Thank you, Mom, for being you

By Brian Greenspun (contact)

Sunday, June 6, 2010 | 2 a.m.

On Thursday, my mother, Barbara Greenspun, was laid to rest. Hundreds of mourners filled the sanctuary at Congregation Ner Tamid. Many family members spoke eloquently about their mother and grandmother.

I know there are many of my mother’s friends who could not be there, as well as thousands of people who just want to know more about Barbara Greenspun.

For that reason, I am printing my remarks below.

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I remember many years ago, my father used to call me in the morning and tell me to get dressed because we were going to a funeral — usually of someone I had never heard of. I asked a couple of times the obvious question, why, and then never asked again.

The answer was simple. My father believed that everyone deserved someone to be at their funeral to say goodbye. Especially the folks who outlived all their friends and their reputations. I know my father had other reasons, but obligation was good enough for me.

I remember, also, my dad telling me of a lunch he had at the Las Vegas Country Club with a 73-year-old man. That man was almost in tears as he explained that he had just buried his mother — she was well into her 90s — and he didn’t know how he could carry on.

My father’s message was that no matter how old she is when she passes on, she is still your mother and that is a big loss. I feel that sadness today, even though I know how fortunate my siblings and I are to have had our mother for over 60 years.

As for the obligation to go to funerals, as I look out today, I see a sanctuary full of people who felt no obligation to be here. Rather, you have felt the need to come to pay respects to our mother. It is a respect that was earned throughout her life and especially for the past six decades of the life she and my father created in Las Vegas.

There is so much I could say about my mother, but time is short and there are plenty of family members here today to speak (or who have spoken) from the heart about mom, or Barbara — the name she insisted the grandchildren call her rather than the traditional options.

What I am challenged by today is the question: How do you say goodbye to Barbara Greenspun?

Like my father and her husband, Hank, Barbara will not be easy to say goodbye to because she is everywhere we go in this community. Her charitable and civic good works touch everything that touches us. She has been, for over 60 years, part of the very fabric of Las Vegas. In many respects, she has been the seamstress.

No, saying goodbye is not an option. It is more like saying hello.

What I prefer to say, though, is thank you. Thank you, Mom, for teaching your children about respect, about fair play, about community involvement and about the determination to do what is right and to do it the right way.

Thank you, Mom, for being hard on me at times, at those times when I needed that stern side of you to let me know where those boundaries were. And thank you, Mom, for working so hard all these years to make sure that each of us learned the invaluable lessons of responsibility and reverence.

The past couple of days could have been far more difficult had it not been for the hundreds of phone calls and e-mails that we have received from people who knew my mother for decades or for just a short time. To a person, they used words like grace, elegance, classy and beautiful, inside and out. They thanked her family for the good works she bestowed upon this community and, in many cases, upon them individually, often without their knowledge.

We have known forever that my mom was in a league of her own, but to hear it from so many others, well, what’s a son to say other than thank you? Thank you, Las Vegas and thank you, Mom.

One of the words that we have heard a lot to describe her is “humor” and boy, was she loaded with that. Almost to the day she died, her sense of humor was intact. When we gathered at her bedside at the end, and shortly thereafter, it was laughter that filled the room.

Sure there was a profound sense of sadness, but it could not overcome the happiness we each felt for being able to have our mother for so long and for the stories we recalled about growing up in her house.

Her greatest biographer, of course, was Hank. He wrote a daily column for 40 years in the Las Vegas Sun, and many of those days were given over to the latest episode of “life with Barbara.”

There was one column written 48 years ago that allowed my dad to include himself in the company of the Duke of Windsor and President Jack Kennedy.

The short version is that Barbara was voted that year as the best-dressed career woman in Las Vegas. I remember that time. It caused quite a stir in our household. My guess is that Barbara held that title for decades, long after the voting for such recognition ceased.

After comparing the clothing budgets of the man who used to be king and had his finger on the wealth of England and another who had a trust fund sufficient to dress his wife in Dior and Cassini, my father wrote proudly about his best-dressed wife.

“And whereas Jackie Kennedy and Wally Simpson Windsor achieved their distinctions with thousand dollar (designer dresses), my wife did it with a $30 dress purchased in a Tokyo department store.

“The only foreseeable problem is how can a best-dressed wife coexist with a worst-dressed husband in the same house. Something’s got to give. But for the present I am content to rest on our laurels for she is my Jackie and I am her Jack.”

In just one column he found the essence of my mother’s elegance. He placed her at the top of the fashion world, right next to the beautiful Jackie Kennedy and praised her for doing it in a $30 dress. I am not certain my mom took it in the spirit my dad wrote it, but she understood instinctively the lesson. And she was more than happy to live in her own Camelot with Hank.

There are dozens of humorous “life with Barbara” columns and hundreds of stories that we will tell for years to come. Suffice it to say that theirs was a love affair that started the moment they met and continued long after my father passed away.

In a documentary we finished this past year, my mother talks about how Hank proposed to her within seconds after meeting her at a wedding in Belfast, Ireland. She said she was madly in love with him from that very moment and didn’t even know his name. She married him “for better or worse” a short time later, and the rest has been an incredible journey that is the stuff about which adventure books are written and from which love songs are composed.

I will miss my mother’s wisdom and her steady hand. I will miss her unrelenting determination to do good and do right. I will miss her unconditional love and the pride she had in her entire family. And I will miss the light in her eyes when she saw her eight great-grandchildren — the babies who medical science proclaimed she would not be able to see and enjoy.

I know this is the time at which I have to say goodbye to my mother.

This task is made easier because I know she is in a better place. It is a place she has wanted to be since the day my father died.

Barbara is with Hank, and they are dancing in the stars! A little arguing, perhaps, but loving life and loving each other as only they could.

In that same documentary, my mom says that their favorite song was “Where or When,” sung by her favorite singer, Frank Sinatra.

Now we know the answer to the song.

Barbara is happy with Hank once again. We know where she is, and as of Tuesday afternoon, we knew when.

We are glad you are happy, Mom, but we will miss you. Rest well.

Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.