A Farewell to Frieda "m0m" Schurr

            There’s some people that, by their very nature, seem to be immortal. When suddenly it turns out they’re not… shock is not the word. It’s beyond that. Shock comes later, days later, when you realize that you will no longer share a thought, a joke, an enthusiasm, or a memory with this person again. You turn to them, because they have always been there, and they’re not. It’s human nature to do this again and again, and hurt every time.

            Frieda Schurr was my friend Maggi’s mother. I’ve known her since I met Maggi more than forty years ago. She was a woman of grace, humor, education, patience, culture, and wisdom. She always encouraged me and my creative works, never criticized when I fell short of my potential; in short, treated me as she treated her own children and many students over the years.

            Although I seldom saw her, we corresponded with mutual delight. Whether cracking up at Sir Terry Pratchett’s puns or creative use of Latin (“Fabricati Diem!”) or enjoying goose bumps at nice, tight harmony singing, we shared joy in a way I seldom found with anyone else.

            I remember the first conversation I had with her:

            Me: “Oh, I see you’re going to have a baby. What are you going to call it?”

            Her: “Quits!”

            And the last, her comment on my blog about being reluctantly coerced into learning to knit and displaying my first pair of self-knitted socks: “Welcome to the Dark Side. Enjoy it.”

            I remember when I told her Maggi was moving in with me after retirement she said, “I can trust you to take good care of her… and vice-versa.” I felt honored.

            She is gone. It was sudden, quick, pretty much painless. Although I can’t help but be thankful for that, she is gone. One of the ‘rocks’ of my life, the eternally wise, eternally gracious, just plain eternal Frieda “m0m” Schurr. (It stabs me just to type her name the way she always signed her e-mails.)

            I can’t explain how this feels, but I know one thing: It has to be infinitely worse for Maggi, her brothers and sisters, their spouses and children… the whole family. I’d like to comfort them with the knowledge that Frieda lives on, in each of them, in the form of memories, knowledge, and moral values. That, as long as one person speaks her name with love, she is with us. As long as one person follows the values she believed in, makes use of her teachings, her influence lives on in this world. I honestly believe this is truth, and that her spirit is immortal and will always be with us. But right now it’s hard to embrace this truth because of the pain.

            May the pain pass gently from every member of her family, and each of her friends, and may her soul shine down on us all.