Tanja Buzzi Moriarty

Category: Eulogies and Remembrances

  • Mom’s Girl Scout Sash and the Legacy of a Good Mother

    Mom’s Girl Scout Sash and the Legacy of a Good Mother

    As evidenced by Mom’s accomplished life (in her obituary), she used her God-given gifts wisely as a teacher and leader, a woman of unwavering faith and most importantly how to be a strong mother. She loved her life, loved nature, and loved her family with all of her heart.

    In her later years, Mom was still engaged in her world. Instead of being “out in the field” with scouts, camping, church, and travel, her home became her headquarters.  She stayed connected with loved ones and lived her life purposefully.

    Each morning, she’d rise at 7 and start her day. After a light breakfast, she’d read her daily devotions, then flip open her laptop to visit family and friends on Facebook. She’d post a line each day on her own Facebook page, who visited or called.

    Mom then extracted the puzzle section from her daily Hartford Courant. She discarded all the rest of the paper into her recycling pin. Then Mom would read. She often had two or more books going at once, in totally different genres from her extensive book collection. Once she was bouncing back and forth between “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm” and “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”. She read everything from the Bible to contemporary writers to the classics.

    She’d have lunch, read, and play solitaire for hours. She’d gaze at some of her favorite mementos. Among her treasures was a framed photo of the four of us as adults, with an old snapshot of the four of us as small children tucked in the bottom corner of the frame. Her table was laden with an array of knickknacks. She had her Swedish horses, gnomes, fairy lights and a tray of tea candles. In the evenings, she’d sometimes tune into Jeopardy if family were home. On Sundays, she’d dial into her church worship service via Zoom.

    After Mom passed, I came upon her amazing Girl Scout sash. It was hanging on a shelf in a recessed closet, near the place where she sat at her dining room table. Festooned with 35 neatly arranged badges, a “Be Prepared” patch, Troop number, her fly-up wings into Junior Girl Scouts, and a host of trefoil pins—This sash, struck me anew, that it is not only a treasure, but a testimony to who Mom was throughout her youth and the rest of her life.

    Mom earned all these badges and wore her sash in the mid 1950s. Some badges are easy to identify— cooking, sewing, nature, babysitting.  But many more are obscure and our family cannot wait to identify each of them when the 1955 Girls Scout handbook arrives. Thank you, Ebay!

    The sash had probably hung in this closet for years, just within her reach or for her to peek at. Because it was only a few feet away from where she sat, and not stuffed in a box or a drawer somewhere, means it was very special to her.

    Mom never brought out her beautiful, well-adorned sash to say, “Hey, look what I accomplished. Look at all my badges!” That wasn’t her style. She never bragged or brought attention to herself. Even when Brenda and I were in Girl Scouts, she had us focus on our own endeavors.

    I hope this incredible sash brought Mom quiet affirmation of her many accomplishments. Reminders of her sturdy, foundational years, growing up on a farm with supportive and stable parents, loving Swedish immigrant grandparents, in a houseful of siblings, out in the middle of Higganum woods. Her scouting years and years of faith helped her to truly Be Prepared with all of life’s ups and downs.

    I’d like to take a moment now and share a make-believe badge that I think Mom would have easily earned in her adult-years, The Good Mother Badge. I picture it a green circle like the other badges, here, with an embroidered mother bird, her wings spread wide over a nest of four baby birds. The birds of course, are named Tanja, Brenda, Eddie, and Andy.

    Let’s imagine the requirements mom would have easily met to earn this badge of honor, The Good Mother Badge.

    1. Badge Requirement one: Enrich Your Children in the Arts: An easy one. Mom read Greek and Roman literature to Brenda and me as toddlers, as she balanced quality time with us and studying for her master’s degree. More age-appropriate reading matter included “Peter Rabbit” by Beatrix Potter, “The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh” by A.A. Milne, and Johnny Gruelle’s, “Raggedy Ann Stories” and “Raggedy Andy Stories.” She turned us on to Aesop’s Fables, Bible stories, and Walt Disney stories in books and record sets.

    On Saturdays, she drove us to (Middletown) Junior Matinees to see live productions of Peter and the Wolf and other children’s plays. Working as a library assistant, she’d come home with the latest children’s books and records for us to enjoy.

