I posted these words on Facebook following my mother's death:
My dear mother, Deloras Elaine Sindelar Dermer, passed away October 30 at the age of 94. She left a legacy of love in her more than 50 surviving family members, most of whom were at the funeral. She was the matriarch of our family and had 8 children, I being the 3rd (and 2nd son).
My sisters Susan and Gwen were nearby when Mom moved to assisted living after Dad died in 2018. As Mom’s health declined, niece Kyra took her into her home in Lincoln to be with the family full time. Mom died surrounded by Kyra, niece Mindy and great-grandniece Ahlani. My sister Gwen and her husband Darrell and I had left a few hours earlier to go back to Omaha, returning to Lincoln once we heard the sad news.
I had been in Nebraska 3 days prior to Mom’s passing, and had been returning once a year to see Mom in the past few years. She made her last big trip to Sonia and Charles’s wedding in 2022. Prior to the pandemic, I would drive Mom out to spend a few weeks with us in Virginia during the Lenten season. Taking Mom to Mass, I remember her remark about a particularly rotund priest: “Father never missed a meal.”
She was a woman of deep Roman Catholic faith, and was buried with Dad in Omaha National Cemetery. The funeral notes give a brief summary of Mom’s life, but omits the crucial detail that she grew up in depression-era western Nebraska and raised 8 kids through their formative years in Scottsbluff, Nebraska—for me, my entire childhood.
The day of the funeral was the saddest and most joyous day of my life. At the presentation, the open casket held Mom. Adjacent to the casket was the family room (I called it the “crying room”). I kissed Mom’s cold lifeless face and hair, and retired to weep. I did that twice. I should have done it a dozen times, even to now! But it cannot be; she will never return. So we wipe off our tears and rejoin the family.
My cousin David, who lived with Grandma Bertha in Scottsbluff during the 1970 school year, gave beautiful remarks about Mom at the burial, and the gratitude we should all feel towards her. The late afternoon funeral meal found the family reveling in what Mom would have most loved—a family reunion with her spirit filling the room.
Mom is gone, but her goodness lives on.