This is the last selfie that I took of my mom and I. It was in February 2015 (one month later she was gone) and we were getting ready to watch a play in Hendersonville, NC. My mom was always up for a selfie - she was so fun and I miss her.
This is the eulogy I gave at her funeral.
Constance Lynn Hamlin-Palmer
3/9/1934 - 3/18/2015
"My first thought when I learned my mom had passed, was who am I going to call for advice or help with something or tell me how to figure something out?
My mom was a wealth of information, sound advice, basically an Encyclopedia Britannica of anything you would need to know. Throughout my childhood and well into my adulthood I would call my mom ...
Mom - I'm planning a dinner party what should I cook? Two hours later, my email would be filled with receipe ideas.
Mom - we are planning a trip to Utah, what should we see? The next morning, an entire iternery of a trip my mom and dad took years earlier would show up in my email.
Mom - my pet rabbit fell off the deck, what do I do? Grant it it's 2am in the morning and I'm 400 miles away .. but she helped me find an 24 hour emergency vet.
Mom - I need a tinsel dress for the school holiday show. My mom asks when I needed it ... tomorrow morning! Sure enough I had the best tinsel dress in town.
Mom - Olivia won't take her bottle, what do I do? The next morning, mom and I went to Babies R Us and bought no less than ten different bottles to experiment with.
My mom never did anything half-heartedly or without passion. We would often joke that mom was tiny, but oh was she mighty. Mighty in spirit, mighty in gumption, mighty in her opinions and mighty in her love.
My mom and dad thrived in their retirement years .. they entered the world of square dancing and round dancing and met so many wonderful and lasting friends. My favorite memory was coming home to visit and watching them dance together in the garage - showing me the latest dances they learned. Every child should have a memory like this - I was blessed.
After my dad passed, I worried about my mom, as any daughter would. I wanted her to find happiness again. She spent a few months with my husband and I in Texas. She would spend a long time on the computer and Dan and I would joke about needing to teach my mom internest safety! I would ask her what she was doing and she would reply, 'a friend is teaching me to play bridge'. I later learned this friend's name was Bill.
A short time later, I was walking her down the aisle to marry this man named Bill. I was thankful that my mother once again found happiness and opened her heart to love once more. We thank you Bill for loving our mother so fiercely, unselfishly and beautifylly. Bill just joked the other day that he served in the airforce for 20 years and then served a Queen for 15.
My mother has had many chapters in her life ... all vibrant, colorful, full of life, some painful, some hard, and some easy and free .. all the elements of a life lived to it's fullest, just as it should be, just as we all should strive for. My mother used to tell me when one door closes, a window is opened.
So as this door closes on my mother's life, a window has opened for her children, her grandchildren and great-grandchilldren to carry on her legacy and to continue to pay it forward.
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