I wrote this for my mother's funeral service, and read it there on February 21, 2026. A video of the service is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTLV_y69m0k. You can get more basic information from her obituary on this site.
Jody: Coal miner’s granddaughter.
True, even her father worked in the mines some summers.
Before the divorce, Jody was a “housewife,” raising children, cooking, baking. Cub Scout den mother, Brownie troop leader, involved in the PTA for public schools. Marching against the Vietnam War. Inviting my classmates over from across town. Birthday parties, Halloween parties. Proofreading (editing) my homework. Setting up guitar lessons for me, then letting our bands practice in the basement.
Crying for The Littlest Angel, a TV movie that I can’t even remember watching. She told me she cried for three days when President Kennedy died. She also said that she and Barry (my father) took me as a baby to see JFK speak in Ohio.
Barry left in 1977 or 78, while Nathan and I were in high school, Mardi was 8 or 9 years old. Jody had to deal with being unemployed, albeit with a BA in English. Nathan was becoming a punk. I eventually crashed her car. But Nathan got a job at Swensen’s and I at the American Cafe.
And Jody found work at a knitting and yarn shop – how appropriate (she knitted many sweaters and such for the family). She went back to school, getting an Editing certificate at GWU, and then getting herself a good job for the next three decades at the Air Line Pilots Association. As Copy Editor of their magazine, just as she became editor of the church newsletter here [Dumbarton United Methodist Church in Washington, DC].
Somehow she held us together. Mardi’s friend, Megan’s mother, Nancy, invited Jody to this church. Mardi once told me she thought the church saved Jody’s life.
I went away to school that fall and eventually stayed away, visiting at least yearly. And in those analog days, we wrote many letters to each other.
Some subsequent memories stand out:
In 1981, the band I was in toured the east coast. The night we played the old Cellar Door, at M Street and 35th, Jody somehow hosted seven of us overnight, cooking a fried chicken dinner for all of us.
In 1989, I wondered if I should ask Cathleen to marry me. I was somewhat leery because of my parents’ divorce. I mentioned that to my mother, and she said not to let that sway me; that anyway they had almost 20 good years, plus three wonderful children to show for it. “Besides,” she said, “you’re not going to do better than her.”
Jody’s vacations were almost exclusively to visit family. When our first child, Conor, was born in 1992, Jody drove 800 miles to see us. She complained of tummy trouble, but when she needed to lie down, Cathleen, then an ICU Nurse, drove her to the doctor. It turns out that her appendix had burst on the way to Chicago. She was admitted to the hospital, had a partial resection of her colon, and was lucky to have avoided sepsis and death.
Then I started to see the coal miner’s daughter there.
Once I became a Christian in 2010, Jody I discussed religion more often. She puzzled at how her grandmother could be so devout a Christian after losing children to coal mining accidents and the Spanish flu. But with the strength of coal miners, Jody also faced the hardships of her life.
I recently read Time Shelter, a Bulgarian novel of magical realism by Georgi Gospodinov. In it, there were “time shelters” created for people suffering from dementia. The shelters recreated the decade in which those suffering from dementia were most comfortable. This obviously hit close to home because Jody was suffering from dementia in her final years.
For Jody, that comfortable time seems to have been when she was in grade school, in the early 1940s to the early 50s. In late 2019, she didn't recognize the house on Sherier Place as the house she had lived in for decades. She told her sister Sally that her real house was on a corner. Sally drove her to our previous home, on a corner, but Jody said that wasn’t it. I think she was looking for a house in Chillicothe, Ohio, where they grew up. Aunt Sally confirms that their house in Chillicothe was on a corner.
I remember visiting Jody at Memory Care once, a couple of years into her stay there. After visiting for a while and having easy conversation, you could hear dinner being prepared in the background. Jody said, "I think Mother will have dinner ready soon." I found that sad, but also sweet.
One of my favorite memories of Jody here at Dumbarton Church, was when her mother and father were visiting sometime in the 1980s. Her father stood up during the joys and concerns portion and said something really nice about Jody. Things I can't remember, but even then, they brought tears to my eyes.
Another one of my favorite Jody memories is when Nathan's punk band was practicing in our basement, also in the 80s. He was singing "Do You Love Me?" by The Contours. After some loud minutes of that, Jody, who was upstairs with me, joked "Yes, already!"
Writing this reminded me that at the end of the Gospel of John, Jesus asks Peter that same question three times, “Do you love me?” The Contours continue, “now that I can dance?” Jesus on the other hand, could have continued “now that I am resurrected,” but did not. As a Christian, my hope is in resurrection, and I trust that Jody will already be there when I arrive. She didn’t have to ask, but Yes, I love you, Jody, already, and always.
