Epic Canadian Obituary

[Debra]

Margaret Marilyn DeAdder​

​

1942-2021​

Margaret Marilyn DeAdder, professional clipper of coupons, baker of cookies, terror behind the wheel, champion of the underdog, ruthless card player, and self-described Queen Bitch, died on Tuesday, January 19, 2021.

Marilyn, the oldest of four siblings, was born Marilyn Joyce in 1942, to parents Hannah and Edgar Joyce, in New Glasgow, NS.

She grew up in a modest home, which still stands on the top of a hill where the Westville Rd. forks to the Town of Westville in one direction and the old drive-in in the other.
Growing up with very little taught her how to turn a dime into a dollar, a skill at which she’d excel her whole life.

Marilyn loved all children who weren’t her own and loved her own children relative to how clean-shaven they were.
She excelled at giving the finger, taking no sh!t and laughing at jokes, preferably in the shade of blue.
She did not excel at suffering fools, hiding her disdain, and putting her car in reverse.

A voracious reader, she loved true crime, romance novels and the odd political book.
Trained as a hairdresser before she was married, she was always doing somebody's hair in her kitchen, so much so her kitchen smelled of baking and perm solution.
Marilyn had a busy life, but no matter what she was doing she always made time to run her kids’ lives as well. Her lifelong hobbies included painting, quilting, baking, gardening, hiking and arson.

Marilyn loved tea and toast.

The one thing she loved more than tea and toast was reheated tea and toast.
She reheated tea by simply turning on the burner often forgetting about it. She burned many a teapot and caused smoke damage countless times, leaving her kids with the impression that fanning the smoke alarm was a step in brewing tea.

Marilyn liked to volunteer and give back to the community.
She was a lifelong volunteer at the Capital Theatre in downtown Moncton, which her sons suspected was her way of seeing all the shows for free.
For all of Marilyn’s success in life, her crowning achievement occurred in the mid-to-late eighties, when, left with mounting debt, no job, no car, and no driver’s license, she turned it all around to the point in the early nineties that she had paid down her house, paid cash for all her cars, and got her three boys through university.

Marilyn is survived by her three ungrateful sons Michael (Gail), Paul and David (Trudy), whose names she never got completely right, and whose jokes she didn’t completely understand.

She loved them very much, even though at least one of them would ruin Christmas every year by coming home with facial hair, and never forgot that one disastrous Christmas in which all three sons showed up with beards.

Everything she did, she did for her sons.

Marilyn is survived by her three granddaughters Meaghan (19), Bridget (16) and Madelyn (5).
While her sons committed unspeakable crimes against humanity, her granddaughters could do no wrong.
While her sons grew up on root vegetables and powdered milk (funneled directly into the bag to hide the fact that it was powdered, fooling nobody), her granddaughters were fed mountains of sugary snacks as far as the eye could see, including her world-famous cookies and cinnamon rolls.
Her love for them was unmatched.

Marilyn is survived by her sisters, Melda and Linda, and her brother, Lloyd, who still owes her $600* (*inside family joke – sorry, Lloyd).
Marilyn is also survived by an incredible number of close friends, who cannot be named for fear of missing somebody.

Marilyn, ever the penny-pincher, decided to leave this world on the day Moncton went into red-alert, her sons believe, to avoid paying for a funeral.
But, on the other hand, she always said that she didn’t want a funeral, she wanted an Irish wake.
She didn’t want everybody moping around, she wanted a party.

Marilyn will get her celebration of life when COVID-19 is over. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you do something nice for somebody else unexpectedly, and without explanation.

We love you, mom, a bushel and a peck.
A bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck.

