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I will only have this one opportunity to honor my mother publicly in the presence of those who loved her and appreciated her as I did and I intend to use it well. My name is Katrina Rasbold. Most of you here who do know me, knew me as Kathy Chapman. If the lady we are honoring today had had her way, I'd be introducing myself as Lydia Jane, but fortunately, Dad won that debate and I was named for a German ballerina whose name he misheard. If you think my movement through identities was confusing the metamorphosis my mother experienced was even more profound. Lou Mitchell, Lou Chapman, Judy Chapman and Judith Miller were all combined into one incredible woman who was my mother. Lou Mitchell, I never knew and there are many loved ones here who hold the memories from that piece of her history. It is my impression that by whatever circumstances, somewhere in life, Lou Mitchell picked up the idea that she was not pretty enough, not smart enough, not talented enough and not important enough. Nothing could be further from the truth. I think of my mother as Lou Chapman. In her, I feel I got the very best of parts of my mother. She was, in my early childhood, an absolutely phenomenal mother. Because of her, I experienced a childhood that would put the word "ideal" to shame. My days were filled with my mom and her limitless expressions of creativity. She would walk my little legs off to get to a particularly nice picnic place she'd found or a patch of ripe blackberries. Lou Chapman would plop herself down in the mud and make endless mud pies with me to play restaurant. More than once, she would make a crib for my baby dolls out of a large Quaker Oats box. She made barns for my plastic animals from Puffs boxes. She handmade nearly all of my clothes and she'd take the leftover material scraps and make a matching dress for my baby doll or Barbie. At the time, of course, I didn't realize that all children did not live that way. I also didn't realize that we were poor. I thought everyone ate beans and ham for all three meals, had an outhouse, walked to the pump outside for their water and heated their houses with a fat, black coal stove. That was the same coal stove into which I jammed my mother's silverware one winter. While Mom was digging out the melted ball of metal and was crying a little and cursing a little, I came upon her. Seeing her bent over, fishing in the bottom of that stove, digging her silverware out of the ash catcher was more than my three-year-old teeth could handle, so I took a bite. The next thing I knew, I was airborne, sailing backwards into the wall behind me with a little rain of plaster falling into my hair. I never bit Mama again and that poor gal had a terrible bruise for about two weeks. Like most children, I didn't appreciate what I had at the time and like most moms, the time came when she put her curse upon me, promising I'd have a child even worse than I was. Now, when my three-year-old is painting murals with my makeup or pouring a gallon of orange juice into the carpet or kicking the dog, I know Mom's having a grin. Later on in life, I learned that we were actually dirt poor. My father would take the 1922 silver dollar someone gave me when I was born and give it to Mr Colk at the general store to hold for him to buy groceries against. My parents faced extreme financial hardships, but I never knew it. They were young, happy and very much in love. My days were filled with joy and love because of a mom who was a child's dream companion and a dad who called me "Kitten" and could fix anything. During this time, despite their financial disadvantages, my mother began a tradition she would carry on for forty years. Each Christmas, she would find a family in the community who would not otherwise have Christmas and make certain that they had gifts. She would buy toys at thrift stores, make clothes and stuffed toys and send a few apples and oranges over. No matter how ill she became, she never missed a year and one month ago, with the help of my brother, Allen, she helped the fortieth family have a Christmas that almost wasn't. In the late 60's and early 70's, something shifted and our world changed. I won't even pretend to know what it was. Our lives became a series of medical emergencies and it seemed as though Mom was always getting ready for surgery, having surgery or recovering from surgery. Just before I got home in 1978, Lou Chapman became Judy Chapman. Judy Chapman went out and got her drivers license, finally, although for as long as I knew her, she would still close her eyes when she went over a bridge and couldn't help but turn the steering wheel in tandem whenever she'd roll a window up or down. The roads of Kentucky became a safer place when Judy Chapman got a car with electric windows. When my father lost his job, Judy went out and got a job working at NHE nursing home and later, at Medco, which is now Bon Arbor. She went to vocational school and received a certificate in food preparation, which was appropriate because she was an incredible cook. She supported the family at different times when my father was out of work. When the situations called for her to do so, my mother stepped out into the world with courage and strength. I was with my mom in 1986 when at the age of 43, just two years older than I am now, she had to bury my father. He left no provisions for the family and she was forced into hardcore survival mode. Survive, she did, despite a plethora of obstacles, bringing her two sons through it intact as well. A while later, Judy Chapman became Judith Miller when she married a Cajun truck drive named, Grover Eugene Miller, G-E-M, "the Big GEM." Grover taught