Eulogy for Joan Koloze
(presented at her funeral Mass at Holy Name Church, Cleveland, Ohio, on Tuesday, 13 May 2025)
This is the most difficult speech I have ever given in my life.
First, however, thank you, Monsignor Richard Antall, for celebrating this funeral Mass for Joan. Joan and I greatly respect you for being not only an author and scholar, but also, more importantly, a magnificent priest for our Church: humble, orthodox, witty, and utterly compassionate. I also appreciate that Fr. Thomas Haren, in residence at St. Michael’s Church in Independence, Fr. John Mullee, pastor of St. Monica’s Church in Garfield Heights, and Fr. Tony Schuerger, in residence here at Holy Name, are concelebrating this Mass. Final thanks to Molly Grunau, Music and Liturgy Director at St. Monica’s Church, for fulfilling Joan’s one demand to have Gounod’s Ave Maria played at her funeral Mass.
Like many of you, I feel cheated. People live well into their nineties now, so having Joan die at age 73 seems an utter tragedy. The Morris family, her brothers and sisters, could have had twenty more years of a sister whom they revered and loved.
Our four children are cheated of having Mom physically present at our boisterous dinners, our holyday and holiday gatherings, and our celebrations of various landmarks in life: anniversaries, baptisms, birthday parties, First Communions, Confirmations, special meals to celebrate career successes, and weddings.
And then I think of the grandkids who could have had Grandma present for the next twenty years. Grandma will not physically be there at your graduation from high school or college, your weddings, your ordinations to the priesthood, your entrance into religious life, or the many milestones of your lives.
Thinking like this could make us all extremely sad.
But then, as Psalm 30, verse 5 affirms, “At nightfall, weeping enters in, but with the dawn, rejoicing”, just like the Crucifixion on Good Friday and the Resurrection on Easter Sunday, despite feeling cheated, I know that it is better for Joan to be in the hands of God. Remember: God never allows an evil thing to happen without a greater good in mind. Now, for Joan, there is no more heart failure, no more kidney disease, no more twenty-five pills every day, no more insulin, no more seemingly weekly doctors’ appointments, no more this, no more that.
Joan’s life was much more than any illness she may have had. Her IQ was extremely high; she was a contender for a Rotary Scholarship to study in Ireland. She graduated magna cum laude from Ursuline College and formally obtained half a Master’s degree in Education; all of her post-graduate work would have constituted a completed master’s degree, if not placing her well into a doctorate. She was a Catholic schoolteacher for nearly forty years. She could have made much more money trying to teach in a public school, but she chose Catholic schools because she wanted to transmit our Catholic Faith to little children. Maybe that’s why her peers elected her in 2002 as Outstanding Teacher of the Year at Saints Peter and Paul School. Leaving teaching, Joan chose to devote herself to married life, raising a family, and volunteering for the pro-life movement. She was the treasurer for a pro-life political action committee for many years here in metropolitan Cleveland.
If the Vatican were to ask me to testify someday at her cause for canonization, I would point out that Joan was a victim soul, someone who offered up every suffering she had so that others would be spared anxiety or pain and thus achieve their academic or career goals. Joan offered her sufferings for her parents, her brothers and sisters, her children, her grandchildren, for me, and, most especially, for the Right-to-Life movement.
Above all, however, when Joan is officially canonized someday, she will be made a saint because she greatly loved her family. Her death doesn’t stop that love, just as God’s love didn’t stop at the Crucifixion. No one can stop God’s love; that’s why we have Easter.
And, if that is true, then no one can stop Joan’s love. Therefore…
Children of the original Six Kolozes, Greg, Mary, Ann, and Tony: Mom loves you.
Our sons-in-law Scott Nolan and Brian Buckingham and our daughter-in-law Dr. Barb Koloze: Mom loves you.
Grandchildren of the Nolan family, Luke, Dominic, Claire, Rose, and Lucy: Grandma loves you.
Grandchildren of the Buckingham family, Hannah and John: Grandma loves you. Since Mary Grace is only two months old, I ask her guardian angel to tell her someday that Grandma loves her.
Grandchildren of the Koloze family, Aurea and Aidan: Grandma K loves you.
Over the past four months, when God was preparing both Joan and me for her transition to eternal life, three lines from Gladys Knight songs kept coming to my mind, songs that both of us appreciated because we sang them on every road trip to visit the children and grandchildren. The three lines are: “Neither one of us wants to be the first to say goodbye”, “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me”, and “Farewell, my love. Goodbye”.
Joan, neither one of us wanted to be the first to say goodbye in this, the last period of our married lives, but I want everyone to know that you were and are the best thing that ever happened to me. We have known each other for one and a half years as boyfriend and girlfriend, which began at the first pro-life workshop we attended, then another year and a half as an engaged couple, and then forty-three and a half years in marriage. We have blessed God with our four living children and our two babies lost by miscarriage, Michael or Elizabeth and Patrick, both of whom you are now seeing again.
I would change the last line of the song I have in mind. Instead of “goodbye”, I would say, “Until we meet again, I am certain that God is holding you in the palm of His hand. Farewell, my love”.