    • Badge Requirement Two: Encourage Simple Pleasures:

    Mom found affordable fun. We camped at state parks—-Hammonassett Beach on Long Island Sound, and Wells State Park in Massachusetts. We’d stop by Sturbridge Village and visit Aunt Edna and Uncle Ward on their working dairy farm.  Every time a new kids’ movie came out, she’d load us into the old blue station-wagon and we’d head to the local drive-in! She’d pop tons of popcorn and mix a jug of Kool-aid. We saw first runs of classics including “Escape to Witch Mountain”, “The Apple Dumpling Gang”, and “Herby Rides Again!”

    Mom was director of Camp Higganumpus, a fantastic Girl Scout day-camp in town.  We’d trek the big hill to the Girl Scout cabin in the woods on Hull Avenue. She and other leaders showed us how to make sand candles, macrame owl necklaces, and make ice cream. We also had capers like cleaning out the outhouse with lye!

    • Badge Requirement Three, “Raise them with Faith.” From an early age, Mom taught us about God and Jesus. She led us in nightly prayers, and we’d say grace before we’d eat, even if it was over a peanut butter and jelly picnic.

    She brought us to church, “making us” go until we were 18 years old.  She lit advent candles and read Luke 2, every Christmas morning before we opened presents. When we’d come to her with a complaint or worry, she’d always say, “Pray on it.” As we grew older, she never pushed us or guilted us into practicing her style of faith. She simply modeled grace, forgiveness and personal devotion. 

    • Badge Requirement Four: Teach them Good Manners Mom had class. She instilled in us to always use good manners. “Please,” “thank you,” and “excuse me,” were standards. We were not allowed to swear or even say the word “f-a-r-t.”

    While we always had good food and decent clothing, Mom taught us the importance and necessity of sharing.  Brenda and I shared a hairdryer she’d worked hard to give us one Christmas when she was a single-parent. She’d split a Hershey bar into four equal pieces when there was just one to go around.  All in all, we never really noticed what we were missing.  Her her love and strength made it good. Above all, Mom never played favorites. We all felt her love for us equally and unconditionally…always.

    Julia Radko, my son Chris’ fiancée made the Good Mother badge and gave it to me this past Christmas.

  • Nevertheless, She Persisted

    Nevertheless, She Persisted

    Shared at the Celebration of Life of Melissa J. Schlag, October 18, 2020 at Eagles Landing State Park in Haddam, and published in the Haddam Bulletin, December 2020.

    By Tanja Moriarty

    Twenty years ago, I brought a plate of cookies to welcome our new next-door neighbors. A beautiful young woman with dark brown eyes eagerly invited me and my two young children inside.  

    Right away, I was drawn to her warmth and her convictions. 

    While she lived next door, we organized block parties, wine-tastings, and game nights. We even started a town-wide book club together, Booksom Babes, which still meets to this day. We laughed a lot, talked a lot, and shared life’s ups and downs. She was one of my very best friends. 

    As time went on, some of our neighbors became disenchanted with the shenanigans in the two-party political system in town. In 2007, Melissa helped a few of us renegades start a third party, A Better Haddam. She agreed to become the party’s treasurer, saying, “I don’t know how, but I’ll do it.” 

    That’s how she rolled, jumping right in and rolling up her sleeves. We shook some folks up and made some waves with this party. That was the intention.

    From there, Melissa just took off with the political scene. She began to flourish.

    To promote more open town government, she began video recording every Board of Selectmen meeting from 2007 on. She lugged what would be now considered very antiquated, over-sized cameras and wires from the local public access cable television station to the meetings. Officials got nervous and I think it made them to sit up a little straighter knowing they were being broadcast to the masses. As time went by, others started video-recording the same meetings. As a result, more and more people began tuning in to local town government proceedings. 

    When Melissa moved across town to her soulmate, I felt the loss of her immediate presence in the neighborhood. But I knew she was truly happy and fully living life by her own lights. We stayed in constant contact with our numerous political activities and treasured our get-togethers where she’d blow us away with one of her new, designer cocktails. 

    She ran for the 33rd District senate seat on the Green Party ticket, making great inroads in Hartford that would later help benefit Haddam and the environment. She was endorsed by the New London Day and the Norwich Bulletin and garnered nearly 9 percent of the votes, which was pretty amazing for a third-party candidate.

    She also began working on the Haddam Bulletin as a designer, journalist and one of its editors. She did this for 11 years.

    Using her State Capitol connections and communication skills, Melissa made the perfect director as she spearheaded the Stop the Swap campaign. She was instrumental in saving from development a 17-acre state preserve abutting Eagle Landing State Park on the Connecticut River.    