her how to love again and that she was worthy of being loved. Say what you will about Mr Miller, but he brought a light to my mother's eyes and she adored her "Cajun." In 1996, she endured the heartache of burying another husband after seeing Grover through a lengthy illness. They endured challenges together and her loss was great when he died. A few years ago, my mother did what most of us thought she'd never do more than talk about. She moved out of the family home and into her own apartment, living alone for the first time in her life. Despite her many health difficulties, she found happiness, peace and a part of herself. She also found someone who, sadly, you will not find mentioned in any of her obituaries, but a man who is extremely significant, nonetheless. Through a strange set of blessed circumstances, she reconnected with a man named Junior Davis, who would, ironically, in her last years, bring Judith Miller back around full circle to Lou Mitchell, because both Lou Mitchell and Judith Miller loved Junior Davis. Mom told me that she'd broken up with Junior Davis a while before she started dating my father. Mr Davis was my mother's first love and he would also be her last. Every woman needs a true "sweetheart" in her life and Mr Davis was that to my mother. He filled her final years with joy, love and faith that few of us ever experience. I felt more smiles on her face in the past 2 years than in 39 previous years combined and that is saying a lot because my mother loved to smile. I'd like to thank Mr Davis for taking such good care of my mother and for the love, respect and honor that he bestowed upon her. Although circumstances prevented them from marrying, she loved him every bit as much as she loved her two husbands. Someone who I love and respect dearly once commented correctly that if you wanted to know what really happened in a story my mother was telling you, just take what she said and divide it in half and you'd be pretty close. My mom experienced every moment to its fullest and her life was not just a series of sequential events, but a story to be told to the world. Events occurred for her on a much more dramatic and elaborate level than the rest of us. This was her world and her perception of it. Life was just bigger and more interesting for her than it was for the rest of us. For the entire time I knew her, my mother struggled with her weight. My impression is that she was just too big of a personality to be housed in a small body. She had to be bigger than most of us on the outside because she was bigger than most of us on the inside. Mom cheated death so many times that I think a lot of us had come to believe that she was bulletproof. I fully expected her to recover this time as well and even after my brother, Ed, called to tell me she'd passed, it all seemed very unreal and still does. My brother went through an incredibly difficult time as he and his wife tended to Mom in her last week and afterwards. I want to thank them for being there and I want to thank those folks who were so supportive of him during that time. My mother died as she lived, surrounded by enormous love and enormous drama. I didn't get to be with my mother as much as I wanted in the past several years, although we talked often by phone. I missed her then and I miss her now. This past Christmas, she surprised me, with a gift that was so deeply personal that I cried for days. I received, thanks to the help of my Aunt Patsy, this volume of my mom's poetry, handwritten by her, documenting her innermost feelings from her history. It was a poignant reflection of the love and sorrow, fear and wonder that she experienced over many years of her life. What a treasure it is and what a blessed gift. When I left Sacramento on Thursday, I thought it would be her last gift to me, but since I've been here, I understand that her final gift to me is to be here in the midst of the people who love and appreciate her as I do. When we grieve, one of the things that we have lost is the physical presence of the person with whom we share history and memories that happened of a personal nature between the two of you. When the other person who experienced those moments with you is gone and is no longer there to validate and relive those memories with you, we fear they will somehow become less valid with time when we are the only remaining witnesses. Both of the people who experienced that incredible childhood with me are now gone and it was a world that sadly, even my brothers were only able to glimpse from time to time. I can tell you that my memories of that time are crystal clear at this moment. We grieve the physical presence of our loved one: their smile, their touch, their laugh and the love that we feel radiating from them. With my mother, that is what lives on with us forever. We can feel her love, warmth and tremendous capacity for caring drawing us all together today and that will subtly connect us together forever. I can feel my mother's presence permeating everything around me. She's in the air that I breathe, in the earth that nurtures and support me. She's in the water that washes me clean and the fire that will warm us through the remainder of the Winter. It's a Winter that will be a little colder without her physical presence here with us. Even as she is here today with us, I can say with some assurity that today, my mother walks with Jesus and I am quite sure that she is talking His leg off, telling Him some wonderful story or another...and I don't even think he'll divide it in half. He'll just smile and nod and tell her, "I'm listening." Thank you for listening to me today.
February 1, 2003
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Eulogy
For My Mom