Four Songs

Meditations on Maureen

My grandmother died recently, though not totally unexpectedly. In fact it was a lot later than I would have guessed based on the past few years of her life. But however long these sorts of things tend to drag out, they still manage to somehow catch you a bit off guard.

When I was growing up, until I was around 15 or so, I used to be big on going to church with her. This was in no small part because she would take us out for Chinese food as a reward, but I appreciated the aesthetics and the ceremony of it. Her funeral and reception were held in the same church we used to go to, with its biting pews and stained glass glow. Despite the number of times I’ve been there I can’t remember going without her present (the funeral of course being no exception).

They read a bible excerpt that is normally read at weddings (“Love is patient, love is kind”), and the priest delivered a sermon about how much everybody loved Maureen. At the reception, my Mom read the eulogy that I ghostwrote for her in a trembling voice. Other people went up and did some little stand-up comedy sets, and my sister sang a song.

Mostly it didn’t feel like anything to me, it didn’t feel real. Her casket was closed, which I feel like maybe was part of the problem: it allowed me to imagine that the box was empty.

I went and found a bunch of songs on spotify called “Maureen” to try and shake something loose.

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1. Maureen—Sade

This can probably be considered the canonical Maureen song based on its popularity. It’s apparently considered an under-appreciated track in this woman’s catalog but the video still has over a million views. The lyrics are relevant, but it is incredibly funky and somewhat bizarre to imagine that she’s singing about my grandma.

I love her but she was not this cool.

Maureen I miss you
I just can't explain
Never gonna see you again
I wish you could meet my new friends
Walking along the subway listening to
Loving you is easy acapella
You were a souped-up car in that rent-a-go-cart town
And I miss you
Maureen
We're as thick as thieves
Maureen Maureen

“You were a souped-up car in that rent-a-go-cart town”—this reminds me of the somewhat bizarrely decked-out hearse that they drove her body away in, which had purple lights and the name of our town in bubble letters on the backseat window.

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I remember when I was six years old there was an unusually deep snowfall in our town, with three feet of snow on the ground at one point (this would have been roughly 2/3rds of my height at the time). The normally trivially easy journey two blocks down the street to grandma’s townhouse became a frigid, grueling trek. Once we peeled off our wet clothes and drank some hot chocolate, it felt like we’d landed safely on the moon.

Even though she was diabetic, she kept an enormous amount of candy and junk food in the house—much to our delight. But she also had an unfortunate habit of keeping food years past its expiration date, so it was always a gamble to see if you were about to bite into a phenomenally stale Oreo, or peanut butter that tasted like foul chalk. It was the fodder for many jokes in our family but it had never occurred to me until recently that it must have been because at some point in her life she actually had the experience of her family not having enough food to put on the table. When we were caring for her through her dementia we still couldn’t get rid any of it because the sight of a pantry not chockablock full of food made her too upset.

My parents lost their house in bankruptcy after I left for college, and the new owners cut down the fruit-bearing trees in the front yard to make room for more parking. But my grandma's townhouse remained right where it was, the shrine to consistency it had always been.

She expressed a desire, in terms that could not have been clearer, that she really really really wanted to spend the rest of her life in that house, and that she would die surrounded by her friends.

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2. Maureen—Fountains of Wayne

Incredibly funny and stupid power pop punk song, kind of reminds me of that band Bowling for Soup that I was into when I was 12 (before my Beatles phase). If we do away with the razor-thin layer of subtext, the lyrics are basically saying that he wants this woman, the titular Maureen, to stop telling him about all of the other guys that she’s sleeping with because he’s jealous.

I pick her up outside the station
(Uh uh uh uh, uh uh uh uh)
She's telling me about her spring vacation
(Uh uh uh uh, uh uh uh uh)
She's not leaving much to the imagination
(Uh uh uh uh, uh uh uh uh)
She's giving me way too much information
(Uh uh uh uh, uh uh uh uh)

My grandma actually did have a bit of a habit of oversharing, but this was primarily graphic details about her medical issues. After her husband died she apparently remained entirely celibate for the rest of her life, but she did manage to fill an entire room of her house with a collection of trashy romance novels.

“She's not leaving much to the imagination”—unfortunately very true near the end.

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Maureen absolutely hated conflict. As an example of this: just before my grandfather died he’d decided to switch his life insurance policy of many years to another within the same company. Because he was only in his 40s, the amount she was owed was in the millions, but the company declined to pay out because “his old plan was closed and the new one was not yet started at the time of his death”. She could not be talked into trying to sue for the money.

