Eulogy for My Mother

And a bit about this new phase of grief

My mother, Janet Behrens Macaluso, died peacefully on the evening of Wednesday, August 27, three weeks to the day after I flew home from Colorado to enroll her in hospice.

Don stood on the right side of her bed, holding her hand. I stood on the left side, cradling her other arm. “I love you, I love you, I love you,” we told her as she drew her final breath.

It was exactly the death I wished for her.

The first thing I said to Don afterward was, “Is she gone?” We’d had several false alarms throughout the day. In the end, there was no mistaking the real thing, but I just wanted to make sure.

The second thing I said, after breathing a huge sign of relief, was, “We did it.”

We kept her safe and comfortable.

We saw her out with dignity and love.

We survived it.

Don left my mother’s bedroom to tell the memory care staff that she was gone. With shaking fingers, I made the first two phone calls of many that night: one to the hospice after-hours line, so the on-duty nurse could come pronounce my mother dead; and one to the University of Washington BRaIN lab, so they could send a driver to retrieve her body for brain donation.

“Hi, this is Devon Pass, and I’m calling because my mom just died,” I said. What an intro.

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” was the response I got on each call, and it was not what I wanted to hear at all. I did not feel sorry in that moment; I felt euphoric.

My mother, who spent about two years in silent terror as her mind began to fail, then nearly six years in an all-out mental and physical collapse, was finally free.

I think I’ve shared enough about this journey for you to understand that it’s because I love my mother so much that I was happy when she died. I always feel like a shitty person trying to explain that, but if you know, you know.

I made more phone calls: to my brother, to my husband, to my father. I recorded a short video to send to my closest friends so they could see I was okay. The result was an unhinged combination of smiling and sobbing.

Sydney Sweeney as Cassie in Euphoria. Also, me.

I was “okay.” Sure!

I have so much more to write about the day my mother died, and I’ve tried, but I haven’t been able to do it justice yet. So for now, I’ll just share a bit about the aftermath.

I waited a few days to post the news on social media. It felt like I had an open wound that I wanted to keep covered for a bit before exposing it to the world. Watching my mother die was an intense experience, and I needed to let it marinate in my heart and mind so I could convey exactly what I wanted to say and make sure it still felt true. Here’s what I ended up sharing along with the announcement:

“I’m sorry for your loss” is the standard condolence, and I will always accept it and say thank you. But I want to be clear that the loss of my mother did not occur this week, but in bits and pieces over the last eight years. We’ve been grieving her since her early onset Alzheimer’s diagnosis in 2019, and she was not the same for a few years before that as she quietly navigated the early stage of the disease.

My mother’s death is a release—an end to many years of confusion and fear. I feel an incredible sense of peace and gratitude that she is no longer suffering.

Now we enter a new phase of grief. I still miss my mother so much it hurts. But I can look at old photos of her and smile. I can zoom out to take in the entirety of her life and rediscover all the love and joy and beauty. There was so, so much.

67 years will never feel like enough—but it was everything. She was everything. And she is free.

I didn’t want to come off bossy: “Let me instruct you how to console me.” But I knew if I didn’t say anything, I’d have the same icky feeling I did the night I made those first few phone calls, as people with very good intentions inadvertently misunderstood my state of mind.

I’m so grateful people took the time to read and understand what I shared. I got a lot of very thoughtful comments about sending us love and being happy my mother is at peace and thanking me for sharing our journey. All of those felt so much more comforting than “I’m sorry for your loss,” but I appreciate that I got a few of those, too. I’m also sorry for my loss, and now I’m diving back into the depths of what exactly that loss was.

Don’t think because I was happy when my mother died that I escaped grief. Not at all. The ocean always recedes, ominous in its calm, before a tsunami.

I dreaded the tasks ahead: writing her obituary, planning her funeral, delivering a eulogy. But when the time came, I realized they were helpful steps in the grieving process.

After Mom’s diagnosis, I spent more than a year so crippled by grief that I couldn’t speak the words aloud: “My mother has Alzheimer’s.” It took a few more years after that to be able to talk about it or even think about it without melting down into day-ruining sobs.

Eventually, I buried that grief to survive—to work, to parent, to function as a human in society. I could not live in it for as long as it took my mother to die.

I had to separate my mother, who was gone, from Janet, who was still in front of me.

