Well, my name is John O'Grady. I am Karen's youngest son. I asked mom one day when I was about eight, "mom how do you remember all the lines in plays and musicals that you perform in at the Hartnell theater?" She said, "John, when the time comes you remember." About a week before this my brother and I had been talking to my Dad while driving out to our little ranch to do some work. He told my brother and me in his irascible way "whatever brains you boys got, you got them from your mom, you didn't get them from my side of the family!" Remembering this when talking to Mom I asked her how does Dad remember all the lines and songs in the plays and musical he is in? since he told Mike and me that he's got no brains? Mom said, "well, you know John, your father has become a much better actor since he married me."
Well, when the time comes you remember, when the time comes you remember........
A poem I remember mom used to love read to me often is by William Blake, it is only four lines and here it is.......He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in Eternity's Sunrise
For my Mom her joy came from music. One of the first memories of I have of her is walking home from school and being still about halfway down the block from my house and hearing this powerful soprano voice rising up to the heavens from the back of the house. I would go in. I would walk to the back and peek through the curtains into a room we called the Music Room. It was a beautiful room with a high, open-beamed ceiling and two huge skylights at the top. There was a full Steinway piano in the middle of the room on an Indian rug and there would be Norma Wylie, mom's vocal coach, or Yvonne Crane, a friend who helped mom prepare for particular roles and musicals, sitting at the piano playing. Light from the skylights would be pouring into the room in visible streams like illuminated water. While singing, mom's face would just be full of elation, peace, joy. It was this....this music that allowed her to live in eternity's sunrise.
My Grandfather, mom's father, Howard Wilson was a very deep influence on mom. He was a Baptist Minister and died much too early....much too early at only 38 in an auto accident. Anyway, he used to give mom one simple admonition, he would say, "Karenina" (his nickname for her) "you will face many challenges in life, many...throughout life....but the key to overcoming this is perseverance.....perseverance." I can't tell you how much just this one simple admonition from her father helped mom not only to cope with Multiple Sclerosis as it progressed but also to fight it, she often told me this.
Well, unfortunately the disease did progress. And over the years we have so many people tell us that it is such a shame about Karen you know, oh such a shame that she just really has no quality of life. I understood what they were trying to say on one level. However, on another level I don't think that one can know a person's quality of life until one knows the qualities that one values.......let me tell you what my mom valued, it was not the physical......she valued strength of Soul and Character and the love of her family.
One incident that really brought all these values into perspective and focus occurred only about a year ago. My dad took a fall off his bed. It turned out to not be very serious but it seemed so at the time. My dad and I were talking and I was trying to figure out how I was going to get him off of the floor and back into a wheelchair and or bed. Dad was concerned mom was worried because she could not see what was happening on the floor from her bed. He assured her he was ok. Mom, at a time she had been scarcely able to move her head much less speak for about a week because her MS had flared up, somehow turned her head and in a clear and loud voice looked down at my Dad and said "Mike, you get up, I love you but you GET UP right now!!" Well, I was able to help get him up, with the help of the Urrutia family. In a few minutes Dad was in a wheelchair next to mom's bed telling her he was fine. She said to him, "see....I knew you could do it!"
After that incident Mom had some good days where she was able to express herself quite well. On days like that the main thing she always wanted to say was "thank you" to everyone who thinks about her and loves her and to tell everyone that she is fighting as long as she can. And to you Dad......she especially wanted to say "thank you." Thank you for all the love and devotion you gave to her throughout the decades....thank you....and God knows the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune did not exactly pass you by either. Mike loves you, we love you, I love you.....Mom loves you.....she loves you to this moment......to this moment.
(this part I had written out and have just found tucked away in the notes I used in the actual eulogy. I paused and then simply read the following two paragraphs before returning to the prompts and notes) For me, Mom showed the power of the human soul. Though broken physically, she opened her eyes that see inward and looked up. That was her path to joy and wisdom. Her life was bound only by the limits of her thoughts. Her thoughts were bound only by the limits of her expressiveness, and these were boundless.
Even when our bodies are bound by afflictions, death or disease our soul transcends all this by singing out in words illuminated by sunbeams brought forth with lightning.
And this, this (hold up mom's Bible) is a very special book for me, very special. This Bible was given to my mom on her 17th birthday by her Grandpa and Grandma Wilson (Howard's parents). And in the front piece my mom wrote out lines from a Psalm.....these words......
"My voice shalt thou hear in the morning O Lord; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up."
And I.....I......can only pray that when the time came to remember that these words were in her mind and her heart as she "slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God."
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