The Eulogy for Ann Marie Hicks

Delivered
11/25/22

by her son, Sander Hicks

I want to start by saying how grateful I am to my Mother for giving me life, and Catholic spirituality, and the most unique family in the world. It’s an honor to be up here speaking at her passing. And if I break down, we can all just pray a Hail Mary together, OK? 

We all feel an immense amount of grief.

I also want to say thank you, to each of you, for coming to say goodbye. Do you wonder what she wants to say to each of you? I have been meditating on that for over a week. I just pray in the name of the Holy Spirit that I can say something here that will comfort you, and give you a gift, of a Word to rouse you.

There will never be anyone exactly like her. And yet we could all learn something from her, and be a little bit more like her. She was God’s love in the world. She was a powerful voice for a new kind of family, for mercy, for food for the hungry, for volunteering, for peace and nonviolence.

There was never a stranger in her house, because all were welcome. She would do anything for you. As a mother, she was a great comfort. She could take the pain away. When you engaged in a conversation with her, she was completely present, not distracted. In her presence, you felt her aura, her energy, and her warmth. It was like these things came from another world.

Growing up, my Mother did a lot of things that I didn’t understand at the time, but eventually, I saw her brilliance. She was adamant that we should not have plastic guns, as toys. Guns kill people, and it’s not a game. I see now, she was living the law, of turn the other cheek, break the cycle of violence and reaction. She believed in nonviolence and taught me that by her example.

Dinner was at 6:30 every night. “We sit down, as a family.” She fed us healthy food, and we could only have candy on Saturday morning. (My sisters and I were just joking at the Funeral Home this morning about how it’s Candy Day on Saturdays, so we can have peppermints from the Funeral Home).

She didn’t allow commercial television, but educational TV was all right. Thanks to Sesame Street, I was reading before I went to kindergarten. She loved books. She read the Giving Tree to us a lot, and you know what, she was the Giving Tree. 

All my life, people have asked me, what was it like, to have such a unique, multi-racial family. Well, it was great. It was incomparable, because I didn’t have another family to compare it to. She tied us all together with her love. In a lot of the old family pictures, she is seated at the center, like a Sun. 

My sisters followed her lead, and I am so proud that they have had long, happy marriages. Mary Beth and Carlos are going on 22 years, and Lee Ann and Bruce will have 25 years soon. Good job. Mom is proud of you. 

Which gets us to her own 56-year marriage to Dad. 56 years and they were so in love. She was always the most beautiful woman in the world to him. And she revered him completely. 

Together, they volunteered a cumulative 80 plus years for ACCA, the local Christian direct-action charity. Together, did work in Haiti here in the Parish, and in the 60’s, they traveled and worked in Ghana, West Africa for two years. Here at St. Anthonys, he started the legal clinic, and she was on the School Board. 

In all of my years growing up with them, I saw them fight once, just once. There was an argument about some oatmeal, and she stormed off upstairs to go back to bed. I had just learned to feed my sisters raisin bran and milk, so I remember thinking, this is so shocking the marriage must be over, they are going to leave, and I will have to feed my sisters cold cereal for the rest of our lives. That is how unusual one fight was. And then, they came down and kissed and made up in front of us. All was well.

They complemented each other – Dad was funny, and a little risqué, she would play it straight. I remember once she had some repairs for him to do. He was nibbling on her neck, hugging her. She said, “Norman, go get up the towel rack.” He said, “Oh, my towel rack is already up.”

They were perfect for each other. Both came from Catholic, working-class, Polish-American families. Both came from Northeast industrial areas. Both were dedicated to making the world a better place, with their gifts, and their willpower. She was more religious; he was more secular. But he agreed to raise the kids Catholic and go to Mass.  She made him sign a contract the night of the proposal. She had great joy as Dad eventually inched closer back to Catholicism. When Dad received Holy Communion in Assisi, in Italy, she was ecstatic. “Well, I did it for your Mother” he said to me later. But hey this is powerful stuff. He kept going. 

Last week, the very day before she died, he wrote an email that moved me. It wasn’t very secular. “I know you will join me in praying for a peaceful end to her life, and a smooth transition to the next. She was a wonderful wife, mother and grandmother. The angels will welcome her to heaven with open arms, I am sure.”

