Eulogy

I was fine in the morning. As I turned up at the chapel of rest, I was reassured that the little woman in the box was not my mother. Nothing like her. Too small, too thin, too sharp featured. The skin far too sallow, the make-up too dark. It was her dress, but it didn't fit her - more an emerald winding sheet. The white rose resting on her chest was a nice simple touch, and she would have liked it. But this wasn't my mother - this was T'Pau, this was Spock's mother. I didn't kiss her, as I had done when she was in the hospital, I didn't touch her hair. I just looked at her. 

I wanted to see her, as I nearly didn't say goodbye to my dad years ago, but Kelly told me it would be a good idea if I did, and of course she was right. I wanted to see mom again, as the last time I had seen her had been in such horrible circumstances. And this was fine, this aquiline Maltese woman in gentle repose, whom I didn't recognise, looked at peace. I was fine. 

So, when I stepped up to the pulpit to read, I felt unrealistically confident. I read in public for money. I have technique, skills. And I had written the eulogy to be light. She was fun, and this was a celebration of her life. There were jokes, anecdotes. It contained a story that revolved around my mother introducing herself to her extended family as "anus". I was pretty sure it was the first time someone had used the word "anus" in a eulogy. 

I was wrong. Not about the anus thing - I stand by that - but in thinking any of my skills would be of use to me. It's hard to do light-hearted badinage when you're struggling with your breath, or gasping soul-deep sighs, or your voice is a high pitched squeak as you canter breathlessly to the end of another blurring paragraph. 

The first paragraph was great. Nailed it. I even got a gentle murmur of laughter, describing the family producing uniformly big headed babies. Easy. And then it suddenly occurred to me: I'm reading the eulogy at my mother's funeral, and she's dead, and this inadequate summation of the events of her life is it, and I'll never see her again, and the paper started to darken at the edges, and I thought of how she used to make me be an acolyte - a little boy with a big candle - at mass forty years ago, and how every week as I knelt at the altar, just before communion, I would faint, and every week I'd have to go back again and faint for Jesus, and now I was going to faint on the altar again, only this time there was a marble floor my head would be dashed against, and it would be live-streamed to the entire Higgins diaspora. And I thought, yes, this is very in keeping. Its a very Higgins moment. 

But I didn't faint. I took a moment. I re-focused, and I managed another page of my eulogy, as it stretched out in front of me like War and Peace, before my breathe control failed me, and my voice became shrill and hopeless again. It happened three times - the beginning, the middle and the end. And I was done. And I plodded back to my pew, thinking I was mouthing "Well that went well" to my brother, Barry, but in fact saying it quite loudly in the church. 

I hated myself for cocking it up, but in retrospect, I think she would have liked it. I got all the words out, in the right order, and only a few were audible only to dogs. What she would have hated - and again I have no idea why I did it - was I had my hands in my pockets the entire time.

"Disgracing me, up on the altar with your hands in your pockets," she would have said, "like a FARMER!"

Anyway, for those who are interested, or those who didn't hear it the first time - the acoustics were a bit off - this is the eulogy. 

Anne Mary Higgins was a force of nature. Mom - she always affected the American spelling, after spending time in America - was funny, difficult, opinionated, sentimental, loving, and liked a party.

She was born in Sligo in 1940, the youngest daughter to a much older family – her father was exactly one hundred years older than her youngest son. She moved to New York in the early 60s, working for Hearst Publications, but by the middle of that decade she was a nurse in The Whittington Hospital in North London. She met my dad in North London as well – two young Irish people, both called Higgins, and living in the same street. It was kismet. It was also a love that continued until the day she died. They married in 1970 and I was born, in the Whittington, the following year, and my sister eleven months after that. By the end of the decade, they had moved to the seaside, and completed the family with another couple of big-headed babies.

She would throw herself into everything during our school-lives: she was treasurer and later chairmen of the PTA. She was in the St Vincent de Paul, the Union of Catholic Mothers, the Basingstoke Ladies Choir. She enjoyed Irish dancing and arranged flowers for the church, which she also cleaned.

She was always popular: everyone wanted to be in Annie’s gang. Not least her nephews and nieces, who sometimes crossed oceans to hang out with her. She had friends everywhere, lasting, life-long friends. It was one of her gifts: she was easy to like.

And she was also incredibly tolerant. Later, college aged, we children would arrive home from the pub, often with friends in tow, and the big red teapot would always be out on the kitchen table, the laughing and singing carrying on for hours. And Annie was at the centre of it, craftily dispensing her heavy tar B and H cigarettes when our Marlboro lights started to peter out.

If she was in the mood to have a good time everyone would have to be as well – one of her biggest insults, when someone refused a drink was to say, “You’re very sensible, aren’t you.” It’s hard to do justice to the serpentine hiss of that “s”.

Annie Higgins was always the life and soul of the party. When she was introduced to her Colombian in-laws, she took great pride in announcing, in her newly acquired Spanish, “Mi nombre es Ann”. Unfortunately, what she’d actually said was, “Mi nombre es ano”, meaning “My name is anus”, which surprised a number of the Colombian party. The story rattled through the family for years, but Mum never cared, she liked it. She could always take a joke and liked to be at the centre of things. Of course, she always was.

She was a voracious and omnivorous reader. The house was always filled with books, huge teetering piles of books, wedged into every corner. And when we returned from the hospital, the house was still full of books, books that would now never be read. Half books, then, like a song never sung.

One of her defining characteristics was her faux outrage. Our Dad liked to tease her, and she would always respond exactly as anticipated. He once taught his children the words to the song “Do you want your old lobby washed down” because he knew she hated it. And true to form, every time it was sung, her eyes would scrunch tight, her lips would purse, and she’d shake her head, intoning “Not yer old lobby AGAIN!” Everyone was happy: teasing dad, yelling children, and mum loving to hate the song, and loving the serenade.

In her later years, she was happiest surrounded by her grandchildren, whom she adored. And there would be another outing for the faux outrage, when her youngest grandchild Henry would reveal his bottom and do his waggle dance on a Lockdown Zoom. Mum’s feigned horror at the spectacle was part of the delight they both shared.

I knew she was very ill when Mum, previously opinionated on everything, stopped volunteering her thoughts. She would answer questions, but she wouldn’t start conversations. In the last week I spent with her she spoke spontaneously only twice. She told Susan, suddenly, that she had very elegant toes. Two days later it was my turn. She turned to me and said, apropos of nothing, “You have very small hands, John”. And that was it.

Anne Mary Higgins leaves behind four children, five grandchildren, and a lifetime of memories. And she will live on, as a part of us, for the rest of our lives. Her legacy is one of laughter – we have so many wonderful, timeless stories about Granny Annie.