Eulogy for Elizabeth Saunders

Matt Saunders
Jul 27, 2017 · 3 min read
My mum, Elizabeth Saunders. 1950–2017.

Thank you everyone for coming here to celebrate and remember the life of my mum, Liz Saunders.

I’ve agonised for so long over what to say today
That would bring back to our minds for a few moments
The woman we knew and loved
Things to say
That would make us laugh a little
And help us cry the kind of tears
That leave you feeling a tiny bit better somehow.

But it’s funny the things you remember
When you start doing this kind of thing.
And what kept coming back to my mind
Was how much she loved music
And how much she loved to sing.
I remember when I was very young
Listening in the car to this cassette tape we had
Of Billy Jo Spears — a country singer -
And we would sing along together.
I had no idea what the songs were about back then
But I remember her voice
And how she’d close her eyes
As though the words really *meant* something
Because my mum never did things that didn’t mean anything.
She never did things by halves
And everything was imbued with this… intensity
Of feeling and passion and determination
To demonstrate just how much she cared.

Like, there was this dessert she used to make
A mascarpone and lime cheesecake
It took hours to make because
She’d put these little chocolate leaves on top
Each one made laboriously by painting a real leaf
With melted chocolate
And then she’d carefully separate them
Leaving this exquisite little confection
That would vanish in your mouth in a second.
And she didn’t do it to impress you
Or to show off
She did it because it was one of the ways that she could say,
“I love you”.

When I first started school
She said “I love you”
by embroidering question-marks
On the collar of my shirts
Just like Doctor Who

And she said it by continuing to say it
When every day I’d mouth “I hate you” and stare at her daggers
For making me go to school.
Later we became friends
And we watched movies together.
We’d get the Christmas Radio Times
- Before Netflix and downloads and video tapes -
And we’d mark out the films we most wanted to see
And we’d watch and enjoy them together
While Dad usually fell asleep.

And then she said “I love you”
By making me an omelette
Every single morning I had an exam
And she said it by welcoming into our family
With wide, open arms
The girl who became my wife
And with the purest expressions of joy
I had ever seen
At the birth of each of her grandchildren.

And I always knew that she carried this… burden
This pain that sometimes dripped
Into our relationship
like a leaky roof
But she said the three words every time that we spoke
Even when this cruel disease
Had Robbed her of everything but love.

The night a few weeks ago
When I got ‘the call’
I drove like lightning from the sky
Ran through a maze of corridors
And I have to believe I arrived in time
For her somehow to’ve heard me say,
“I’m sorry. I forgive you. Please forgive me
For all of the times
I never heard what you were saying”

She always loved nature.
I remember long walks on Sunday afternoons
And picnics deep in the woods.

I don’t have the certainty-kind of faith
That some people do
That mum did
But I have hope
That in some other forest,
With wild deer in some sunlit glade
She wanders now
Not alone
And waits
To be able to say that she loves us, again

And I truly have Hope
That the Best is Yet to Come.

I love you mum.


Read my cycle of poems, “The Observer’s Guide to Grief”.

Matt Saunders

Written by

Journeyman Poet

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