I thought because I’d buried it that I’d processed it. I thought because I’d spent more than 100 hours ugly crying to multiple therapists that I’d processed it. I thought because I’d written about it with brutal honesty for many years that I’d processed it.

It was when I was organizing photos for the slideshow of my mother’s life that I realized, no, I haven’t processed it.

This is my mother as I want to remember her. I can look at this photo and hear her laugh so clearly. The mischievous twinkle in her eye sums up exactly who she was. We were on our way from my 2009 college graduation ceremony to a fancy dinner afterward, and she stole my cap to try on for herself: “How do I look?”

This is the woman who disappeared eight years ago. This is the woman I’m still so fucking mad and sad to have lost.

The slideshow turned out beautifully to the untrained eye. 134 photos in roughly sequential order, five seconds of each before it faded to the next, 12 minutes and 58 seconds in total. I put it on a loop at the reception.

What you don’t see, unless you’re me, is Titanic.

The night before the funeral, I took an edible to try to relax, and watched the slideshow through one final time to make sure it was perfect. There’s Mom as a baby, a little girl, a gawky teenager, a beautiful young woman. There she is getting married. There she is squinting in the sunshine, beaming with her two young children. There she is at Halloween, at our Christmas dinner table, on vacation. There she is falling in love with Don.

About halfway through, a sense of dread overcame me. I knew there weren’t many photos left before I’d see the light in her eyes start to dim, her easy smile start to look uncertain. 99 photos in, one photo of her healthy dissolves into another photo of her losing her grip on herself. I don’t know that a stranger would know the difference, but I can recognize it immediately. I lived it, and now I was reliving it.

Evie is just a toddler with a tiny ponytail sprouting from the top of her head when my mother starts to look scarily thin. Her teeth take on a grayish cast. Her normally meticulous haircut looks unkempt. All the confusion, hurt, and fear from that time came flooding back to me.

If you’re old enough to have owned the movie Titanic on VHS, you may have done what I did and only watched the first of the two tapes over and over. You may have lived for the magnificent love story and, longing for a different ending, skipped the tragic part.

I wished to be able to do that as I watched the slideshow of my mother’s life. I wished for her to become unsinkable.

Because I was high, because I had my guard down, because I had nothing left to stop me, I cried the way many people cry on the day their mother dies.

It felt like the first real step into this new phase of grief; the first splash of the tsunami. May I learn to ride these waves and do my best to be unsinkable.

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I want to share the eulogy I wrote and somewhat delivered one week ago today. As I spoke, I skipped over some of the parts I knew would make me cry harder than I already was.

I hope it helps you get to know more about my mother. I’ve spent so much time writing about her illness and not nearly enough about the first VHS tape of her life. It was magnificent.

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Hi everyone. I’m Devon, Janet’s daughter. Thank you for joining us to remember my mom and celebrate her life. Please bear with me; I’m going to try my best to get through this.

Mom was elegant, poised, brave, hilarious, and loving. She was also, as she liked to say, a tough chick. Through all her challenges, she remained the genuinely kind, sweet, good-humored person she always was. It was my privilege to help take care of her these past few years. I know I’ve never loved my mother more, now having loved every version of her.

Mom was born the youngest of five children to Bernie and Mary Behrens in Anaheim, California. As the baby of the family, she was extremely close with her parents, who adored her. She went to Catholic school and found great comfort in her faith throughout her life. After this church was built just down the road from her house, she attended regularly, and I hope she is thrilled with the beautiful service we had today.

Mom always loved to dance, but didn’t have much opportunity to perform until high school, where she was proud to be part of the flag team. She put me in dance classes when I was little, but my heart wasn’t in it. Luckily, her passion for dance went straight to my daughter, and Mom was bursting with pride anytime she got to see Evie dance.

Mom was known as “Dancin’ Janet” at her memory care facility. Anytime they played music, especially disco, she’d bust out her best moves. Mom’s dad also loved to dance, and in her eulogy for him back in 2001, she said: “If there is dancing in heaven, and I think there must be, you can be sure that Dad is there with a new spring in his step and a big smile on his face.” I agree this must be true, and I love to picture them dancing happily together.

Mom was utterly devoted to Brandon and me. It was her dream to stay home with us when we were young, and moving to Woodinville made that possible, as the cost of living was much lower here than Southern California at the time. She loved the Pacific Northwest and was thrilled to give us an outdoorsy childhood exploring the area. She particularly loved Winthrop, and I have fond memories of us riding horses together at Sun Mountain Lodge.

