EULOGY FOR DIANE MEADE

Our ancient sages were fond of saying, “‘Ve-ahavtah rei-echa ka-mo-cha.’  Zeh klal ga-dol ba-Torah.” - Love your fellow human being as you love yourself.’  This is the most important teaching of the Torah.”  If our sages were correct, and I believe that they were, then Torah is Love.   And if Torah is Love, then Diane Meade was Torah, for she lived the life of Torah; she lived the life of love.

There are those people who, when faced with most situations, lead with their fist.  They are always ready to fight.  Then there are those who, when faced with most situations, lead with their head.  They must think everything through thoroughly, endlessly analyzing it from every possible angle.  Then there are those who, when faced with most situations, lead with the heart.  They open their hearts, let their feelings be their guide, always seeking new opportunities to express their caring and concern for others.  Diane was one of those people.  She always led with the heart.  Love was indeed the prime mover in her life.

Love, or more precisely true love - honest love - sincere love - has many dimensions, and we express it in countless ways.  And such was the nature of the love which literally flowed from Diane.

Plain and simple.  Diane loved people.  Whenever she was in the company of others, she glowed.  In fact, her son Gary put it very well when he said that “Mom could walk into a public bathroom and make friends with someone.”

Diane’s love of people was manifest in several ways.  First of all, she was a talker.  John and all the chil­dren agreed that they could be in a crowded room, look for Diane but not see her because she was short, but simply listen, and sure enough they’d find her.  However, not only did Diane like to talk, but people liked to listen to her.  For Diane was the consummate storyteller.  Indeed, every one of her conversations turned into a story, and one story would lead to another story, and then another and another.  Every once in a while John would try to bring it all together by asking, “Diane, where is this going?”  But without missing a beat Diane would respond, “Shut up and I’ll tell you,” and everyone else would laugh their heads off.

Laughter was a very important part of how Diane related to others.  She not only had the gift of gab but she also had the comedic sense.  When she was President of the Sisterhood, I always looked forward to her presentations to the children at the Bar and Bat Mitzvah services.  Each one was accompanied by a hug, a kiss, and perhaps a pinch on the cheek.  And then her remarks to the young person made us laugh in a warm, loving way.  But even more than her Bar and Bat Mitzvah presentations, I really looked for­ward to her Presi­dent’s remarks on Sisterhood Shabbat.  It was great stand-up Jewish comedy with a par­ticular focus upon our congregation.

Laughter was so important to Diane because she clearly understood that there were few more precious gifts to give to others than the gift of joy.  I suspect that she was particularly appreciative of that because not all of her life was so joyful.  Her first marriage was a difficult one with a difficult divorce.  It was not easy for her, on a very limited income, to be a single mother, raising her two boys, Gary and Rick.  Yes, for Diane, joy was a precious gift; a gift she gladly wished to bestow on others.

Stories and laughter were not the only ways she showed her love for others.  There was, of course, her cooking and her baking, especially her bread baking.  Some say she was addicted to baking bread.  What a powerful symbol bread is.  For millennia, across many and varied cultures, bread has been, and is, a ma­jor symbol of life.  To share bread with another is to wish them a long and a good life.  And so it was with Diane.  Food, and especially bread, was yet another vehicle by which she expressed her love for us.  Adam and his friends could come home late from whatever mischief they were getting into, and they could be assured that Diane had left some bread and food for them to devour.  We at the Temple were special beneficiaries of this particular expression of Diane’s love, through all of her challah baking.  Many a Shabbat service was graced with a Diane Meade challah and many were the Bar and Bat Mitzvah fami­lies who were blessed by Diane’s offer to bake the challah for their special event.  I always knew that if there was some program which I was organizing which would have been enhanced by some delectable treats, that Diane was always an easy mark.  I don’t think she ever turned me down.

Then, of course, Diane showed her love for others by being the care giver that she was.  When Diane fell ill, there were all sorts of people at the Temple who were calling the office, asking what they could do for her and the family.  Now generally, we would direct such inquiries to the chair of our Caring Committee, but in this situation, that was impossible.  Why?  Because Diane was the chair of our Caring Committee.  She was the one who made sure that everyone in need in our congregation was taken care of.  And some­times that even included some who felt that they didn’t need to be cared for - like the older congregant who was incensed when she received a senior citizens Hanukkah care package.  But that didn’t phase Diane, for her reward was not to be found in any expressions of gratitude or appreciation but rather in the satisfaction she received by the act of caring itself.

Diane must have been ecstatic when she earned her nursing degree, for if there was ever a person who was hard wired to be a nurse, it was Diane.  And how she loved her work at Community Health Care and at Head Start.  When asked what she did, Diane loved to say, “I train babies to raise babies.”