    She led the Haddam Democratic Town Committee which grew in membership. We campaigned vigorously for her race for First Selectman which she won and served in 2013 through 2015. I was so proud of her accomplishments as our town’s leader. 

    Through her networking with DEEP and EPA, she championed the cleaned up the Higganum Cove. She was also instrumental in the DEEP purchase of the 42-acre Kuiaski parcel which became a State park for everyone to enjoy instead of housing lots. 

    I have to tell you, since she passed so suddenly, and because she always deflected accolades and praise, I worried that because there was to be no formal obituary, that her incredible accomplishments might go unsung. 

    But within just two short weeks since her passing, her momentous accomplishments had been featured in major newspapers, on television news, by Connecticut’s lieutenant governor, and state and federal representatives. 

    Our own Haddam town government proclaimed Sunday, October 18, 2020 Melissa Jean Schlag Day. On that day, over 100 people gathered at Eagle Landing to celebrate her extraordinary life and irreplaceable friendship. 

    I can rest now that the world has fully and fairly acknowledged the accomplishments of one Melissa Jean Schlag. She’s been rightfully portrayed as a passionate, self-assured and uncompromising public servant. A tireless leader crusading for open government, fairness, and saving our vulnerable planet. 

    On a more local and personal level, she also was the ultimate Girl Scout, “Always leaving a place better than she found it.” 

    She was a fixer, a female MacGyver, a carpenter, a roofer, painter, floor installer, anything she put her mind to she become an expert. She was also a computer whiz and if she didn’t know how to do something, she’d look it up.  She was a planner, a consummate researcher, stone-turner, fact-checker, journalist, mover and shaker, an environmental heroine. All of these qualities made her a brave and passionate, public servant.

    Melissa showed such incredible strength and tenacity to all who knew her. When she told me four years ago, she had cancer, she said so nonchalantly you might have thought she said, “I have a hang nail.”

    She lived well, passionately, fiercely, making everything count, defying and denying the damned cancer. She never complained. She never showed weakness. 

    That’s how she wanted it. 

    Many had no idea she was dealing with Stage 4 cancer. Those of us closest to her didn’t even realize how sick she was until the end. 

    The last few precious texts we shared while she was at Yale Hospital informed me that she still had no intention of letting on how the cancer was progressing. Or that she was giving up. She was clearly ticked off that she was still there after a long stay, expecting to be home the Monday before she passed away. 

    The last text I sent her was on Friday morning, Oct. 2nd —the day I would later learn was the day she passed.  The text was a copy of someone’s cheeky Twitter post, that was going viral after the announcement of President’s Trump’s Covid-19 diagnosis. It read, “Looks like RBG (Ruth Bader Ginsburg) successfully argued her first case before God.”

    I don’t know if she ever got to see that on her last day on Earth. I like to think she did and that she may have grinned before she took her leave. 

    I also like to imagine her now, communing with other great, brave souls who inspired, sacrificed, moved and shook us to higher thoughts, actions and standards.

    Like them, Melissa made history with her convictions and actions in her short life. In my humble opinion, she belongs right up there with RBG, Susan B. Anthony and Joan of Arc.

    For those of us who had the precious privilege of knowing her, we will forever be in awe of a woman who accomplished more in 46 years, than people twice her age. 

    May her legacy of promoting democracy, protecting the environment and so bravely living an authentic, uncompromising life continue to inspire us to do the same. 

  • Sandy’s Song: COVID-19

    Since the pandemic started in March 2020, I’ve flip-flopped working from home, then going back in the office, and now back at home until I am full vaccinated. I felt too anxious with co-workers who in a vulnerable building, were not wearing masks, or at least not enough of the time. Some didn’t think COVID-19 was real or that the virus could “happen” to them or their loved ones.

    Well, COVID-19 did happen to us. Sean’s mom, Sandy, 74, was living in a small and seemingly very COVID-careful convalescent home of 55 beds. For the longest time they had stayed COVID-free. Precautions were such that we could only visit Sandy while sitting six feet away from her, sitting outside on a porch, wearing our masks. Then the last time I saw her, right before Thanksgiving, the convalescent center was even more stringent. Sandy was sitting indoors, six feet from the open window leading to the porch. She was in her wheel chair, behind a wall of Plexiglas-glass, wearing a mask. Sean and I were outside on the porch looking in the open window, wearing masks. A little much, we thought.

