09/08/2026
Today is my mom’s birthday, and as I think back on her life, I turn to the eulogy I wrote for her almost two years ago.
The Eulogy, or “funeral praise,” is the oldest and least valued literary form. Eulogies have a natural magic to them, reflecting both the force of loss and the struggle of the eulogist to come to terms with the loss.
My mother loved to read, especially anything I had ever written. This eulogy is her final gift from her favorite writer.
Carol Ann (Mercik) Beck loved the clouds, the silent hours past midnight with popcorn, and The Grand Canyon. She loved to stare at the sea when the wind and waves skewed the horizon with whitecaps. She’d sail in all kinds of weather, even twenty foot seas. She wore Chanel #5, religiously left the house in mauve lipstick, and kept her bed unmade while never missing a chance to remind me to make my own.
My mother was a superstitious clairvoyant who believed in God as much as she believed in omens; I believe she knew death was at hand. She didn’t spend her final days thinking about what she had achieved, but rather what she wouldn’t manage to do. She wanted to know about her granddaughter’s birthdays and the cake flavor they currently loved, evident in her final words, and a testament to how she celebrated their whole beings every day, all days.
She wanted to come closer, to the PNW, when she had more strength, but in her final hours she tried not to blink as her granddaughters continued to grow, ever so slightly, and had a final, lasting smile on her face at the mere mention of the girls’ names. Her granddaughters were her everything. In the eighty-three years of her life, Carol Ann spent nearly fifty of them as the wife of Robert Nicholas Beck and as my mother.
Raised in Versailles, CT in a mill town on the banks of the Shetucket River. She played in her father’s tomato fields and across the street in her grandfather’s greenhouse. She loved her sister, Elvis, Rhode Island beaches, and stock car races. She dreamed of being a nurse, styled and cut hair instead. As my mother, she excelled at keeping watch over fevers and flu-s.
(Continued in comments)
