My Eulogy for Mom

By request. So many people have asked to read Mom's eulogy I thought this might be the best way to share it.

Hey, friends. I know I said I wasn’t going to post this month, but I had so many people requesting that I share Mom’s eulogy that I wrote for her memorial service. I figured this could be a way to help those of you who know me to know my mom a little bit better (people always said I made more sense after they met my mom!). If you would like to see her obituary, the funeral service provided that for us.

Memorial Service held at NewSpring Church North Auditorium on April 1, 2025, read aloud by Pastor Dan Kubish

· Never trust an atom; they make up everything.

· My friend’s bakery burned down last night. Now, his business is toast.

· Need an ark to save two of every animal? I noah guy.

Pat didn’t write those, but she would have loved them. She was the queen of puns and was cracking “dad jokes” before dad jokes were even a thing. And she would have been delighted by the fact that her memorial service is on April Fool’s Day. Pat loved to laugh, and even more than that, she loved to make everybody else laugh with her. She had a magnetic personality that drew people to her. Even complete strangers felt at ease with her, whether it was someone in an elevator or the cashier at the grocery store.

She grew up in Wichita with two younger brothers to boss around and several cousins to get into trouble with. Pat was forged in a family culture of hard work, good character, and bad jokes. Veterans. Farmers. Businessmen. Engineers. Mechanics. Inventors. Teachers. But none of those roads truly appealed to Pat; she was a musician, albeit an unusual one who didn’t see music as artistic expression so much as creative organization.

But even her passion for music paused when she met a short, skinny 15-year-old boy who came to the Cowboy Cleaners, where Pat worked at the time, to cash his paycheck. Drawn to his kindness and tender heart, Pat fell for Daryl pretty fast (although his doing donuts in the iced-over parking lot may have had something to do with it too). They were married on March 14, 1969, and shortly afterward they relocated to Houston, chasing big dreams and hoping for a better life.

Even though she began working full time in banking and loans, she continued to pursue her career as a musician. Pat had a tremendous musical ability, learning to play every category of instrument except the woodwinds. She even played a full-size tuba in her high school marching band, which is really funny if you think about it because Pat was barely over five feet tall. Pat played her viola in orchestras and symphonies across Texas, Louisiana, and Kansas.

But over the next eleven years, in spite of their best efforts, Pat and Daryl began the long, downward spiral toward divorce. And at her lowest point, when Pat was at rock bottom, Jesus found her. Not that He’d ever lost her, but for the first time in her life, she turned to Him for help, and He transformed her. Not because she deserved it, but because she chose to believe the promises of Jesus Christ.

Ephesians 2:8-10 tells us:

God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.

Pat trusted that Jesus, the Son of God, died for her sins, and that He was raised to life again. Accepting the free gift of salvation Jesus offers transformed her from the inside out. Pat would often quote 2 Corinthians 5:17 as her life verse:

Anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!

She chose that verse because it was her story. Pat trusted in Jesus, and He made her a new person. The old person she used to be was gone, and her new life was just beginning. When Pat decided to place her faith in Jesus Christ, she changed the course of her family’s history. Pat met Jesus in 1980, and she and Daryl worked to restore their marriage. Soon afterward, God blessed them with a family, Amy in 1982 and Andy in 1984.

Becoming a mother changed Pat. Family had always mattered to her, but having children caused a shift in her personal priorities. No matter what it cost her, Pat wanted to provide her children with the resources and guidance to be successful. Truly successful, not just in a career but in their own personal walk with Christ. This earnest desire to give her children a foundation in God’s Word led Pat to homeschool her kids beginning in 1991, when the family moved back to Wichita. For Pat, education wasn’t just something to do to pass the time; Pat herself was a lifelong learner and encouraged her kids to see every moment as an opportunity to grow in wisdom and understanding.

One of her favorite methods of teaching was through real-life experiences, like camping. Camping was something Pat and Daryl enjoyed before their kids joined the scene, and it was something the entire family enjoyed doing together. Each person had a job, and only together could they make their camping adventure successful. One person to gather firewood. Another to organize the food. Another to get the tent ready. Another to build the fire. Teamwork was the theme of every camping adventure, even though nearly every camping trip had some element of disaster. Floods caused the tent to float away one time. A windstorm caused the tent to collapse another time. The stomach flu caused trouble as well once.

But it wasn’t a Williams family camping adventure if something didn’t go wrong. In some ways, camping disasters were training for other times in life when things didn’t go according to plan. Could you keep moving forward even when your tent is in shambles, your sleeping bag is drenched, and a raccoon ran off with your dinner? Nothing builds character like unexpected challenges.

