ThunderJeff's Mom

A few have privately requested a non-fb version of the eulogy. Here it is:

As an initial matter—before attempting the near-impossible task of delivering the tribute my mother deserves—my family and I want to offer a few words of thanks.

My childhood home was host to many visitors these last nine months. Friends and family brought food, conversation, and company to my mother, my father, and my siblings. Countless prayers were whispered, encouraging texts and phone calls were exchanged, and heartfelt letters were mailed. My family thanks you for your kindness, your thoughtfulness, and your companionship during this difficult time.

My mother was the oldest of five children—the only sister to four brothers. Matt, Mike, Peter, Tim, my mother treasured her relationships with you and your families. She unconditionally loved each of you, and was proud of your unique talents, your depth, and your successes. When the end was imminent, all four of you made your way to our home within twenty-four hours. Thank you for being the brothers my mother deserved.

To my wife, Elena, thank you for bringing warmth, thoughtfulness, and strength into our home during a very difficult time. Your contagious smile and energy have been a pillar of strength for us, and you've been my rock. Our son will be lucky to have you as his mother.

To my siblings, Mom was incredibly proud of you. Bennett—Mom remarked on many occasions how she stood in awe of your remarkable discipline, industriousness, and quiet confidence—particularly at such a young age. She was thrilled to see her baby boy graduate from such a fine school, and excitedly awaited seeing you develop as a young professional. Shaun—your green thumb, artistic abilities, and take-no-crap attitude are some of your many great qualities that make you a living extension of Mom. She remarked on more than one occasion how much of a joy it has been to watch you stare down very real obstacles and triumph—emerging as a fine lawyer and independent woman. I know she will enjoy watching both of your lives continue to unfold—both personally and professionally.

And Dad—thank you for showing us the meaning of unconditional love. Mom's second time around with this horrible disease began and ended the same way—with your arms wrapped around her, telling her it would be okay. Your patience, strength, and devotion are inspirational. Mom was so lucky to have you, her best friend, by her side for over forty years. You said it was your greatest pleasure and deepest honor to take care of mom these last nine months, that to make her feel comfortable and for her to experience even one less ounce of fear was worth all of your energy. Dad, we are equally honored and fortunate to have witnessed the ultimate caretaker these last nine months—a real-life superhero.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention something from the outset that my Mom would unequivocally want you to know. She hated how cancer is so often described as a battle with winners and losers—the implication being that if it takes you, you've somehow lost the bout and aren't a winner like survivors are, that you didn't fight hard enough, that you aren't a good enough soldier to carry on. Such an argument is premised on the belief that cancer is an honorable foe—it isn't. Cancer is an insidious thief, pickpocket, and cheat that operates in the shadows—and sometimes it robs one of everything despite their precautions, gumption, and courage. My mother told me in no uncertain terms that "I don't care what anyone says if I don't come out the other end of this—I am not a loser, and this does not define me." And she's right—this had nothing to do with her pluck, courage, or strength—which she had in immeasurable quantities.

Distilling what defines Mary Kamps and makes her a winner into a few paragraphs is impossible. No series of anecdotes can accurately capture what made her special. No verse, poem, or quote does her life justice. But as my mother often told me—trying, and being brave in the attempt, are admirable things. So let me introduce you to four unique sides of my mother, so that we may all know her better, and in doing so, more completely honor her as we continue on in our own lives.

Mary the Businesswoman

Some of the younger members in the audience, and even a few of the older ones, may have forgotten my mom's successful, over twenty year career in advertising. In 1981, she began her career writing copy for an advertising firm. Early in her tenure, a male coworker with the same job title who was hired at the same time as her informed my mother he was drawing a higher salary. My mom marched straight to her boss' office and demanded equal pay for equal work—which she received. In a field, company, and era dominated by male professionals, she rose rapidly through the ranks—ending up as a director of marketing and vice president. Her male counterpart who was quick to brag about his starting salary had long since flamed out.

After nearly a decade, changes in the company, both structural and philosophical, brought my mother and some of her talented coworkers to an impasse: go down with the company, or start their own. The decision was an easy one, and in 1990, Hanlund Phillips was formed, with my mother as a partner.

