Final Draft of the Obituary before the Mourning for All that Was Left Out

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The Inadequacies of Obituaries  

            Never mind that the cost of running Mom’s obituary twice was the same as the cost of six round-trip plane tickets for her grandchildren and great grandchildren traveling three thousand miles from the east coast to attend her memorial.  I have another frustration with obituaries.  They have to leave far too much out. 

            Here’s what I submitted after editing by Kathy, Suzy, and Jonathan:

Nadine Martin Oct. 25, 1921 - Oct. 12, 2011

In loving memory of Nadine Martin, Mom, Nani, Nay, of Pleasant Hill, born in Kansas City, Missouri, on October 25, 1921, named Natalie Virginia Stephens and renamed Nadine Virginia Robison by her adoptive parents Perry and Lela Robison, who moved to Oklahoma and then to California, where she attended school and studied piano and ballet. An honor student, she started UCLA at the age of sixteen, also attended UC Berkeley, and later left college to marry Elmore Martin, type his dissertation, and start a family. They lived in California, Idaho, Iowa, South Carolina, and Kansas. In South Carolina, she continued her education through correspondence courses at the University of South Carolina, and the year they lived in Hays, Kansas, she graduated with honors from Fort Hays State College with a degree in English. She and her family then moved to Pleasant Hill, California, where after twenty-five years of marriage and five children, she and her husband divorced. She worked as a counselor at the children's shelter in Contra Costa County, where she met Kathy Loss, who became her partner and companion of more than forty years. She also worked as a probation officer for Alameda County, where she was praised for her beautifully written court reports. She and Kathy traveled extensively in foreign lands and the US. She always had the motto, "If you want to do something or go someplace, do it now--don't wait." In her sixties, she discovered that her birth mother had five other children, four of whom she then met for the first time. She retired after about twenty years and learned to use the Internet at the age of seventy-two so that she could do volunteer work at the Mount Diablo Peace and Justice Center. She was still tap dancing and rollerblading in her seventies, when she and her grandson Jonathan formed the Jonani Duo, giving concerts at family birthday celebrations, with her on the piano and him on the clarinet. In her eighties she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and in March 2011 she moved to Aegis Living of Pleasant Hill, where she continued playing the piano for her enjoyment and that of other residents and staff. She will be remembered for her warmth and wit, joie de vivre, social activism, and the inspiration she provided to those who knew her. She loved gardening, reading, playing tennis and Scrabble, doing crossword puzzles, bicycle riding, and contemplating cloud formations. Her children remember her handiwork in making their clothes, costumes, formals, and even the afghan covering her at the time of her death on October 12, 2011, at the age of 89. They are grateful for her introducing them to show tunes, Tom Lehrer, Nichols and May, a love of nature, a lively exploration of ideas, and a compassionate inquisitiveness about the world. They are also grateful to all who cared for her, including Aegis staff, John Muir staff, and loved ones who were always there, in particular her partner Kathy. She was predeceased by her daughter M'Lissa Martin Jones, who died in 1994, and siblings Jasper Culley and Margaret, Bill, and Nadine Langan. She is survived by her partner Kathy Loss, her sister Virginia Langan Real, her children Dana Martin Langner and Tina, David and Susan Martin, grandchildren Rebecca Jones Carlisle, Jamie Jones Markel, Megan Jones, Erik and Karl Langner and Jonathan Martin Wills, her great-grandchildren Samantha and Alison Markel and Emily Carlisle, and dog Samson. There will be a memorial gathering for Nadine's close friends and family. Please call Kathy L xxx at xxx for further information. Donations in memory of Nadine can be made to the Alzheimer's Association or to the Mount Diablo Peace and Justice Center. 

            “I never explained the reason that I identified Mom’s parents as her adoptive parents,” I told my son Jonathan. 

            Jonathan was in San Francisco, his third time this year.  He was going through clarinet pieces to choose what he’d play at the first of Mom’s memorials.  We were having one for people who knew her and one for my friends, most of whom didn’t know her but who care because they care about me.

            “I hate it when people imply that adoptive parents aren’t the real ones.”

            “Yeah.  The blood is thicker than water thing.”

            “Try drinking blood when you’re thirsty.”  I said. 

            But this wasn’t the time to go off on a tangent about water as blue gold and the percentage of people in the world who didn’t have access to clean water, though that was something Mom would have worried about.

            “I specified adoptive because I needed to identify the other family I found for her back in the early eighties.”

            “Yes, someday you’ll have to tell me more about that,” Jonathan said.

            Jonathan was tactful.  He was saying “someday” to indicate that this was not the time, to guard against my tangents.

            Just beyond where Jonathan was at his stand in the middle of the living room I could see the white trunk I still had there in the nook.

            “And I kill off your Daddyman awfully fast.”

            Daddyman was the name that Jonathan at the age of three gave my father, a man he didn’t remember having met before.  He heard me calling him “Daddy” and started referring to him as “Daddyman.”

            A moment tomorrow for him.