This is what I read at my mother's funeral...

For now, I can only write these small and choppy things about my mother, and I write them from my single point of view, as her lastborn daughter and, I boldly claim, as her friend.
It’s hard to judge, but I believe that perhaps the most valuable thing my mother did for me was guide me down a path in life where after 27 years of life, the most profound personal pain I’ve ever felt started the day I had to swallow the fact that I was going to have to live without her. Shakespeare was quite right to say that parting is a sweet sorrow. See, I know that she is now singing of the Mercies with her God. I don’t know what heaven is like, but I imagine her there, renewed, cavity-free, sparkling and radiant, reunited with loved ones. Why sweet sorrow? Well, it’s sweet to know that she is where she should be and because the reason it hurts so sharply to lose my mother is because it was delightful to be with her.

She marveled at things. She marveled at rare things, like the Aurora Borealis, dancing its colors across the northern sky. Typically, we had to deliberate whether the streaks of light were just the reflection on the clouds of Rolla and Rolette's city lights or the actual Northern Lights. The thing is, she cared whether or not it was.

She marveled at ordinary things like popcorn, a baby’s smile, a melody. She simply soaked up the sunlight of music.

She exclaimed at intricate quilts. She schemed and planned, saved, and stored boxes of old scraps. She was drawn with a magnetic force to quilting circles (or rather quilting rectangles). She marveled, not only at the creative act of sewing, but at the fellowship shared in those times.
She devoured books late into the night, preserving the facts she encountered in them and pulling them out in Trivial Pursuit games. She stockpiled good Scrabble words and somehow remembered the meaning of them. "Oh, juju," she’d say and think a brief moment, "It’s a sort of charm." We, her oh-so-educated and big-headed children would wrinkle our brows with disbelief and grab a dictionary. I don’t remember EVER proving her wrong.

She laughed until tears rolled down her cheeks. She marveled at birds and flowers and beautiful fabrics. She felt deeply the mandate to reach out to others in need, to those who were thirsty in spirit, to those who didn’t have enough. She knew that true worship was more than words, that true worship is only through the Spirit.

Please, my attentive audience, if a death should ever be something good for those who remain behind, it is by inspiring us to be better people, more loving, more Christ-like, more perfect.

So, be inspired by my mother.
Marvel at life.
Be cheerful as much as possible.
Run to take pictures of sunsets.
Hug children with every ounce love you have.
Trust your sons and daughters.
Be a true companion to your spouse.
And mostly, mostly, mostly, Love the Lord your one and only true God, with all your heart and soul and mind.

Gwen F. Kauffman

Where my mom grew up in Condon, Montana

My mom holding me in 1981

My parents leaving for their honeymoon 1965