When I was younger, my sister and I thought my mom's office was a cool space—she had limitless pads of papers and pens for us to doodle on—I was partial to drawing the Terminator, Shaun and I were allowed to make copies of our hands and faces with their gigantic copy machines, and the sixth floor had vending machines with Reese's Pieces. It was only in adulthood that I learned that my mother—who was a lead writer for Hanlund Phillips' work product—had serviced clients as large as Abbott Laboratories for over a decade—developing complex promotional and marketing strategies and materials.

To some of my younger female cousins in the audience, your Aunt Mary was a badass. Let her serve as a reminder to never settle for anything less than what you deserve, especially in the work place.

Mary the Mother and Wife

While my father helped Shaun, Ben, and I with any struggles we had with math and science, Mary Kamps was always there when you needed to find the right word, sentence, or paragraph for a meddlesome book report. And god help any of our grade school classmates when Mary's children had a class project that required an artistic component. I wouldn't go so far to say she'd do the project for us, but let's just say we didn't paint like Monet when we were third graders.

When the burdens of young academia became too much for us to bear, my mother implemented what she called "mental health days"—one day a quarter, of our choosing, where we could miss school for the day to recharge our batteries.

Although my mother was adamant that we succeed academically, she was equally adamant that her children became well-rounded individuals. When we were in grade school, this meant piano and cello lessons, trips to Museums and gardens, and countless art classes at Kaleidoscope here in town. It meant required reading—including Harry Potter, before it was cool. In our teenage years, it meant volunteering, civic engagement, and summer classes. Needless to say I did not appreciate many of these activities at the time, and I know my siblings and occasionally saw them as forced marches. But now that I'm older and ostensibly wiser, I can see that she wanted us to be people of substance and depth—to have opportunities for growth and creativity that she would have done anything for as a child. I'm so appreciative that I can hop on the keys, that my sister draws and paints things that take my breath away, that my brother, now more than ever, carriers himself with confidence and his trademark wit due in part to Second City classes. Most significantly, I'm so thankful that all of these activities bolstered our resumes, playing no small role in allowing us to all to attend and graduate from the University of Illinois.

As my siblings and I entered adulthood, she never stopped being a mom. Our relationships merely evolved. My mother was on the sidelines cheering wildly for my brother when he emerged from Lake Michigan during the Chicago Triathlon—the joy on her face seeing her baby boy emerge from the water, unscathed, was priceless. My mother and sister bonded in recent summers using their green thumbs to sculpt and shape the flowers, plants, and trees of our childhood home. Very recently, she used what little energy she had to suggest baby names for my son.

My mother and father's love story is too complex and beautiful to put into words. They have had starring roles in many tales of perseverance, caring, and companionship, from him selling his motorcycle to help her pay for her final semester of college, to her nursing a hypothermic Steve back to health after he rode to Northern Illinois in the cold rain—on said motorcycle. They've known each other for over forty years. They grew up together, built and designed their dream home together, saw the world together, and raised and educated us together. As my siblings and I started our careers and entered early adulthood, they had begun to spend more quality time with themselves—bringing the Cubbies good luck multiple games a year, seeing musicals and plays, taking long walks, wining and dining, hosting us for barbecues, and competing for world supremacy on the Sunday crossword.

A final note about our childhood homes. We never ate off an unclean dish or went to bed on a dirty sheet. Our house was free of clutter. Our fridge was full and our meals were warm. Early adulthood taught me that magic elves didn't maintain our home—so much of it was thankless work performed by my mother—who wanted to give us an environment to be our best, worry free. As she would so often say: to whom much is given, much shall be required. Mom, thank you for the much that you've given.

Mary the Artist

I wasn't kidding about the school projects that required artwork—my mother was a force to be reckoned with. But her artwork was not merely on display in our grade school classrooms, it is a ubiquitous presence at Signal Hill. Her studio contains numerous paintings of the highest quality. Our yard contains delicately placed statues, sculptures and shells—all hand selected from her travels and adventures. Her gardens are carved from the forest—meticulously planned and designed, a symphony of complementary colors, shapes, and sizes. She honed her craft—taking classes, studying the masters, and imparting on us a profound appreciation for artists, various world cultures, and artistic periods—particularly impressionism and the Renaissance. Fun Mary trivia—her favorite artist was Caravaggio. On occasion, I found her at the piano, still able to read music, but too bashful to play once she knew she had an audience.