So after she began to develop dementia it was unfortunate that we got into a fundamental disagreement with her condo’s strata, with them taking the position that it was unacceptable for us to care for her in her home overnight because it was a 55+ complex. It was morbidly fascinating to watch a kind of conspiracy theory spread through the strata complex that my grandma was actually completely mentally fine and we were abusing her in order to extract a larger inheritance from her.

Almost every time she spoke with someone from the strata she was so mortified that she would have another mini-stroke that made her dementia worse, so we had to do everything in our power to keep them from talking with her (which of course only fed into their suspicions). Residents scowled, photographed us, and peeked through our windows to the extent that we were forced to keep the curtains drawn at all times. The strata council banned us from using the pool and the shared tool shed, published baseless accusations and personal information about us in their meeting minutes, and attempted to levy $200 a week fines (which were overturned at the Civil Resolution Tribunal)

The ridiculous legal battle over whether family members can count as “caretakers” (the alternate interpretation being that you need to be a registered nurse or something) reached as far as the BC Human Rights Tribunal, but my understanding is that now that Maureen is dead, the case has now died with her.

Water under the bridge I guess, like so many other things.

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3. Maureen—David Myles

The genre is apparently folk jazz or “roots” music: it also vaguely reminds me of a more upbeat version of that stomping-on-floorboards style of music from around that time like the Lumineers or Mumford & Sons (which everyone loves to dunk on but I have always liked). He is also a Canadian artist, which is good because CRTC regulations require that I feature a minimum of 35% Canadian content in my blog posts.

In these lyrics the singer appears to be pursuing my grandma romantically which is odd, but we can just ignore that or pretend he is a young Bob or something.

Bob died when I was 3 so for all I know this is exactly what he sounded like.

I’ve got time in my pockets
I’ve got fate in my shoes
I’ve got the wind at my back
I’ve got nothing to lose
So I’m going out tonight
I’m going to catch your eye
I might not stand a chance
But I’m willing to try
Maureen, Maureen
Won’t you tell me that you love me
Maureen, Maureen
Won’t you tell me that you love me

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Making things even more difficult was that, just as we were considering whether to throw in the towel, covid lockdown hit and there was no choice but for us to stay put. Me and my siblings watched her in shifts, and every day she begged to go to the grocery store (her main hobby other than the casino had been adding to her pantry collection). She never really understood what covid was.

The only thing that would settle her down was to put on her favorite shows. These were Suits—which she liked because it reminded her of working at the office, notable for starring Megan Markle—and Heartland—which she liked because it heavily featured babies and animals, notable for being a glimpse into the wholesome lives of Alberta horse people. I personally have seen the entire run of both of these shows maybe 3 or 4 times over, but I always kept them on silent with the subtitles on so I could try to ignore them as much as possible. There is one (of several) extremely annoying character in Heartland that I only recently found out speaks with a voice two octaves lower than I realized.

She probably would have complained if she realized that I was muting it, but she didn’t actually notice because she had been almost completely deaf since her mid-20s. For most of my life she got by fine on a mixture of hearing aids, lip reading (she said she would have dreams about going and shaving off all of the men’s beards to help with this), and just straight-up pretending like she heard what you said based on context. During lockdown her hearing aids stopped working, and in the chaos there was no way to get them fixed. As she started experiencing delusions the things she’d assume you had just said made less and less sense.

Among the many of these that I was there for:

• She realized that she was pregnant

• She lost the baby (very sad)

• Her townhouse had a third floor (…no)

• Her husband Bob was coming back from heaven today

  • “I don’t think that’s true grandma”

  • “well... maybe you should set a place at the table for him just in case”

• Her husband Bob cheated on her in heaven (also very sad)

Me and my siblings watched her until she started needing more intimate assistance, after which my mom moved in with her full-time. My mom was determined to honor her mother’s wishes to stay in her home, but caring for someone with advanced dementia is no joke: it wasn’t until a violent outburst where Maureen slapped her hard across the face that she finally agreed to move her into a care facility.

The only time I was able to go there in person it reminded me of a psych ward in a horror movie: replete with buzzing fluorescent lights and someone in the corner whisper-singing “daisy, daisy, give me your answer true...”. A woman there mistook me for Justin Trudeau and told me that I was so handsome, and asked me to shake her hand (which in retrospect was probably against the distancing rules). My grandma was so sad. She didn't recognize who I was. The nurse was trying to help her to play a game of solitaire, but she was despondent. She started calling my mom (her daughter) “mommy” and let her know she was sorry for being bad.

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4. Maureen—Graveyard Club

This one looks like it’s the most obscure of the bunch: a very sombre and cinematic indie tune with 5.6K views. Based on the artwork, it seems like it has the fascinating property of actually being written in honor of someone else’s grandma named Maureen.

