Communicating Authentically

There is a poem entitled, The Dash by Linda Ellis, which begins with this stanza:

I read of a man who stood to speak at the funeral of a friend.
He referred to the dates on the tombstone from the beginning…to the end.
He noted that first came the date of birth and spoke the following date with tears,
But, he said, what mattered most of all was the dash between those years.

You see, the dash represents the time the person spent alive on earth. I’d like to tell you about my mom’s “dash.”

My mother’s surname at her birth was Strong, and it is fitting to note that she was born to a line of Strong women.

My mother was loved by almost everyone who knew her and loving toward almost everyone she met. Even as a child, when her mother Eunice married Albert Gustafson, rather than staying a stepfather to little Ruthie, he adopted her as his own and gave her his name. Because of that name, her many friends in high school called her “Gussie,” which she recently admitted to us she never really liked, but she was easy-going, so she went along with it. She was also popular; the president of her freshman, junior and senior classes at Terryville High School -– vice-president in her sophomore year -– quite an accomplishment for a woman in 1939. In her yearbook, she listed her ambition was ‘to be Mrs. Sadoski.’ She studied nursing for a year or so, but in 1940, she became Ruth Sadoski, a loving wife and patient mother to 8 children. She was the heart of the house where all the neighborhood kids came to play.

But Mom wasn’t just a Strong, she was strong -– and resilient, and a pretty smart businesswoman. After my father died, she became an Avon lady to make ends meet. She amassed a customer base of well over 300 local families, running a cottage industry from our front porch.

Mom was quietly outgoing, simply radiating warmth and welcome. After reconnecting with an old classmate at a class reunion, she became Mrs. Chet Kantorski and moved to Torrance, California, where she quickly built a whole new network of friends and admirers. She always involved herself in her church and community, teaching catechism and participating in fundraisers in Terryville. In Torrance, she volunteered at the local hospital auxiliary thrift store, and as a vocational counselor at Torrance High. Those who knew her here at St. Joan of Arc in Orleans may remember that she was a lay Eucharistic minister, active in the St. Vincent DePaul Society and in the thrift store. Ever stylish and well turned-out herself, she was even a runway model at a few of the thrift store’s fundraising fashion shows.

Despite the many names she took over the years, Mom was her own woman, living on her own terms. After her second husband died, she oversaw the building of her own home here in Orleans, where she lived contentedly alone for the next 35 years.

My mother touched countless lives; leaving everyone she met just a bit better off. Just as she lived, Mom died on her own terms as well. To us, her death leaves the world a colder place. And that dash between 1921 and 2017 seems so inadequate. But what lies even deeper than our grief, or an etching on a tombstone, is the knowledge that who she was in life will continue to warm us, guide us, and bless us with the same gentle and patient love that we were fortunate enough to receive for all those years in between.

Read by Celeste Rothstein at Ruth Kantorski’s funeral on October 14, 2017