Pat had always dreamed of one day living on a farm, being self-sufficient and independent. The idea brought back memories of her grandmother’s home and a simpler time. And in the fall 1994, that dream became a reality when the family purchased five acres in Reno County, outside the small town of Haven. Of course, at almost exactly the same time, the family found a church home at what was then Messiah Baptist Church of Wichita, 45 miles away. But Pat and Daryl felt strongly that a self-sufficient kind of life was important, just as attending a church with a pastor who preached the truth was important.

On the farm, Pat homeschooled her children, cared for her aging parents, taught piano lessons out of her home, got interested in archery, and worked with the family to garden and preserve fruits and vegetables. Being a city slicker out in the boonies was a bit of an adjustment for Pat, but she came up with creative solutions to tackle problems she didn’t see coming.

One afternoon, while she was driving back toward the house with Amy and Andy in the car with her, she spotted a skunk in the driveway. Skunks don’t make a habit of being out in broad daylight, and this one was behaving strangely (not sure what constitutes strange behavior in a skunk, but Pat apparently knew). She decided very quickly that the animal was a danger and needed to be eliminated, and she had in her possession at that moment a highly effective weapon: a 1984 Ford Crown Victoria Ltd. Yes. She ran over the skunk. Yes. It was a bad idea.

I said her solutions were creative, not effective.

Pat was constantly looking for more efficient ways to save money, different opportunities to supplement income. One way she did this was through teaching piano lessons. Every Monday, she and Amy and Andy would clean the old farmhouse from top to bottom, and all day Tuesday multiple students from different rural areas would come to the house for their lessons. Sometimes they paid with cash. Some paid with check. Others paid with laying hens.

Eventually, though, Pat made the decision to return to work in 1998. Pat could have gone to work anywhere, but she found an opportunity to work here at this very church. Pat got the chance to utilize her amazing musical ear as she became the editor for the church’s radio broadcasts. She also served the worship ministry under multiple worship pastors. She used her remarkable skill and talent as a musician to arrange, compose, and transpose instrumental pieces for use in worship services. And during the era when we had a 20-piece orchestra, she organized and managed all the sheet music. Pat served the worship ministry either as staff or as a volunteer until 2014, when she retired.

In 2016, Pat’s son Andy married his wife, Amy. Yes, another one. It’s not confusing at all. Pat was so happy to welcome Amy into the family as her daughter-in-law, and in the last few years Amy has helped the family navigate many challenges in caregiving. One day, after Pat’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis, Amy and Pat were spending the day together. At this point in Pat’s decline, she had forgotten who Amy was. As they were hanging out, Pat turned to Amy and declared that she needed to find Andy a wife. Without hesitating, Amy responded, “Oh, who do you have in mind?”

Pat qualified for in-home hospice care in September 2024, and the extraordinary nursing staff of Phoenix Home Care and Hospice all truly enjoyed taking care of her. Even when Pat reached an advanced stage of decline, she still loved to make people laugh. She was still so happy. Although she had forgotten so much of who she had been, the light of Jesus’ love still shone through her in how she cared for others. When her care needs surpassed what her family was able to provide, the amazing team at Fern’s Place Home Plus served Pat well in her last days.

If Pat had been able to express her gratitude, she would have. To all of Phoenix Hospice, especially Brittney, Shea, Julie, and Bonnie, and to the caregivers of Fern’s Place Home Plus, especially Bridget and Anna, thank you. Not just for your devoted and diligent care for Pat but also for how you loved her family.

Pat peacefully took her last breath on Sunday morning, March 23. She opened them again in the presence of Jesus Christ, who changed her life so long ago. Today, Pat is healed and whole, better than she ever was here, and while we may not be able to see her, we know where she is. Pat’s life verse may have been 2 Corinthians 5:17, but if you back up a few verses you’ll find a passage that all of us are clinging to today, 2 Corinthians 5:6-8.

So we are always confident, even though we know that as long as we live in these bodies we are not at home with the Lord. For we live by believing and not by seeing. Yes, we are fully confident, and we would rather be away from these earthly bodies, for then we will be at home with the Lord.

Pat is at home with her Savior today. We know that, we are confident in that, because we believe even though we can’t see it.

For those of us still here, we grieve. We miss her. We miss her corny jokes. We miss her cheerful laughter. We miss her musical gifts. But so many of those things that we all loved about her had faded away. She lost so much of who she was.

But just like that first time she turned to Jesus in 1980, He hadn’t lost her. He was just waiting for her. And the same thing is true now. Nothing that mattered about Pat was lost. Everything she was, still is. She’s not lost at all. She’s more alive than she has ever been, and now she’s waiting for us.

I can speak for Pat when I say that her deepest, most desperate desire was for the people she loved to know Jesus the way she did. To turn to Him in their darkest moments, to let Him transform their lives, to entrust their futures to His faithful leading. That’s how Pat lived, and that’s how she lives today.

So, we who know Jesus personally don’t say goodbye. We say, see you later.