Lynn Cebulski, 1924-2026
Eleanor Roosevelt, someone who Mom admired, once said, "You must do the thing you think you cannot do." That moment is here. I don't want to write this. But I must.
We lost our Mom last Friday. At 101, she was still reading books as late as Wednesday and sharing whatever commentary she had about anything you'd care to discuss. But Thursday, she took a clear turn for the worse when the malady that the medical folk had already predicted as her ultimate demise finally crept too deeply into her. By Friday she was uncommunicative, and the end came rapidly and mercifully.
What does one say, though, when the major force in your life has been extinguished? How does one get your head around it? With an admission, first of all, of utter emptiness, of a sense of wandering around as if in the dark. Nothing seems to matter much anymore. The way to get your head around it, I suppose, is in the facing of the simple fact that you can't. Its momentousness, while ultimately predictable--memento mori, say the Stoics, remember that you must die--is yet to be absorbed, the impact yet to be fully understood. But I can still see it, not far from the horizon, like a storm approaching.
Mom lived a brave and steadfast life. Again, Eleanor Roosevelt: "Life was meant to be lived and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn [their] back on life." Mom went through far more than anyone should have while still quite young, suffering major setbacks. The picture below is Mom as a girl, when she could have turned her back on life without anyone blaming her.
She lost her Dad, James Foreman, to a car accident when she was 6, in 1930. She was the oldest of three, at a time when the country plunged deeper into the Depression, felt in no small way on a rural Wisconsin farm. Somehow, Grandma pulled the remainder of the family through. Think you're pretty tough? Try that.
But Mom paid an even bigger price she couldn't have foreseen, either. Upon graduation from high school, this very active, very studious young lady had been offered an assistantship to Northland College in Ashland, on the shores of Lake Superior. But in spring 1942, after World War II had begun but before the job market had caught up, Grandma told Mom that she needed to make money for the family. College, a terrific accomplishment for a small-town female in those days, would have to be set aside. It broke her heart. Again.
Her fondest hopes dashed, Mom, then known as Lurlyn Foreman, eventually moved to Milwaukee to get a job with Cutler-Hammer, known for its electrical equipment. She joined a bowling league, and there she met a wise-cracking former sailor, Eugene "Cy" Cebulski, who'd lost his own dream of post-war plans for extending his navy hitch on an aircraft carrier. That sank when his father caught pneumonia and, as the family's only son, he was needed back home. He gave her a little lip, she gave it right back, and that's pretty much how it went for the next 77 years. Mom's name changed to Lynn Cebulski.
In between all that, they had four sons--Jeff (married to Barb), Mark, Gary (Amy), and Eugene (Jane), of which I am second. Mom went to work in the Grafton public school system, ostensibly to make the needed money to send her sons off to college; in the meantime, she rose to the position of an elementary principal's secretary, meaning that she had a large role in running that school.
Meanwhile, she was living the experience of college through her boys. At least, that's what we thought.
But she had never given up on her dream of college, and when an opportunity arose for her to get an associate degree from Concordia University in nearby Mequon, she jumped at it. Her curiosity still strong and alive, she had to know whether she could handle the rigors of higher education--not that anyone who knew her had much doubt; she remains the best read person I ever knew. In 1991, at 66, she finally had the college diploma she'd waited her whole adult life for.
Her immediate family, Grandma (Clara), her stepfather Clarence Peterson, brother James, and sister Marion Teckam, have passed before her, as well as two grandchildren, Sarah and Allyssa Cebulski. Beyond that, there are 10 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren, and loving nieces and nephews. Her wish was to have a small, private, immediate family service.
On Mother's Day, the Milwaukee Brewers completed the sweep of a three-game series from the New York Yankees. Everyone who knew Mom, a die-hard Brewers fan, knew how much she would have loved that. We would have celebrated her again much as we did before, too, with flowers and cards and hugs.
Hugs: Just one more would have been so nice. Just one. I will wander aimlessly now, missing that and so much else: the presence of an incomparable life force, a well of gentle strength to draw from. Instead of turning her back on life, she doubled down and got on with things, much of what made her a thriving part of the Greatest Generation. She found fulfillment where she never expected it, inspiring a family that widened and surrounded her with their love, after she had surrounded it with hers.
The family wants to extend their sincerest and deepest appreciation to the staff of the skilled care unit at Cedar Lake Health and Rehabilitation Center in West Bend. Mom loved to read and could never have enough books, so in lieu of flowers, a donation may be made to the Grafton and West Bend Public Libraries in her name. We love you, Mom.