    That last visit, Sandy seemed the best I’d seen her in a while. Bright, joking, looking forward. I remember telling her to stay well so when things calmed down she could come and stay more weekends with us like she had before COVID hit. We had hoped that after COVID-19, she and Sean could resume looking into Sandy getting into her own apartment with visiting nurse assistance.

    Then we hit a wall. A few weeks before Christmas Sandy and a few others had come down with COVID-19. Rumor was that someone (a doctor?) had come in to the building who was infected, without symptoms. At first it seemed Sandy, who was moved into an isolated area, only had a mild case. We prayed she would be OK, but COVID attacked. Her lungs were in such rough shape; she had COPD, emphysema, and was already on oxygen at times. Her blood oxygen dangerously low, Sandy was sent to the intensive care unit at the hospital. She and Sean, who is her conservator came to the anxious conclusion that she would need to be put on a ventilator. Sandy told Sean she was scared, and Sean did his best to assure her that the doctors said she really needed it.

    For 17 days we prayed that the medicines they were treating her with would pull her through. At times it looked like she was improving, ever so slightly, but then Sandy’s regular pulmonologist would worn us. If she didn’t turn around soon, she’d have to come off the ventilator. Being on it too long was causing pneumonia and infection.

    We kept praying and tip-toed through very low-key, half-hearted Christmas. My daughter and her son were down from VT after testing negative for COVID. Sean, my son and I were negative, too. We did NOT see any other relatives.

    On December 27th, Sean made a hard and heart-wrenching decision, after consulting many times with his aunts and uncles and with the doctor, to have Sandy removed from the ventilator. She was getting worse, not better. She would need to be let go. Sean had found a priest who would give his mom last rites, a priest who was subbing in for the hospital’s chaplain who had contracted COVID-19! We were told by the attending pulmonologist that once taken off of the ventilator, Sandy would pass in about ten minutes. Poor Sean was with his mom and the priest when last rites were given. He said his goodbyes and then he and the priest waited in the family room for her to pass so they could go in and offer “prayers for the dead,” in a half hour or so.

    In that time, I reached out to my prayer warrior mamas and some family via text that Sandy was off the ventilator and assumed that she passed around four p.m. That’s what I had been told would happen. NEVER AGAIN will I make that kind of assumption. About an hour and half later I text Sean asking where he was thinking his mom had passed and if he was alright. I could picture him in his truck, distraught, crying. He might have gone for a beer, but where? No bars were open. After another half hour with no response from my text, I called him.

    “Where are you?”

    “I’m with my mother.”

    “Oh, honey, will you be home soon?”

    “I am with my mother! She’s is looking around the room. Do you want to talk to her?”

    What? At first I thought he was SO distraught that he had lost it. “What? How?”

    “She’s here. She’s stubborn.”

    “She’s alive?”

    “Yes.”

    “Um, OK.”

    “Do you want to talk to my mother?”

    “Yes. Hi Sandy. I love you.”

    “I love you.” She sounded so weak. So far away.

    “It’s OK, Sandy. I will take care of Sean. I love you.”

    Sean said he’d call me a little later.

    From the waiting room, Sean told me the attending nurse said this it going to be a slow death. That Sandy could live on a few more days. “The nurse said the other pulmonologist never should have told us she’d pass in a few minutes after they took her off the ventilator. They just don’t know.”

    “Could she still turn around from this?”

    “It’s not likely, but you know my mother! She has always done it her way!”

    All I could think was, Oh, my God. Please. Not that I wanted her to die, but I didn’t want her to struggle. For Sean to be in this agony, too.

    After I got off the phone I freaked out. I video called my good friends Bobbi and Jops and just blared, “She’s still alive! She didn’t pass yet like I thought, like I told you …and other people. Oh, My God! I feel so—crazy!”

    For the next three days we prayed for God’s Will Be Done, and hopefully meaning a complete recovery for Sandy. She had been on the brink more than once over the past four years or so with extreme pneumonias and infections. It astounded us at first how she rallied in the past. My son had said, “I’ve said goodbye to Grandma Sandy at least three times. ” But here she was, off the ventilator, and still with us. She had always been such a headstrong woman, a fighter. I could just imagine her thinking, “The doctor said I’d die after ten minutes? I’ll show him! I’ll go when I’m damn good and ready!” In the past 37 years of knowing her and all of the hard times she’d endured and survived, I was thinking that she might just overcome this!

