We took Cheryl to her final place yesterday. Her little niche in the cemetery near her mom and dad, down the hill a bit, a place where I eventually will be too. It is an odd feeling. It’s real but not real.

Eulogy (for reading in Church) – I read this at her celebration mass. The copy that I used has many scribbles and notes to myself. I added those to this. In retrospect, I should have selected a giant font to write it with for the copy I read in church.

Thank you for coming to help us celebrate Cheryl

Cheryl and I met at a picnic. It was a blue moon in August of the summer of 1966. A completely random event in our young lives, this is a story about what we have been together since.

We were meant to be. School friends of mine put together a picnic with friends of hers. Cheryl went because they invited her. I went because my friends invited me. Fate happened that night.

Breathe!

I found myself sitting alongside of her at a picnic table in a dark picnic area in Winton Woods. Both of us were wondering how these guys were going to get the hot dogs off the grill, No tools were available to do so. I scooped the hot dogs up with a couple of paper plates quickly enough that the paper did not catch fire and put them on the table where we were sitting. Cheryl later told me that she thought that action was really clever. Cheryl likes grilled hot dogs, so, that night at least, I was a hero.

This was a night that brought us together and changed our lives forever. Had I understood that hot dogs were going to be part of it I could have been better prepared.

Our meeting was a totally random event and since that night (58 years ago) we have been together. It was meant to be – fate, God’s will, or karma it set our course in life. These past few years I have come to believe that it was my purpose in life to be here and take care of her.

After that summer of high school. She went back to Immaculate Conception Academy to the novitiate program of the Sisters of St. Francis at Oldenburg. (You heard that right, she was going to be a nun.) I went back to Purcell. I dated a couple of other girls but I was not interested in anybody else except for her. I suppose if you believe in love at first sight that was it for me. I am not sure about Cheryl (I sense she is rolling her eyes at me.)

Four years later, we got married.

I finished up school at Miami. She supported me at Miami during our first years of marriage. I supported her at University of Cincinnati Evening College and she finished her degree in Math and Computer Science.

We raised three children.

After the kids left to start their lives, we enjoyed life and living. We had two fairly well paying careers and traveled a little.

With her gone, I feel empty. There is an emptiness in my heart.

Breathe!

I do not know what is next but I do so wish there was a manual. She is still here in my heart.

I don’t really quite know how to express that any other way. We lived together for so long.

I love her and she will always be part of me. I have lots and lots of good memories.

Breathe!

These past few years have been a trial.

I choose not remember her this way.

I will remember the trips to hotels downtown. We had several of those thanks to Nativity’s festival and the Bid and Buy booth. We always bid on the trips and overnight stays – the really great date nights.

I will remember Sunday matinees at the Playhouse in the Park. And the discussions with Mom and Dad in the car and at LaRosa’s where we always stopped for lunch on the way to the play.

I will remember the cruise trips. The 4 day 3 nighter in the bow of the boat with the bed so big and the cabin so small there was no place to walk in the cabin. And then the noise of the anchor chain going out at 4 AM in the morning.

I will remember her happy face as we left Seattle for Alaska. Sitting on the veranda outside of the cabin that was so big it had a separate seating area and two bathrooms. And some guy who could make stuffed animals out of towels and my sunglasses.

I will remember the hiking trips in various parks and the looks on the boy scouts’ faces when we encountered each other five miles from the trail head in Green Bow Lake State Park in Kentucky. And how great lunch tasted when we got back to the lodge after our hike.

Perhaps 25 years ago we began visiting Cumberland Falls every year around our wedding anniversary. The place where we honeymooned. There are some rugged hiking trails in that park. Cheryl loved hiking. Vacation did not count if there was no hike or, at least, a long walk on the beach.

I will remember pancakes with fresh maple syrup in the morning looking for the ladies room in Hocking Hills before we hiked the trail.

I will remember the joy on her face when she graduated U. C. Evening College.

I will remember the tired joy on her face after the birth of each child.

I will remember the trips to Myrtle Beach and during those trips the trips to Charleston. Cheryl loved Charleston and enjoyed walking around the seafront and through the market.

I will remember a Christmas Eve a long time ago when she insisted that I open her gift to me and all I wanted to do was go to bed and sleep after a night of celebration and maybe a little too much alcohol with family. She had made me a shirt. She was so proud of it. She was an incredible seamstress and could not wait for me to try it. (I wore that shirt out but I still have others she made.)

I will remember the trips with our friends, the Wehrmans, to Door County and the Grand Canyon.

I will remember walking to Molly Malone’s pub in Pleasant Ridge after she got home from work to enjoy dinner. Sometimes other friends we knew were there. She had a glass of wine. I had a glass or two of Guinness. And we would walk home to a quiet evening at home to our house on Cortelyou. (Ronny lives there now.)

I will remember her herding the kids to church on Sunday morning.

And cold weekend mornings alongside soccer fields.

I will remember her excitement when Anna announced that our first grandchild, Laurencia, was coming. And David’s phone call from Illinois when Luke was on the way. And Scott’s phone call that eventually turned into Gavin.

And all the other phone calls about babies and other events. Whenever we came home from anywhere she would check the phone for messages.

I will remember how she cared for her own mother, Elaine near the end of her life.

Breathe

I will remember how she cared for me and our family through life and how kindness and caring was in the forefront of any of her actions.

I will remember many things about our time together but I will not dwell on the last few weeks and months of her time here.

I love you Cheryl. (breathe)

You will always be with me.

I carry your heart in my heart. (breathe)

Breathe Again!

I will remember your smile.

…

The church was pretty full yesterday. I was gladdened that so many of her friends and family were able to come and help Anna and David and Scott and I celebrate Cheryl for a little bit.

I wrote and rewrote this tribute to Cheryl and our life together over the two weeks between her death and the date of the celebration Mass. I could feel her with me somehow when I stood at the lectern in church (which she called the ambo. Why are there so many names for the same object?)

Last night was the first night she spent in the cemetery. And I am awake thinking of her and yesterday’s evens at 4 AM.

Carpe Diem.