Meta Mahler died on February 24, 2006, at the age of 96. Her son David wrote the following memorial. my mother When she was a young woman studying the secretarial skill of shorthand, mom learned the characteristic w that stands for the conjunction with. Her written communication has always been peppered with shorthand symbols, and even in her infrequent, sometimes barely readable, correspondence during her last year of life, I could always pick out the abbreviation, w, the better to write more efficiently, the more to fill up a postcard with. There are ninety-six years, and then there are ninety-six years. With a secretary’s sense of dispatch mom loaded up on life as though she had an enchanted w at her disposal. She stuffed a generous ninety-six years of doings into her calendar. Not leaving much out, she mastered a kind of shorthand way of living. Life was a fast streetcar when mom was a girl. Arms outstretched to catch a ball, she threw it back with force to one of her brothers in the front yard of their Chicago flat. Inspired by the downstairs presence of two future major leaguers, brothers Arndt and Orville Jorgens, Meta dreamed upstairs with her family—Cub dreams. Mom was a player, in organized games as a teen with the Cardinals, and later, a bleacher coach embarrassing this young boy with her out front vocalizing during my Little League games. Play knew no bounds. A quiet game of cards with mom was not to be mistaken for love and flowers. I would believe it if you told me mom’s last words in this life were, “Whose deal is it?” When she was a child, mom played as a child. When a parent, she still played. My mother handed me the paint brush. She set the paint can filled with water on the ground next to the house. As a five year old I spent days if not summer weeks making sure our gray house had a new coat of paint every few hours. In the sun the house gleamed. I was snookered but proud. If there were amusements that took one to the living room carpet—board games, jigsaw puzzles, cars, trains, toy soldiers or farmyard animals—mom was there with the rest of us, playing. Her play came from various sources, including one of her heroes, her Uncle Arthur Seeger. Numerous heroines and heroes took roles in mom’s life: friend and librarian Irene Helland; preachers A.R. and O.P. Kretzmann, and Marty Koehneke; and organist Luther Mueller quickly come to mind. But her most real famous persons, her brightest stars, were members of her own family. Music, a flame of serious play, jumped a gap from Arthur Seeger to mom to me. I couldn’t help catching on fire. In later years, if games were infrequent, Mom could always play in her mind. “I’m never bored,” she once told me. “If nothing else I have beautiful memories to relive.” Mom was known in the family for having a few phobias: water activities, boats and swimming; flying in airplanes; dogs; bees; and by extension for boys who had adventure on their mind, raft trips down the Mississippi. But these fears paled next to her fearlessness in human interactions. If there were work to be done that involved talking to other people, no problem. This work she most often approached as a leader rather than a joiner, and always, always as one who serves. Given a task, she didn’t let go till it was taken care of. Remember, Meta was a sweet, self-effacing person. Self-effacing, but sometimes a pit bull. She fought for me when I wanted to break family tradition and attend a private high school. She also took me on when I strayed, spewing out the dreaded phrase, “I could crown you!” In shorthand, I list: a women’s group mom reveled in called, simply, The Club; riding the train, a romance mother never outgrew; favored exotic places: Arenzville, Beardstown, St. Louis (her mind and her sense of play and memory made them exotic). And then there was mom’s trickiest display of shorthand magic, maintaining our household of six. Mom, with dad, held us all together. Mom wrote a beautiful card or letter. She could take a fancy phrase out for a walk and bring along the shorthand to keep it taut and humble. At our yellow kitchen table she gave over evenings talking me through my high school writing assignments. She was a smart grammarian. Poetry pleased her. Mom always possessed a great sense of place and a nose for directions. There is a shorthand to the Chicago grid pattern that mom must have absorbed as a child, like printed ink sets to paper and never moves. Now that I think about it, mom’s last words could have been “Belmont is thirty-two hundred north, so then you go eight blocks further and you’ll be at forty hundred north, and that should be Irving Park.” This playful servant, my mother, closed the news of her life with a quiet, dignified signature. For her past three months she refused to allow her broken hip, her mild heart attack, or several falls to chip away at her sweetness and calm. God cared for her in her last days as he had since her baptism. She easily resigned her life to Him. Mom, the shorthand specialist, finished with a long, bold, confident stroke, making an eternal impression. Whether or not we know mom’s actual last words, she may currently be having the last word. After the White Sox claimed the World Series last fall, I can imagine there is some persuasive, pit bull, direct intercession taking place in heaven right now. Put your money down on it. Mom won’t take no for an answer. At last, 2006 is the year. Go Cubs! Go Mom!                                                                                  David Mahler                                                                                  2.24.06