

Saudade for ourselves, when we see that time doesn’t forgive us.

All these saudades hurt.

But the saudade that hurts the most is the one for someone beloved”

 

Even though this beautiful, foreign word was one that my Mother never spoke to me, it resonated as a way to see her life in a new way. To understand the woman she was before she became our mother. Even with her many friends and dear family members, and though my parents lived out their shared dream of living a life abroad, I know the constant uprooting of her earlier years left our Mother with a deep, ever present sense of longing and yearning. 

 

And this leads me to the most important lesson our great Mother imparted on us, which is one that began as a wish she made with my Dad, many years ago, before my siblings and I were born. We know in our hearts that they wished for a home, for a family, and a sense of belonging that might have easily eluded two such nomadic souls earlier in their lives. We know they wished for us to be as close as we are, to look out for each other no matter what, and to have all the things they never did. We know that they loved us more than anything, even themselves at times. They wanted to create a loving trusting family unit who could withstand the hardest of times, for better or for worse.

 

Mom, even though your spirit is at rest, you will always live on in these many beautiful lessons, and I will spend the rest of my days sharing them. Even if those people never meet you, they will know you. 

 

Thank you.

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On Saturday, March 23rd, our mom found eternal rest. She was a meticulous planner, and in retrospect I think she’d held on as long as possible, against considerable odds, so we could all be together once more with her. Once all her babies were assembled with her in the hospital, her decline was precipitous. Appreciations and love overflowed along with our tears. We kissed her and stroked her hair. As she was fading, Andy reassured her “Mom, you’ve been so strong for so long. It’s ok to let go now. You deserve rest. We love you so much.” 

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Despite the challenges she’d faced over the years, we all wanted and planned for more time with her, and she with all of us and her special, wonderful grandchildren Anna Kristine, Charlotte and Johanna. In the end, her body could not endure.

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As her youngest child, growing up my mom was my everything. We shared a closeness and bond that was deep, full of immense sweetness and, at times, grief. I absorbed the darkness and shocks of life alongside her. She shared so much with me… from her magical, complex dreams and memories, to unvarnished adult insights about everything and everyone. 

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What I carry forward with me is the understanding that our mom’s heart, patience, toughness, intelligence and humor were the cornerstone on which our family was built. With her at the helm, she and my dad carved a spectacular life across countries and homes, all of which she decorated with panache, elegance, thoughtfulness. Mom always encouraged each of us to excel and explore our strengths, and reminded us to be playful and creative. Our mom was a very special artist and creative person who inspired each of us, as well as the many children she taught as a teacher. 

In our lives, Mom has been the epitome of resilience. Beyond the strength she embodied, she had a charisma and easy sarcastic wit that could melt anyone into a smile. She was sensitive but deeply kind. Quick to forgive and to apologize.

Our mom was a beautiful, complex being who modeled for us an invaluable truth of life: that many seemingly contrasting things can be true at once. Despite the challenges she faced in this life, she never stopped being funny and loving. My mom embraced all of us through mistakes and challenges with wisdom and fortitude. She would do anything for us, and she did so much. 

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Mom, we are so grateful you chose us to be your babies out of all the souls in heaven. Thank you for preparing us for the joys, riches, and the slings and arrows of life. Thank you for giving your life to making our family. We are all here, holding together now, grieving your loss. But you could say that the grief we feel is good grief. Our hearts hurt because we’ve seen your light, felt your love, and the gifts of the family you created. We ache because we wish we could have time—more fun moments, hand squeezes, deep conversations and laughs together. We will love you and cherish your memory and spirit, forever.