I delivered this eulogy for my mother, Susan McElrath, on September 28, 2024 at First Baptist Church of Powder Springs, Georgia. Because many people reached out to me suggesting I share it, I am publishing it here exactly as I had it in front of me. I made a couple improvised changes to wording in a few places when I delivered it.
First, before I get into what I want to say today, I thought it would be good to acknowledge something that can easily get lost in all of this. My family and I are not the only ones in mourning today. Many of you have expressed your condolences to me and my family in recent days, but are yourselves grieving the loss of a friend, and I think that should be acknowledged. As someone who takes friendship very seriously, I wanted to extend my condolences to you all as well and say I am sorry for your loss also.
Since news broke of my mom’s passing last week, hundreds of people have shared their memories of her. The characteristic that has seemed to be at the the front of everybody’s mind is her kindness. I am no different; kindness is the thing I remember best about her as well. I normally learn best through words, but I think with mom I learned more from her example. There are two examples that come to my mind that I think really demonstrate what kind of person she was.
The first is my sister. As many of you know, my sister was diagnosed with a chromosome deletion while still in the womb. She was not expected to survive gestation, much less live long after birth. The recommendation was to terminate the pregnancy, and if my mom had taken that course of action, I believe that decision would have at least been met with understanding and sympathy from those around her. But she, along with my dad, decided to honor life and keep the pregnancy, knowing full well that even if my sister survived, she would always need full-time care. Today, as a result of my mom’s courageous and self-sacrificial kindness, my sister is still with us 23 years later. And by the way, dad, if you are ever wondering what mom thought of you as a husband, I think the fact she felt secure enough to make that decision knowing the enormous sacrifice it would entail pretty much speaks for itself.
The other example of her kindness that comes to my mind is how she dealt with frustration in her relationships. The closer a relationship between two people is, the more opportunity there is for conflict and frustration as it gets difficult to hide our differences and failures. I know there are things about me that my mom wished were different. She always thought I should rise to the highest level of whatever I was doing. When I went to college, mom envisioned me as a future PhD. I left school after one semester. When I joined the army, mom envisioned me as a high-ranking officer. I got out as a specialist. When I joined the fire department, mom envisioned me as the future fire chief. The jury is still out on that one, but I’m not exactly racing up the ranks.
My point in this is that I know there was always a big difference between my priorities and her ambitions for me, and I know that sometimes frustrated her. I like to think I made a decent compromise with her by marrying a Georgia tech-educated engineer turned soon-to be-doctor, but what is important here is that while my ambitions are placed very differently than where my mom would have placed them, I never for a moment had any doubt that my mom loved me and was proud of me. And I think that shows something really important, something that gets to the core of my mom’s kindness that so many of you can attest to in your own unique ways: When it came to people, mom never reduced them to what she wished was different about them. She related to people according to what she saw as good, not her perception of their faults or her grievances against them, whether those were justified or not.
As we honor the life of my mom, I think it would be good to follow her example and reflect on the wisdom of it. Because she was only 58 years old, it is easy to think she should have had a lot more life ahead of her. It would be easy to set our thoughts today on all the things we wish were different. But I think if we did that, we would be missing out.
If you knew my mom, you likely also know my wife and I just recently made her a grandmother. Seven weeks ago, we celebrated a birth, and today we mourn a death. I want to point out that we do both things for the same reason, and that reason is we believe life is good, and we know life is good because God is the source of life, and He is good. That does not mean everything that happens in life is good in and of itself, but it does mean God is good in everything that happens, and we can expect that goodness to be made manifest.
In Philippians 4, the apostle Paul writes, “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” I stand before you today believing, as my mom did, that Christ is true. Christ is honorable. Christ is just. Christ is pure. Christ is lovely. Christ is commendable. Christ is excellent. Christ is worthy of praise. Therefore, I believe that when we think of the life of my mom, we should think of Christ. I believe that is actually why everyone was so drawn to my mom’s kindness, for it was in her kindness that she most visibly imitated the Christ she confessed.
I believe that if we divorce our reflections on my mom’s life from her confession of Christ, we reduce her life to vanity. We are right to grieve death. We are right to be sad over this earthly separation. We may wonder why it had to happen now instead of in 20 years. But one thing I am quite sure of is that my mom would be rather offended at the thought of someone denying the goodness of God on her account. It is perfectly good and right to trust God in our sorrows, in our mourning over the death of loved ones, and with our own deaths which we will all eventually face, because the God who gives life also became a man and experienced the very grief we are experiencing today. God knows what it is like to die as a human being, and not only die, but rise from the dead.
I believe we have reason to face today’s mourning with hope, and dare I say even joy, on account of the life of Christ. Our grief need not sink into despair, because mom’s life is bound up in Christ. My mom’s death does not reduce her life to our memories of her that will fade as time passes and eventually die with us.
Athanasias said it was “unworthy of the goodness of God that creatures made by Him should be brought to nothing.” Irenaeus famously said, “the glory of God is man fully alive, and the life of man is the vision of God.” Christ Himself said “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living” and that he came that we might have life and have it abundantly.
As we enter this era of earthly separation, and as painful as that is, I believe mom is alive today in a way that is fuller and more fundamentally real than many of us who are here today. Paul wrote to the Corinthians that the bread we break is a participation in Christ’s body, and that body was raised from the dead. I saw my mom receive the broken bread many times in this very sanctuary. While we might live the rest of our lives on earth without my mom here in the flesh, I would argue that we can actually live life not only with my mom, but every other saint who dies in the lord whenever we receive the body and blood of Christ in faith.
I am thankful for the life of my mother today, and I believe it is right to be thankful to the God who gave it. I speak to you all today as a son in grief over my mother’s passing, but also as one who says what the faithful have always said: I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Thank you.
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