February 15, 2002
Funeral of Grace Geannette Armbruster
Remarks by Sandra Seitz

We are not happy to be here.

This is not the occasion we envisioned, not the sixtieth wedding anniversary or the 90th birthday celebration.
Someone so vital and alive, healthy and active, full of piss and vinegar-it is unthinkable that she is dead. But we know it's true-we held her hands and watched her last breath.

I've known Mom a long time now-when I was little, she was a young woman in her mid-twenties - and I can tell you from all three of us kids: she was a tough act to follow. She always had more-more ideas, more energy, more drive, more encouragement (sometimes called pushing), and more creativity, than any other three people I knew.

There are so many stories:

As you can imagine, Mom was never much for protocol, but as a Navy wife she had to participate in the Navy wives' luncheons, and one time her job was to make the place cards. Of course she had an idea: let's paint pictures of geishas in full kimono and cut out each one for a place card. We must have spent 50 or 60 hours on that project.

Mom was always resourceful. In New Zealand the women entertained with afternoon tea, using their beautiful silver tea sets. Well of course we didn't have a silver tea service, so Mom created a hobo tea party, with tin cups wrapped in bandannas and tied to sticks. The women oohed and aahed and loved every bit.

And Mom was determined. After the aneurysm struck and before she lost consciousness, the nurses at MacGruder told her to wiggle the toes on her left foot. Well, she couldn't, so she hooked her right foot under her left, and wiggled it that way. That was Mom to a T.
Mom and Dad were a great couple. They met at 14 in Octa Kincaid's ninth grade English class. And, they are well matched: salt and pepper, oil and vinegar, cream sherry and dry martini, the diplomat and the blunt-spoken-two very different people who danced together like a dream, laughed at the same earthy jokes, raised their kids with a blend of challenge and support, then did the same for other children: smart ones, slow ones, troubled ones, poor ones-launching together into second careers (or was it the third or fourth?) and then starting all over to enjoy retirement here in Port Clinton, with new and old friends, new interests and associations, a great flowering of spiritual and intellectual life.

Dad is bereft-of his beautiful bride, the companion of all his waking and sleeping hours. Pam and Robie and I are bereft of the mother who knew us from the beginning, was the mentor of our youth and the inspiration for aging well.

But we are the privileged ones. We stand before you and everyone acknowledges our grief. We have prayed together, laughed together over stories, been hopeful together, been devastated and resolute together, and in the end we let her go-together. We are a strong family.

And now our hearts go out to you and it is your turn to grieve with us, to say good-bye. Because you are also bereft.

You have lost the companion of your daily life-your good neighbor, your dear friend, your cousin and buddy, your colleague and church member, your musician and computer consultant, grower of vegetables and herbs.

A cousin said to me, "I feel selfish thinking about how I'll miss her." But you will miss her: there's a hole where she should be in this community. And when we kids disappear back to our daily lives far away, you must turn to each other and to our dad. Grieve together, remember her, and then celebrate her life.

Everyone has a story about Grace Geannette:

When they lived in London a friend of Mom's was good at teaching French to young children and Mom prodded and encouraged her to turn it into a career. She's now finishing her third book and she called the hospital every day from England.

A cousin is now an artist and art teacher because Mom introduced him to oil painting.

And one of my favorites: my brother Robie is in the Navy and entered the officer's wardroom one morning, saying, 1 had a really tough computer problem last night, very tricky. I called my mother.

My sister Pam said, "it's so unfair Mom is dying when she is so full of life. She should have had 10 more good years."

What would she have done with those years? As Dad said in the hospital, "your mother - she never does anything by halves." "No," I said, "why be ordinary, if you can be spectacular."

Here's a woman who was a beauty at 18, a real stunner, a registered nurse in her twenties, a professional musician in her thirties, and even then an adventuresome cook and avid gardener. In her forties she learned spinning and weaving, and on a dare sheared a black sheep to get the fleece. In her fifties, it was painting from life-nudes, of course, and starting a program for gifted children. In her sixties she gave up smoking, a great achievement, and expanded her work with computers. In her seventies her church work blossomed and she started serious reading in politics. Four weeks ago, she joined a fitness center.

So what might she have done in the next 10 years? Who knows, but it wouldn't be ordinary.

You know, Mom never let us get away with ordinary. That's her challenge to us - and to you. When you get up tomorrow and plan your day, make it more man ordinary: push your talent further, take an interest in a child's education, try something new for dinner, get a thick book from me library and read it-take notes, find a good joke and pass it on, learn something on the computer, make beauty everywhere-even in the linen closet, adopt a cat.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, think of Grace-and make that day something special.