    For the next 48 hours, Sean kept vigil as the ever-dutify son. He explored every option of medicines that might help that hadn’t already been tried. The doctor explained that his mother was dying and all that could be done was to keep her comfortable, any other medicines would just prolong the inevitable. Sean, in spite of COVID-19 restrictions that originally allowed just one “compassion visit” to loved-one who was terminally ill, was able to suit up head to toe and visit his mom two times. He said they were able to talk, but very little. Mostly I Loves Yous. He told me he asked his mom to say hello to his sister (who passed in January 2020).

    At home and every time Sean’s phone rang, my heart raced and I froze waiting for news. Sandy was comfortable, but fading. On December 30th around 3 p.m were were sitting in our living room when Sean received a call from a nurse. She said that she had just gone in with the pulmonologist to check on Sandy. They were in the room when she passed, peacefully. Sean thanked her for the call and then got up and walked down the hall to our bedroom where he made the calls to relatives.

    I stared out the window at the subdued afternoon light and felt numb. It was surreal as it is always surreal when someone you love dies. I knew and loved Sandy and all of our crazy ups and downs for 37 years. She never ceased to amaze me. Even up until her passing.

    That evening, Sean, Chris and I ended up in our rec room with a fire going in the wood stove, toasting Sandy with Guiness as we listened to albums. The very next day Sean retrieved Sandy’s belongings the convalescent home left outside in bags on their front porch.

    He spoke with his aunts and uncles and decided we would hold a celebration of Sandy’s life in the late spring 2021 due to COVID. Maybe by then, it would be safer for his elderly relatives to travel to Connecticut, they’d have their vaccines by then.

    Speaking of vaccinations? Two weeks after Sandy’s passing, residents at her convalescent home began receiving the first of their two COVID-19 shots.

  • Rounding the Bases

    Rounding the Bases

    Honoring My Dad’s Last Wish

      “This is where Dad wanted to be!” I called the fourteen of us into a huddle around the pitcher’s mound at Old Yankee Stadium in April 2019.

    “Not up at the family headstone in Torrington. So, today we honor his wish.” 

    My sister opened one of the sandwich bags of ashes I had given out to my three sibs and spread a copious amount of Dad on the pitcher ‘s mound. He had tried out for pitcher when he was 19 years old right there on that spot now dotted with gray.  Though Dad didn’t make the team back in 1961, we’d always been impressed that he at least tried out. Because of this, our entire family has always been and will always be Yankee fans. 

    I quickly looked around the faces of my sibs, our significant others, our children, and nieces the huddle. It was a bit of a miracle that all of us actually got our acts together and converged more or less on time, without any real jangled nerves or bs. 

    We four had such a long, painful history of not getting along. So much to had to due to our parents’ ugly marriage and divorce. There was Dad’s 26 years of wandering and then managing him the last 14 years of his life as his conservator caused lots of stress. 

    Yet, when Dad died a week before Thanksgiving I noticed that for the time being, at least, something clicked for the good in his four children. I like to believe Dad had asked God on his way to Heaven, or maybe when he got there, to “Please heal my four kids’ relationships,” I hoped it would last.

    But now there we were in the huddle. I asked to my younger brother to give the next instructions to the clan.  As the eldest of the four sibs, my role has often as the leader, or in some rougher terms “The Boss.” Yes, I planned the details of this trip, toted Dad’s ashes in my backpack on the train, and I made the pins of dad we all were wearing. Someone else could share in leading.

    Andy announced that each of us take our bags to various parts of the field. Someone would tell when it was exactly 12 noon and we would then release Dad at the same time. 

    Giddy and thrumming with anticipation (and also feeling a little like we were being naughty kids), the four of us took various positions in the outfield. My two adult children and I skipped to left field. 

    My husband stayed at home plate looking at timer on his cellphone. “Ready, one minute.” Then, “Ten seconds. Then, “Three, two, one.”  
    I opened the zip lock top of the baggie and spun around scattering Dad like I was a twirling ten year old. My two children stood back, laughing.  “Go, Dad!” I said.

    I glanced over at my brothers, in center and right field. They seemed to be smiling with their families. My sister ran into the infield and sprinkled what she had left in her bag on each of the plates. 

    Spontaneously, our whole group amassed together just beyond first plate and I passed around York Peppermint Patties, Dad’s ultimate favorite candy. We held them up making a toast, “To Dad.”

    After that, with a bolt of energy, I hustled over to home plate. Pretending to hit an imaginary baseball, I ran, well, jogged actually, to first base, then to second, on to third. When I finally rounded to home, I stomped on the plate and threw up my arms in victory.