Today’s the day: March 3, 2013. My cousins have descended on Fort Lauderdale, gathering together in celebration and reminiscence of Mom’s life. We visited Ormond Beach, the home of Gogo and Deedoc my mom’s parents, and scattered a few of Mom’s ashes there at their grave and in the park at a wonderful little spot that gets a lot of sun. We’ve bonded together once again, just like when we were kids – the six in my generation have known each other for 60 years!

Mom was the last of her generation in the Mock family. She was the middle one of five, with brothers Harry Edgar Mock, called Harry, William Byford Taylor Mock, called Bill, Charles Jackson Mock, called Chic, and John Edward Mock, called Johnny. Their parents, Harry Edgar Mock, called Deedoc and Golda Murdock Taylor Mock, called Gogo, lived long enough for those in my generation to remember wonderful times we shared with them. Deedoc died when I was seven, in 1959; Gogo lived till 1971 when I was in college. All four brothers lived long and productive lives and we remember them too on this day.

I was lucky enough to spend whole summers at Gogo and Deedoc’s home in Ormond Beach when I was growing up, since my dad was a schoolteacher and got all that extra free time. It was as much my home as were our own houses in Cincinnati and Philadelphia. When I was in college I descended on Gogo with several friends for spring break, and I still remember her and her sister Aunt Frances bustling around the kitchen making buckwheat pancakes for us. They looked like those little birds you see on the beach, sandpipers, the ones that seem to do everything at warp speed.

I’m the youngest of my generation in the Mock family, and the only one with a different surnmae. Harry’s kids, Terry and Barbie, can’t be with us today, Terry because he doesn’t travel much anymore, Barbie because she died in a car crash in the ’70s. The rest of us are all here, Chic’s children Penny, Bucky, Niki, Peter and Margot and Bill’s son Billy who’s just four days older than I. I am sure that Mom is looking down on this gathering with awe at the way everyone has come together to remember her, and I know we all thank her for bringing us all to the same place for the first time in at least 30 years.  My dad’s right next to her, her brothers and parents too.

Mom was born on June 11, 1915, went to Roycemore School, Wells College, and the University of Arizona. She rode horses, mostly at a ranch in Arizona, flew her own plane that she had to give up for the war effort in 1941, and drove an ambulance during World War 2. On this day, March 3, in 1945, she married Wayne Lawrence Gregory, my dad, and I came along seven years later. Dad taught speech and drama at Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati for 37 years; Mom brought me up, working occasionally as a librarian but mostly focusing on life at home. We visited Gogo every year at Christmas and spent every summer there too, the whole time I was growing up in Cincinnati and later Philadelphia. It was because I had problems with the other kids at Walnut Hills that we moved to Philadelphia in 1967, cutting short my dad’s dream of teaching for forty years and retiring in the same year that  I graduated and he and Mom celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary. Instead, we took on a new life a block from my uncle Johnny; I had a fresh start at Friends Central School while Mom and Dad opened a new branch of Stuart Lewis Gourmet Foods. They turned their life upside down, just for me.

Later, after the shop had failed and I’d started to settle in here in Fort Lauderdale, they uprooted themselves again and moved down to be near the family – that would be my first wife Kerste, our daughter Tammy, and me. Kerste helped them find their house in Wilton Manors, but almost immediately left me for an old flame in Middletown, Connecticut, her home town. Tammy visited for many years and loved her Grammarge, joining her here at the Church of the Intercession on many occasions.

In 1984, Lorraine and I were married, a few months later Dad died, and by the end of the year Lorraine and I had moved to Pennsylvania for my job. We didn’t come back till the early ’90s, and the members of this church were far more a part of her life than were we. Many of you know more about those years than I do, and I thank you all for the love and support you showed her.

In recent years, Lorraine and I have become more and more a part of Mom’s life as well as being more involved here at Intercession. She bounced back from several falls and other health challenges, returning to her Wilton Manors home time and again when many had written her off. She spent the last year and a half of her life at Sara’s House, a wonderful little assisted living facility where she got great care from a loving and supportive group of caregivers. We brought her here to services as often as we could, and every time she loved to see all her friends here. We made a habit of bringing her home to our apartment for dinner and a movie afterwards, making many new memories that we will forever cherish. On Thanksgiving of last year many of us visited via Skype in what turned out to be the last time many of my cousins saw her. She loved that and I’m so glad that technology made that possible.

Several of us here at the church went caroling just before Christmas, and Mom loved seeing all of us when we visited and sang to everyone at Sara’s house. She came back here one more time, but was clearly tired; Father Fred and I visited her at Sara’s House a couple of times, and it was pretty clear she wouldn’t bounce back this time. But even though she didn’t quite make it to 110, the age she always claimed when I asked her as a kid, she made a heck of a run at it. I pray that my own exit from this life will be similarly peaceful when the time comes. Hopefully not too soon…

I was lucky enough to have my mom in my life for 60 years, almost 61. Not many are so fortunate as I, and none of them are lucky enough to have this very very special lady as their mother. God blessed me with this wonderful gift, shared with me this wonderful person that was Marjorie Mock Gregory. I don’t blame him for wanting to take her home.

Go in peace, Mom. Take good care of her, Dad. I love you both and I thank you. Happy Anniversary.