But her aforementioned gifts, while enviable, pale in comparison to her abilities as a writer. She never chose the acceptable word—it was always the perfect word. From her poems, to her short stories, to her professional writing, to editing our resumes or essays, she had the muse—an uncanny ability to put on paper what we wanted desperately to write but couldn't—what we could only dream of saying but didn't. I'm sure many in the room have received a hand-written card from my mom that left them feeling a fullness and appreciation they didn't think was possible from a tiny note—she simply had a command of the interplay between language and sentiment that I have never witnessed before.

But don't take my word for it regarding her love and appreciation of art and her felicity, take some of hers:

"When I was Ben's age, I managed to get myself to summer school in Spain. I just wanted to go somewhere, and figured out a way to do it. The big obstacle was not working during summer months. I traveled alone, knew no one, and stayed with three other students in the Seville apartment of an elderly Spanish woman who spoke no English. She cooked for us and was generally kind, but maintained a strict curfew and only allowed us to shower two times a week. While there, I became friends with an English student. Her wealthy mom had [a] villa on the Costa del Sol and we went there every long weekend. I'm telling you this because I realize I'm still that girl—fearless and determined. I cannot wait to walk around Florence, [to] learn, appreciate, and just feel alive."

Mary the Untethered Soul

Anyone who visited my mom the last nine months inevitably saw her prayer corner. In it sat a large statue of Buddha sitting cross-legged. Buddha held several rosaries, healing crystals, and a statue of St. Matthew. He sat next to a picture of Old Saint Pats church. One who didn't know her may mistake her prayer corner as the physical embodiment of religious indecisiveness, when it was anything but. Rather, it embodied her spiritual eclecticism and her deeply committed journey to explore the relationship between self and universe.

When my mom recovered from her chemo and radiation treatments in 2014, it marked the beginning of a journey for her. She fully committed to treating her body and mind as a temple. With respect to her body, foreign words such as chia seeds and kale soon became the vernacular—staples of her power smoothies. Dairy was abandoned, and she engaged in a balanced exercise program. Most of you in the room know how phenomenal she looked before the cancer reared its head again—her hard work and discipline were behind it all. But much like her writing stands apart from her artistic gifts, so too does yoga from her quest to improve herself spiritually and physically.

My immense ignorance had pegged yoga as an activity for flexible people to show off those ever-more-popular yoga pants. How foolish I was. For my mother, yoga was the cornerstone of improving her spiritual and physical strength, so much so that she became a certified yoga instructor by studying for and passing numerous, rigorous tests. Yoga is complex and multifaceted, with different paths all sharing the final three stages of development: concentration, meditation, and the final union of Samadhi—which all lead to perfection, wisdom, and bliss. I'm still in the process of unpacking her notes from the many texts she read to improve her state of being—but everyone in this room should know that my mother was constantly seeking a sense of calmness to combat the inherent restlessness of the mind, free from attachments and worldly desires.

In one of her required readings, the Science of Breath, the authors state that "we are all manifestations of an almost inconceivable form of consciousness which lies beyond the grosser levels of our existence. It is from there we came and to there we will return. The entire universe flows out of that consciousness and ultimately flows back to its source, like a tide that flows in and out."

It's a beautiful sentiment, one my mother underlined and made notes about in the margins of the book, but like so many instances in her life, I find her words more profound and appropriate for this occasion.

You can find these words on your prayer cards. I know I will carry mine with me always. A mere two weeks after her diagnosis, and in the midst of our family still processing cancer's unwelcome intrusion back into our lives, my mother texted me this after I told her I loved her.

"I was thinking today that events like this disrupt the rhythm of our life. Ripples out. It's unsettling because we all seek our rhythm. This will settle, too. We don't know how but it's ours. Better to embrace and look for beauty. It is ugly. We are not."

Once again she had the words when I needed them. We love you mom. We will miss you, always.

Thanks all for the kind words. Just now getting back into the routine, albeit with a gaping hole in my heart. I'm reading a book called It's Okay that You're Not Okay that was recommended by a friend after my mom was diagnosed--very interesting analysis of grief and learning to live with it, not move past it.

I'll try and pop in every now and again. This is a special forum with some of the most courageous, industrious, and compassionate people on the planet. Having spent some time in the biopharma industry as a patent attorney--specifically in oncology--I firmly believe that cancer's days are numbered.

My thoughts and prayers are with all of you.

Matt