Babies were a particular weak spot for Diane.  She just adored them - all of them.  She was never more happy than when she was with babies.  She would come home and talk endlessly about the babies at work.  And she would buy them things... and buy them things... and buy them things, and not give one iota of attention to John’s concerns over whether or not she was bankrupting the family.

It goes without saying that yet another way that Diane showed her love of others was by simply, physi­cally showing her love to others.  Diane was a hugger and a kisser, which is not very common in our self-restrained Midwestern culture.  On any given Friday evening, at the conclusion of our Shabbat services, as the Cantor and I stood in the receiving line at the entrance to the sanctuary, we would be shaking hands with this person and that person and the other person, but when Diane came through the line, we knew that there was a warm hug and a kiss in store for us, and we looked forward to that.

Yes, Diane loved people and in return people loved her.  That could not have been made more manifest than by the enormous outpouring of emotion that Diane’s crisis evoked.  With people constantly coming to visit at the hospital, and with others climbing over each other in their rush to offer their help in so many ways, whether by preparing food, or volunteering to stand vigil over Diane at the hospital while the family took meals and respite, or performing various other tasks, all in an attempt to help see the family through this crisis, there is no greater testimony to how many lives Diane touch lovingly and gracefully.  As John said to me, “Diane has real clout at the Temple!”

And as much as Diane loved us all, Diane loved her family even more.  She loved her brothers and her sisters, and constantly reached out to them, even when times were rough for the family and people were­n’t getting along.  One of the great satisfactions of her life was that after an estrangement, she was able to bring her brother Jack back into the family.

You might say that Diane was her family’s “communication central.”  She was the one who kept in touch with everyone and made sure that they all were kept in the loop, knowing what each were doing with their lives.  She did her best to keep the family together.

Family was important to her, and one of the ways she demonstrated that was with her commitment to family traditions.  To her dying day, she was constantly striving to perfect her cooking so that would rep­licate what her mother did in the kitchen.

Yet another of those family traditions was her family’s commitment to their Jewish identity and their Jew­ish faith.  And so was Diane deeply committed.  Not only was she an active member of Temple Emanuel and a regular Shabbat worshiper, but she was also one of those people who reveled in pointing out any­thing that was Jewish.  Whenever she encountered something Jewish in this world, she glowed with pride.

As deep as was Diane’s love for her family, nowhere was it deeper than her love for her husband John, her children, Gary, Rick, Sarah, and Adam, Gary’s and Rick’s wives, Jeanne and Jessica, and her grand­children, Tillie, Grace, Blayne, Brian, Brad, and Makyla.  I remember how she absolutely adored baby Grace.  Diane literally floated on air whenever she had Grace with her at the Temple.  How devastated Diane was when that baby passed away.  But then came Tillie to light up her life.  Indeed, the Meade house­hold became like a shrine to Tillie.

It is abundantly obvious that Diane left her mark on all of her children.  Each one of them carries forward into the future a certain aspect of her legacy.  For Gary, it is her gift of gab.  That gift has made him suc­cessful in the advertising industry.  For Rick, it is her care giving.  Like his mother, Rick has decided to devote his life to caring for those who are unable to fully care for themselves.  For Sarah, it is her love of children.  Today, Sarah is a nanny in New York.  Who knows?  Someday she may very well decide to make this work into a lifetime career.  And for Adam, it is her love of Judaism and things Jewish.  Adam has been active in the Temple, has spent an extended period of time in Israel and someday hopes to return there.  For Adam, like for Diane, living life means living a life of mitzvot, deeds of caring which draw one closer to God.  Each of Diane’s children, in their own special way, are a beautiful reflection of their mother.

And then there is John.  Truly the love of Diane’s life.  Though born of a different father, both Gary and Rick call John “Dad” and mean it with all their hearts.  And both have said to me, almost in unison, “The best thing that ever happened in my Mom’s life is marrying my Dad.”  And John echoes that sentiment.  The best thing that ever happened in his life was marrying Diane.  They fulfilled each other.  They were inseparable.  In fact, I heard a rumor that they even made the bed together.  For Diane, all the hard times of her first marriage, her difficult divorce, her struggles as a single parent, vanished like smoke when she and John united their lives.

From the book of PROVERBS comes a text entitled, “A Woman of Valor.”  Traditionally, a Jewish hus­band is supposed to recite this text to his wife every Shabbat, as part of the dinner table rituals.  This text, more than any other, has become identified with the traditional Jewish ideals of womanhood.  Today, in our post-feminist world, many a modern Jewish woman baulks at the traditional images found in this text.  They tell their husbands, “Don’t read this to me!” and they tell their rabbis, “Don’t you dare say this at my funeral!”  But there is so much in this text that really captures the person who was Diane Meade.  Therefore, at her family’s request, I conclude these remarks with this traditional formula: