Judy Dushku Tribute

Nearly twenty years ago, my sister Trish & I planned Trish’s funeral and we ran into frustrations with people making suggestions we found upsetting. I went home and called Bonnie to lean on. Bonnie, of course, listened with compassion, gave her good advice and then said,

Hey Jude, we will keep it simple when one of us dies. If you die first, I will speak at your funeral and if I die first, you speak at mine.

I felt so vulnerable then. I assumed strong Bonnie would long outlive me. Nevertheless, her comment did plant in me, in a barely conscious way, a decision to be especially observant of Bonnie’s qualities, observations, and her spectacularly sensitive, brave, wise, helpful observations. I did nothing toward writing a funeral talk for Bonnie, you understand, but I became unusually watchful, often taking mental note of the particularly fine things she did and said. I tucked them away somewhere in my heart. That little mental file remains a gift to me and I feel I can always peek into it. I am touched and impressed each time, knowing that it is mine to keep. I thank her.

After Trish died I felt incapacitated for some time, and Bon came to me with the utmost sensitivity. She knew, she said, that no one could ever “replace” someone else or the special relations that two unique people have with each other. She said she would never presume to replace my sister in my life. However, Bonnie said:

I would like to offer to be something like a sister to you.

She observed that I needed a sister close by and she was willing to do anything she could of the things that sisters often do. We were already close friends and we became closer. I did need a sister and since that tender offer, I have regarded her, and have frequently described her, as “this dearest friend of mine who is more than a friend and is something like a sister.”

The perks to me that went with Bonnie’s new role were these:

• Talk anytime about anything at all.
• Love my children and inquire about each one
• Care about what I told her of my and my children’s lives

Now who does that? Who really cares about and remembers what you tell them about all of your kids and grandkids? Those are sister-gifts. And she talked to me about her children. However, I have come to understand that Bonnie was considerably more discreet in her telling about her children than I was about mine. Many Dushku family secrets have left this mortal life with Bonnie.

Bonnie would freely give advice – often unsolicited. I considered it a blessing. I often did not know what to ask for and what I needed. Her advice covered such things as cooking: how thin to slice mushrooms; how to cut carrots at an angle. She told me how to tie those fabulous “Bonnie Christmas wreath bows” on which Mormons spend so much time. She told me gently but firmly that if I could not tie them right after repeated instruction I had to toss mine into the pile of non-Bonnie-bows. She had her standards. I remember she told me that if I preferred to talk all evening then it might be best if I cut wire. If I was making her kind of bows, I had to improve.

Bonnie also encouraged me to be more optimistic about people. “Jude, remember, they can change,” she would remind me when I felt discouraged or critical of someone; “you might be surprised someday.” She always urged patience and acceptance, rather than giving up on anyone -– very much how she lived her own life.

The most treasured unsolicited advice she gave me was to marry Jim. It changed my life in all good ways. Jim and I had decided, for what we thought were very good reasons, not to marry. He had brought one stepmother into his four daughter’s lives to the enduring dismay of all of them and we both read how difficult it was for a stepfather to come into the lives of teen-aged boys. And I had three. Then there was my prepubescent daughter. We were afraid our marrying would undo her. Instead, we decided to stay close in our miraculously wonderful mid-life romance, but live on opposites of the Charles River.

One weekend we went with Bonnie and Gerald to Martha’s Vineyard, and on arriving back at the car in the Wood’s Hole parking lot, Bonnie explained that she and Jim were riding in the front with Jim driving, and Gerald and I could enjoy conversation in the back seat. All fine. So, while Gerald and I made every effort to focus on what we were saying to one another, Bonnie told Jim all the obvious reasons why our decision not to marry was totally wrong and that he must change his mind or he would be missing a chance for the greatest happiness he could enjoy. Every argument he made in resistance to her unyielding advice, she answered back with steady insistence that he was wrong, wrong, wrong. Gerald tried to stop her, reminding her that Jim was nearly sixty and I was fifty, but Bonnie had no restraint in the matter:

Jim, you must marry Judy – and soon. All of your excuses are bogus.

We dropped Gerald and Bonnie at their home, and I drove Jim to Beacon Hill where he lived and went home to my house after picking up my kids. Soon afterward, Jim and I decided to marry. It was absolutely the wise thing to do. It came from the best authority. And we have been one of those happily-ever-after couples who tell each other so many times each week how blessed we are to have found each other. And after so many expressions of gratitude for this state of happy matrimony, I typically look to the Heavens and say, “Thank you God for our joyful marriage” and then Jim raises his arms to the sky and shouts, “Thank you Bonnie Horne!”

Jim often observed, “Bonnie doesn’t say something unless she really means it. Then she is clear, and I for one will listen!”

