Mary Nagan - November 3, 1917 - October 15, 2008

Mother Mary in the gardens of Healdsburg, at the wedding of Jeffrey and Christina, August, 2008.

Mary's eulogy –– written by Wendy Lewis.

I remember the first time I met Mary and Bill Nagan. Rita was shuffling uncomfortably around the dining room of she and Mike’s first house on Jefferson St. NE — her tattered turquoise robe barely made the turns around the girth of a very pregnant belly. While I was there, Mary and Bill dropped by. I was taken first with Mary’s brilliant blue eyes, then her infectious laugh and calm demeanor, which provided perfect ballast to Bill’s generous, blustery and endearing theatrics. I fell in love with both of them instantly and little did I know what kind of harvest this affair would bring. I was going to have to buy a few silos.

For almost thirty years, Rita and I have raised our children, survived poverty and calamity, traveled, celebrated our successes and buried our dead together — in short, we’ve polished off a few bottles of wine. Woven inextricably into all these events has been the strong fiber of her family and today we pay homage to the matriarch of this Irish crew — Mary Jane Farley Nagan.

Mary stands alone as my only true hero. Unwittingly, she lived beyond the standards for a woman of her own (or any) generation by truly being who she was and keeping time with her own internal drummer. She has always appeared to me to be disaffected and unshackled by conventional roles or limits of any kind. She was the sort of woman whose autonomy would inspire three staunchly independent and entrepreneurial generations in her own family while deeply affecting countless others on the periphery, myself, and my children included.

Mary was really good at doing what she wanted, when she wanted — and didn’t really make much ado about any of it. She didn’t need permission and perhaps she never even imagined it was part of the process. She didn’t rant, rave, demand or make a scene either; she just slipped through all the gates as if she’d been given a backstage pass. Her way of moving through the world gave me extra clearance to do the same. Without ever spelling it out, she showed me that you don’t have to fight for access; you just assume there is a freeway exit with your name on it and flip on your signal. It really works!

There is an infinite cache of stories family and friends will flush out in the days and years to follow — but here are a few that come to my mind. I was in New York at least twice with Mary and I know for a fact she dug closing wine bars, loved St. Patrick’s Cathedral and was always up for the next thing to do no matter how late it was. She’s also given me a host of gardening tips over the years, innumerable rants on U.S. and Irish politics, and plenty of information on Catholic rituals and saints. While she was one of the least judgmental people I’ll ever know she was certainly not devoid of her convictions. She never excelled at cooking, but she got damn good at those Irish potato buns — they weighed a pound each, stuck to your ribs and became standard Thanksgiving fare. Someone will need to sign up for those this year.

Here are few more things Mary taught me by example about the art of living well. Mary never “got old” but instead got bigger, always expanding and updating her skills, interests, goals and passions. I never thought of her as “someone’s mother”, an elderly woman whose presence required that I behave differently or edit myself. As long as I’ve known her, Mary has always pursued life as if it were meant to be lived right now, not wasting time with diminishing returns or pretense. She met everyone where they were.

Even with the losses she incurred during her years, she didn’t get sucked into the undertow of sentiment as she aged clinging to things that might weigh her down, but instead, made choices in the present tense and towards whatever interested her next. She thought nothing of taking up metal sculpture, traveling here and abroad, finishing a college degree or starting a new business in her 70’s, 80’s or 90’s. She didn’t throw the age card down as an excuse to not learn something, not challenge herself or unplug from the world. She would sometimes make reference to “those old people” as if she were not one of them — and clearly, she wasn’t.

Mary has everything to do with me being on this plane right now, writing about her, bound for Berlin. I’m heading off with three young musicians to tour the world for the next year. The chance that this would happen this late in my career is as likely as the chance I would miss the funeral of this remarkable woman who has had such a profound influence on my life! But, these unlikely events have lined up alongside each other and there is something so unbearably impossible and perfectly Mary about it all.

When I saw her four days before I left town, she asked me to check out Michelangelo’s The Last Supper when I got to Milan because she’d never been able to see it when she had traveled to Italy. I baited her with things like “here you are, still trying to make a Catholic out of me after 30 years” and “I’ll go see that damn painting if you’ll just wait for me to get back to tell you what it felt like”.

When I left her sick bed that day, I went to a studio to record the gospel song she’s long wanted me to sing at her funeral and every time she reminded me, I would say, “Mary … I can’t sing that or any song at your funeral because I can’t sing and cry at the same time”. Her response was always the same, “Well, that’s too bad. You’re gonna have to pull it together because you have to do it — I won’t take no for an answer”. It seems she has held me to that promise and let me off the hook at the same time because the song got sung but I’m not here to do it in the flesh. How she pulled this off will confound me for the rest of my days. If you need more proof, while Rita reads this to all of you, I’m on the ground in Milan trying to get to that painting. Life is a mystery.

You are all gathered here together today because of Mary Nagan. Celebrating her life is going to be easy; living without her will take some painful getting used to, and it may take awhile. Go easy on yourselves. One of the last things Mary said to me was, “So … off you go into the wild blue yonder!” As I write this, I’m flying at 36,000 feet suspended somewhere between the blue of heaven and the deep blue sea. I feel her floating along inside me and I know she will do the same with all who have had the pleasure and privilege of loving her.