Mom was always crafty. She made everything from Halloween costumes for us kids to professional-level quilts. I have so many memories of her busy at work in her sewing room, piecing together quilt squares and listening to talk radio. Later on, she loved making baby quilts for all her expecting coworkers, and I’ll always treasure the beautiful quilt she made for Evie when I was pregnant with her.

My childhood memories tell the story of how present Mom was in our lives. I remember her volunteering in my classrooms and putting a homemade meal on the dinner table every night. She always let me help in the kitchen, even if I slowed her down or accidentally caused her to mess up, which I now know, as a mother, takes a lot of love and patience!

Through elementary school and junior high, Mom was always there to greet me when I came home, and I remember crying into her apron over school drama more times than I can count. If I close my eyes and concentrate hard enough, I can still feel the soft cotton on my cheek as she hugged me.

She was my biggest supporter and gave the best advice, but also gave me tough love when needed. We had some tumultuous years in my teens where I felt like she was trying to ruin my life, but she was always very calm and steadfast in her parenting. I hope she knows she got it all so very right.

The thing I admire most about my mom is that she was brave enough to start over and build a new life for herself at 45. It must have been terrifying, but she never showed it. It was amazing to watch her fall in love with Don, who was the very first man she went on a date with. They met up at The Cheesecake Factory for lunch, and he offered to help her shop for a refrigerator, which she needed for the house she’d just bought all on her own. She picked out a fridge and a future husband that day. Why keep looking when you just know?

Don complemented Mom’s more reserved personality with his rather loud and boisterous one. He helped draw out a different side of her—a side that got a kick out of off-color humor that she wouldn’t have dared to enjoy as a good Catholic girl. She became quite skilled at poker, casually beating lesser players, like Brandon and me, while asking, “Is a full house good?”

Don also helped Mom become more adventurous by taking her to concerts and festivals, and on “death-defying” hikes at Mt. Rainier. In turn, she helped keep him in line, which some of us know can be a tough job. Together, they fixed up her little rambler and turned it into her dream home with a beautiful garden full of flowers and vegetables that remains, to this day, the envy of the neighborhood.

I have to admit I questioned Mom’s judgement when I first got to know Don, but as always, she was right. I’m eternally grateful she chose a man who not only stuck with her, but gave his all in caring for her. He proved his vows, “in sickness and in health,” a thousand times over. As her daughter, I couldn’t hope for anything better.

Over the years, Mom and I became very good friends and slowly morphed into the same person. We loved shopping together—spending marathon days at the mall—and more and more often bought the same items, and showed up to events wearing the same thing. She was the happy recipient of many pieces from my closet when I was done wearing them—and sometimes before I was done wearing them. Mom always knew exactly what she wanted and how to get her way. She was mischievous, but in such a charming way that you couldn’t be mad.

The highlight of Mom’s life came in 2016 when Evie was born the day before her own birthday. I’ve never seen her happier than when she came to the hospital and held her granddaughter for the first time. The scarf I’m wearing is the one she wore that day. I like to think it’s infused with all of Mom’s greatest joy and love.

I’m grateful she got to watch Evie grow up for nine years. There was no mistaking the way her face always lit up when she saw her. I’m happy Mom now has a front-row seat to watch Evie dance all the time.

So many things will always remind me of my mother. I’ll think of her whenever I watch “Love, Actually” during the holiday season, indulge in chocolates from See’s Candies, or hear songs by John Denver and James Taylor. When I walk by a store window and see an outfit or purse I know she would’ve loved, I’ll wish she was there with me to ooh and ahh over it. And most of all, I’ll feel her happy presence whenever I see a beautiful garden, especially one filled with roses and sunflowers.

I’m going to close by stealing another bit Mom wrote in her eulogy for her dad, and just tweak the pronouns. For one thing, she said it perfectly, and it’s also a little payback for all the clothes she stole from me. Here goes:

“There is much sadness here on Earth since her death, but there is great rejoicing in heaven. I prefer to think of it that we have not lost a mother, love, or friend, but we have all gained an angel who is watching over us and sending us strength and encouragement until the day when we are all together again.”

I love you and miss you, Mama. Thank you for everything.