Jim and I had spent most of 1998 and 1999 Romania and Ireland when Bon was diagnosed with cancer and had some of her roughest early months. We were in touch only by phone, and I knew times when she was bad. When we came home, I spent a lot of time with Bonnie trying to understand what she had endured while I was away, and trying to understand how she had survived it all with what appeared to be such calm resolve and optimism, at the same time her telling me that she also knew that death was a possibility.

One afternoon we returned to the idea about speaking at her funeral. “You know me really well, Jude,” she said, and I want people to know the truth about who I am.” “Well then” I said, “I have to know if you are or have been afraid to die?” “Absolutely not,” she said firmly. She told me about the tapes she listened to, scriptures she’d read, a series of radio programs with women ministers that, along with conversations with family and friends, had helped her be peacefully prepared for this possibility. “But,” she said, “saying I am ‘not afraid to died’ does not mean I am yet ready to die. I loved living and will do so for as long as I can. I know I have some important work yet to do. It is not finished.” We talked about what it might be and she said she was not sure.

Over the next few years we often spoke of this question of what she thought her work was and whether or not she has doing it the way she had hoped. Then, for a few years, we did not talk about the subject. Probably in late 2006, I asked her again, and she said that she absolutely knew why she had been so willing to struggle to hard to live. Life has been an amazing blessing worth every sickness from chemo and allergic reactions to drugs and every other pain and what appeared to me to be horror of her treatments.

Jude, look what I would have missed if I had died when some first expected it! Nearly every grandchild I have has been born since 1998 and I know each one, and for those already born in 1998 I have had the experience of deepening of my relationships with them as they were only children back then.

She talked of each grandchild and the joy of knowing each well and believing that she had had some good influence in each of their lives. I tried to tape her the next week, asking her to tell me about Jackson, Maddy, then Bella, and Mia and Jessica and Nicholas – all of them. We stopped the taping when she said she could not think straight because of her meds, but I remember she said, “How could I have missed knowing Charlie?”

All of you grandchildren of Bonnie that are here: Do you know how important you were and are to your Nanna? Part of why she wanted to live this long was to know each of you better. She told me sweet and tender stories about every one of you and also about how important it was for her to know you. Also it was very important she said to have the chance of getting to know Mindy and their daughters better.

And she said with passion and enthusiasm that she knew how much deeper and better and how different her relationship with Gerald had become since 1998: more intimate, more mutual, more respectful. This was a very important achievement for Bonnie that she was most grateful for having these last ten years to savor. She mentioned it so often.

I adore him, in ways that I did not tell him enough or show him earlier in our lives. What if I had died before becoming so much closer to Gerald – my very best friend?

When Linda & I had our talk about her funeral wishes in 2007, Bonnie was very clear about what she wanted. She was worried that someone would get her service wrong! She was firm and clear. It must be a celebration of life including, and in fact particularly, a celebration of this last decade. She picked the songs. “You have to sing or lead ‘Amazing Grace,’ Judy. Val Wise must sing ‘How Great Thou Art.’ It says what I feel.
We read the words of this beloved hymn that expressed her feeling that the Lord had given her so much good that she “scarce could take it in.”

This past Wednesday night, my daughter called me with some urgency. She was very close to Bonnie and Gerald. Eliza called and told me to go be with Bonnie right then. Michelle said come over and in this clear way, I knew from all our previous conversations what I was supposed to say and do. Gerald and Michelle said that while Bonnie was unconscious she could hear us. For some reason she was rigidly hanging on and was not giving up. They knew it was time for her to end her fight.

So, while Gerald and Michelle had a bit to eat after two long days at her bedside, I held her and told her that I thought she was terribly worried and that I knew it was my job to figure out what was worrying her so much that she could not pass on in peace. It seemed then so clear to me what was on her mind and weighing on her. I told her what I thought: you are worried that your grandchildren will not remember who you are and not only that you loved them but that you believed in them. You are worried that only you completely understand your beloved Gerald and love him with all of his unique and wonderful ways. People might not surround him with love if she left him. And then I told her that she could quit worrying because what she feared would not happen. Your friends will do what you want them to do, I promised her. It was such an intimate moment that I would not share this in a public place except that I promised her these things in behalf of all of you here. I told her that together your friends will remind your grandchildren about who you were and how much you believed in them. And Gerald will not be abandoned and we will embrace him as fully as you hope we will, and as we always have. I promised this. We know him as you do and we love him deeply and will continue to love him. Then I said, “Bon, whenever I have promised you something, I have tried to do it exactly as you would have me do it.” The best way I had to pledge this was to sing for her two favorite songs. And so, for another half an hour I sang over and over “Amazing Grace” and “How Great Thou Art.”

After that half an hour, I suppose it was, she relaxed in my arms and began to stop breathing. I sang the same songs again. Soon, I knew she had gone. I sang them again. Then I told Gerald and Michelle that she had gone.

It was my greatest honor to have been with her as she passed on and to have sung to her and committed to her to do what any sister should do. So now, will you help me please, and let us all sing, ‘Amazing Grace’ together and join in this promise to Bonnie.