Personally, she was dedicated to Mary. As a teenager, her Catholic girls group was highly organized in her home parish. It was called a “Sodality” or a group of companions to Mother Mary. Ann Marie wanted so badly to win the lottery that would give her the privilege of crowning the Mary statue with a tiara of flowers, at the Sodality’s big ceremony, May. She even promised God, that if she won, she would become a nun. God was definitely interested, because, in the lottery, her name was picked for the top honor. But somehow, she didn’t become a nun, maybe she re-negotiated, or perhaps God had other plans for her. Instead, she had the life-long, dedicated religious passion of a nun. She often prayed the rosary, and had a place in her home dedicated to prayer and meditation. On long car trips, we would pray the rosary as a family, which was so annoying as a kid, but then you grow up and see it differently. It’s like chanting. It can put your mind at rest. 

I remember being so disturbed by a film on TV called The Day After, about nuclear war. In the 1980’s. She said there was something I could do about it, and that she was already a subscriber to anti-nuclear newsletters. Together, we went and saw the Gandhi film when it came out, in the early 1980s. Both films had a profound effect on me. She believed that peace is possible. She believed we can do something about it.

She believed world hunger could and should be eradicated. As a Masters Degree biologist, she knew that we COULD grow enough food for everyone. Something else is in the way. 

She believed that we could be like Martin Luther King, that we can eradicate the stupidity of racism. We can create a world of peace. We can be like Jesus. We all just need to act, to do something big.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus says, “Greater things you shall do, because I am going to my Father.” 

Can I get an “Amen?”

Some of you may be saying, What? Us? Greater things than Jesus?

Mom would say, well if Jesus said it, it must be true. Find out how. To the young people here, she would say, you can do it. Take this world of violence, and hate, and love it back into becoming human again. Teach your children peace. Teach them about Dorothy Day, Father John Dear, and what  Jesus taught us. Imagine a world without war. She loved the words of Isaiah, that the swords will be turned into ploughshares, and the spears into pruning hooks. From war tools to farm tools. Feed the people.

Mom was a lifelong teacher, but she was also a musician. She loved to play the piano and sing. She would put on the song “Lord of the Dance” and make an entire party in her house dance to it, follow her around like a Conga line. She loved musicals, and would take us out to see Godspell, Cats, Sound of Music.  

Her life was a big YES. She was like Mary. (Ann Marie, after all is the name of Mary, preceded by the name of Mary’s Mom, Ann). 

Mary said a big YES to the Angel, she chose to have Jesus become a baby in her. 

In a similar way, Mom said Yes to Norman, yes to his marriage proposal, after only three weeks of dating him, Yes to going to Ghana, yes to believing in that mission, even though she didn’t exactly know where Ghana was. Yes to building a family in an unconventional way. Yes to adding Carol Rewers to our home, when she needed a place to stay, and Carol today has enriched our family with her own spirituality. (And helped plan this funeral.) 

Many people forget we even had Hussein from Iran come stay with us, in the early 1980’s, a Muslim Iranian student who lived with us when there was hate in our neighborhood against Iranians. She ignored the hate and opened her home. No one was a stranger. “You are neither Jew nor Greek, woman nor man, we are all one in the Body of Christ.”- as St. Paul said.

I will end with this – and she really loved this story. She once told me, Hell is quite a place. A rich banquet, full of the most delicious foods, fruits, fountains of chocolate, honey baked hams, organic kale, you name it, BUT everyone’s arms are locked at the elbow, and so everyone is fighting all the time, starving.

And heaven is the exact same. Heaven is exactly the same. With one crucial difference. The people feed each other. We feed each other. We work together. 

I know today where my Mom is. She is at that banquet, helping to organize it, (maybe even suggesting how to run it better), she is directly helping to feed people, sharing the heavenly gifts we were all given. 

What inspires you about her life? What can you do for other people? For the poor? Can you bring light to the confused? Could the spirit of Ann Marie reach out and connect us all more? In the name of Jesus, can we prevent the next mass shooting, by being like Ann Marie and talking, and hugging people more, even the desperate loners playing with guns? That would be you in communion with Jesus. 

The next time you see a homeless person, or a panhandler, stop and ask them for their story. Listen. Give of your time. That would be you in communion with Jesus.

Ann Marie in is heaven, but it’s not a heaven far away from our lives. Her heaven is when you remember her voice in your heart, in your life. She wants you to get more connected with your communities. Expand your own sacred heart. That is her voice, and it’s singing in harmony now with God’s voice, and it will live forever. 

Jesus said, “Greater things you shall do….” Feed the hungry, and care for the forgotten. Mom heard that, she lived it, and she spread that Gospel into our own hearts. 

Her life is our life! 

Her death is a new beginning!