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| Kathleen Marie Snyder November 24, 1950 ~ February 23, 2006 |
| For Our Mother We feel it's unjust that we have to sit here and write to you in words the depth of our love, respect and admiration for you. Because no matter how much we write or how eloquent we put our thoughts to paper, it wouldn't even begin to tap into or do justice to the feelings that run so deep inside each one of us. We're trying to imagine what life will look like without you in it. You were always a mother first, and because of that, you were a part of everything. No matter how close or how far we lived from you, you were HOME. For so long, you have been our place of love and refuge in this crazy, mixed up human world. You were our gift from God to help us navigate through still and restless waters. We thank you, Mom, for your tireless efforts to encourage us to be solid, productive, loving, strong, compassionate people. Because of you, we became the kind of people that see the value of endless grace, generosity and human kindness. But what we will remember and cherish the most will be your unfailing love for us. You showed us how to love in small and big ways. The small ways over a lifetime add up to be pretty big ... but what they mean to us are the tokens of love scattered along the way that always reminded us that you were in our corner. All the times we came to you the night before a project was due and we didn't know where to start, and never letting us sit around too long feeling sorry for ourselves after a big disappointment, hemming pants the day of an important interview, being a short order cook for the whole lot of us and let us not forget the countless times we dug into your purse for a 10 spot. You were always available. And all of those little things were amazing and important... and we hold them so dear to us. And in many ways, they are what life's all about. But Mom, the big ways you loved us... those ways are what truly defined us as people. Because frankly, when you decide to have 6 children ... at any given time, one of us always had a big life issue we were facing. You never gave up on any of us. Never. You wept for us when we were lost, you fought for us when we were in battles bigger than ourselves, and you celebrated with us in all our successes. And we love you for being our compass when we lost perspective, and our sounding board when we needed to vent, and our cheerleader when we didn't think we had one more ounce of courage left. We knew we could always look to you to love us. We are all so different ... and you embraced our differences and loved us differently and equally and unconditionally. And lady, we loved being loved by you. The hardest part of our relationship with you was watching you struggle with a body that couldn't keep up with your amazing spirit. You fought like a champion ... and we can say, without a doubt, Ali had nothing on you, kid. You are OUR hero. For so many reasons. And watching you go through your struggles with such honor, dignity, perseverance and courage is a legacy that will never be taken for granted. It has taught us to be better human beings ... better Christians. Your sacrifice and struggle brought many of us closer to God. Your life gave us gifts that transcend what we have here on Earth. Because in some ways, for some of us, you lead us to Heaven too. How incredible is that! So, while we miss you here, we know you are helping God prepare us all a home for a later date. And He's lucky, because you're really quite good at that. And that's what we're going to hold onto until we see you again. To know you are busy doing what you are best at ... but without a broken body ... without pain ... without struggle. And besides, you have one more baby to raise up there that's been waiting for you a very long time. And you KNOW Grandpa's not changing any diapers. Give Daniel & Grandpa a kiss for us. We will never forget. We will never stop missing you. And we never, never stop loving you. Forever Yours, Jason, Sarah, Adam, Rebecca, Elizabeth and Jake |
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