Her arrangements have been entrusted to Cobb’s Funeral Home and Cremation Center, 330 Whitepine Road, Riverview

Margaret Marilyn DeAdder (1942-2021)

Margaret Marilyn DeAdder, professional clipper of coupons, baker of cookies, terror behind the wheel, champion of the underdog, ruthless card player, and self-described Queen Bitch, ...

www.cobbsfuneralhome.ca

From observing my own relatives, both my fathers Parents (my Grandparents) were first generation born in Canada.
Hailing from a mix of Norwegian, Irish, Scottish and British parents with very hard-time roots, they had a sardonic and strange out look on issues.
I have found that genuine East Coast Canadian humor is uniquely dark, self depreciating, and usually very funny.
Just to note, I suspect the author of this obituary was her son, Micheal DeAdder.
He is a semi well known author and cartoonist in Canada.
You may recall the infamous cartoonist that lost his freelance position for creating the cartoon showing President Trump playing golf and ignoring the dead, face down, drowned bodies of a Salvadoran man and his child.
Yeah, that kind of humor...sometimes it is Waaaay too much.

 

[loreta]

I love this obituary. There is in it admiration, understanding, joy. All obituaries should be like that, I think so. With humour, with compassion also, showing the light side, the brilliant side. We should also work with our obituary or also ask: how I would like to be remembered? With humour. Humour is vital.

 

[psychegram]

Thanks for sharing that, that was great. I forwarded that on to family and friends.

 

[Joan]

Thanks for sharing Debra, but, I think many, many obituaries, may have similar stories, just ordinary people, that live a life of loving and giving. Just to quote the C's simple Karmic understandings.

I remember, in my working career, I worked with a lovely woman, with a family, who said, if she didn't go to church ever Sunday, things just didn't go right for her. She never discussed her religion, or her religious affiliation, it was something personal to her

To this day, after many years, on occasion, I continue remember the words she had spoken.

 

[Debra]

The essay below is from a group that is dedicated to helping grieving families of non-affiliated or agnostic/atheist non-faiths, I guess you could say.
My Beloved Nephew is married to a wonderful young woman from the US, and her Dad died in Seattle died last month.

A very intellectual and rather "bohemian" new branch added to our Family Tree, they all pride themselves as being "to smart for Beliefs".
Apparently, from the bit of info my Nephew told me, during his last days, the gathered family DID resort to group meditations, group prayers, and lots of Buddhist bells, incense, and a potpourri of scattered New Age woo woo.

Anyway, this was posted in his memory on his wife's Facebook page.
It is from a member of Grief Beyond Belief, which is a secular on-line community providing peer-to-peer support for those grieving without faith.

I find it interesting, as it addresses materialist, Darwinist thinkers, who, when hit with the depth of grief and loss of a loved one, can find themselves suddenly bereft of comfort, because they don't have a "Faith"in a "Beyond"or knowledge in the Alternative aspects of the Cosmos.
Yet, there is the deep primal hurt, that depth of loss of a loved one, that eternal human question, "Where did they GO?"
Here is the essay:

"You want a physicist to speak at your funeral.
You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died.

You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed.

You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.

And at one point you'd hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you.

And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.

And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat.
There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.

And you'll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith.

Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time.

You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they'll be comforted to know your energy's still around.

According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you're just less orderly.
Amen."

Aaron Freeman, "Planning Ahead Can Make a Difference,"

Very scientific, and dealing with the physical aspects of the death of an accidental life, very Darwinist, yet, I really like it, because it is partly true, and perhaps mostly true, for those who are just beginning their journey in human form.

Then, I found a Christian response to this essay, and it made me smile:

“What happens to my body when I die?” is a question for the physicist. So yes, if that is the question your remaining loved ones will be asking, by all means invite someone who can clearly expound on energy and heat answer it for them.

But if “What happens to ME when I die?” is your question, I’d say you want to hear from Someone who has died and come back to life. Even better, if that Someone was there at the point time began. Who created a universe so orderly that laws of electromagnetism and gravity and conservation of energy could be discovered, measured, and articulated by sentient creatures made in His image. That Someone who promised His followers that He was going to prepare an eternal home for them.[8]"

Who Will Speak at Your Funeral? — LIFE IN MESSIAH

Recently I saw a post that began, “You want a physicist to speak at your funeral.” Having never considered that option, I read with interest the extended quote from Aaron Freeman who, to no one’s surprise, turns out to be a physicist. Here’s his opening: You want a physicist to speak at your funer

lifeinmessiah.org