Isn’t anyone a saint?
Is there such a thing called fate?
In the dark I touched your face
Oh Maureen

Can you hear the crickets sing?
Everyone at home’s asleep
I can feel you here with me
Oh Maureen

Streetlights tonight are all flickering

Isn’t anything enough?
Has there ever been true love?
Does the spirit hold you up?
Oh Maureen

Something’s wrong inside my brain
My head is full of ghosts again
I always felt so out of place
You know I never could relate to the world I’m living in

Trust, refreshing, beautify, more, healthy
Fresher, perfect, rich, better, luxury, longer
Famous, natural, pleasing, as easy as this

Oh Maureen, Oh Maureen, Oh Maureen
Oh Maureen, Oh Maureen, Oh Maureen

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I had another opportunity to see her in person this Christmas, but I ended up getting sick again. When she was on her deathbed a few weeks later my brother put me on a video call, but I didn't know what to say. She looked sallow, barely moving or breathing. I told her that I loved her but I have no idea if she heard me.

The house my mom was renting for over a decade was sold last year, so she moved into my grandma’s townhouse and took over the mortgage. She ripped out the rotting cupboards and the old carpet, painted over the early 90s wallpaper, and connected the kitchen to the living room. It looks entirely different now, but memories still cling to the walls that weren’t torn down.

I had a conversation with Maureen in 2015 after her first stroke, where I first remember thinking that time was running out for me to ask her questions about her life. We sat on the edge of her bed and talked about her earliest memories of growing up in Winnipeg—taking the bus to the grocery store with her mom—and how much I reminded her of her uncle (who was apparently also a pretty big guy). We looked out the window at the ducks bathing in the creek behind her house, and talked about god.

She saw it, you know. This thing I can see so clearly sometimes: this simple beauty in the world, in the flowers and animals and babies. She told me she had always been blessed with the gift of faith.

I struggle a little with disconnection. Sometimes I forget that I ever experience emotions until my eyes have already welled up with tears. In as far as it is a good summary of some of the broad strokes of her life, the following is the eulogy I helped my mom write. I cried when I read it out loud for the first time.

Maureen Phyllis Eby was a grandmother, a mother, and a friend to many in the community, which you can tell from the number of people showed up today. In addition to being her daughter, in many ways I worked as a personal assistant helping her organize her many, many activities. She was a member of Comox Rotary Club, Comox Legion Ladies Auxiliary, Comox Valley Head Injury Society, and the 888 Wing. She was the Comox Valley Daycare Society administrator, and she helped start Beaufort Daycare. She was active in the church and the Catholic Women's League. She was a beloved elder in the Metis community and a member of the MIKI'SIW Metis Association. She founded Eby’s Business Services and worked there for over 30 years, employing many people. When me and my brother were young she was a girl guide leader for many years. She enjoyed playing bridge, camping at TeePee Park, and spending her summers by the pool with her grandchildren.

She had a closely guarded secret technique to crochet scrubbies for cleaning dishes, and despite her arthritis she worked tirelessly to produce them in every colour to be sold at fundraising events. When we went to restaurants you could tell how good the service was based on the number of scrubbies she produced: one was excellent, two was ok, three not so much. Based on the sheer number of comments I've received, her legendary scrubbies were almost as beloved in the community as she was.

I have had the privilege of raising five children of my own, and watching them grow from infants into fine adults. It was always fascinating to see how fully formed their personalities seemed to be from the very beginning of their lives. Through caring for my mother in her final years I have had the much sadder honour of watching that process unfold in reverse through her dementia. Though her understanding about the specifics of the world around her diminished bit by bit over time, she always remained my mother. And those core pieces of her personality that made her who she was never went away: shown clearly through her desire to connect with the people around her, or through a mischievous look as she tried to trick someone into bringing her candy. 

Growing up in a military family, we moved around a quite a lot. We would repeatedly uproot our lives and move across the country, so the only true constants in our lives were the connections between me, my brother James, my mom, and my late father Bob. When my father died young we were all hit hard by the grief, and my mother, who never remarried, always kept a place for him in her heart. He was a military leader and an engineer who designed planes, and his ashes were spread from a helicopter over the Comox glacier 30 years ago, forever rooting our family to this place. I have no doubt in my mind that they are together now in heaven, and I'm sure that they have a lot of catching up to do.

Not all of us after we are grown have the opportunity to show that when you strip away everything else, the person we are underneath it all is so sweet, and generous, and loving. The memory of her kindness is the legacy that my mother left behind in the hearts of all of the people that she touched. 

Maureen led a full life, travelled to many places, and dearly enjoyed the company of her friends and family. She will be missed.