A Eulogy for Lisa

2005

Delivered March 15, 2026

We come together today to celebrate the life and mourn the death of Lisa Johnson Bedell.

My name is John Bedell, and I was Lisa’s husband for 34 years.

Lisa was a beautiful and loving person, and she lived a life with much joy. But her life was also shadowed by sadness. Lisa’s children and I discussed among ourselves what to say about this, and we agreed that there is no way to describe Lisa’s life or understand her death without acknowledging that throughout her adult life she suffered from episodes of depression that were sometimes dark and deep.

1971

Lisa grew up in the Ten Hills neighborhood of Baltimore. Her girlhood home on Woodside Road was three miles from where we are today. She was the eldest of three sisters. I did not know Lisa as a child, and I hope that some of the speakers coming later will tell you more about that time. But I do know how important the memories of her childhood were to her. There was always a sweet smile on her face as she told and retold stories about her girlhood adventures, always involving the same cast of characters: her sisters, her best friend Ellen, her uncle Bob, and her father. I can imagine Lisa as a pirate queen running her hands through her chest of gold coins, sifting them, feeling their weight, holding one up to the light – that was Lisa with her childhood memories. They were her treasure. 

1985?

When her parents divorced, Lisa tried to keep the peace between them, and between her sisters; she wanted for all the people she loved to get along together. Loyalty mattered to Lisa, and she simply did not understand why people held grudges. She forgave everything to those she loved, including things I thought she should not have forgiven.

1989?

Lisa went to college, first in Virginia, and then at UMBC here in Catonsville, where she graduated in 1986. She then went on to graduate school in Minnesota where I met her in 1988. I thought she was the smartest woman I knew, and the prettiest. She asked me out. But she wasn’t looking to have fun. Lisa had goals. For our second date we drove across a frozen lake, something we both wanted to do while we were in Minneapolis. On the way she started asking me questions: did I want children? How many? Would I object if my wife wanted to stay home with them? What sort of home did I want? Later we called this “the interview.” I guess I passed, because a week or two later she showed me a picture of the engagement ring she wanted.

I was not ready to buy it. In fact I was a little alarmed by this rapid progression, and by the intensity of Lisa’s attentions. I tried to be rational about it. This was not easy, caught up in Lisa’s fire, but I tried to think things through, to weigh up the pros and cons. Lisa checked all the boxes of what I wanted in a wife, and the interview had shown that we wanted the same kind of life. We shared many interests – history, folklore, folk music, the history of language – and we got along famously. And she was hot. So I persevered.

1990

One of the things that decided me on Lisa was a car trip. Two of our graduate school friends got married in Rhode Island. I picked Lisa up in Baltimore and we drove up to the wedding together. It was a summer weekend and the traffic on I-95 was bad, turning the trip into a dreary slog, but I had a wonderful time. It did not matter at all what was outside the windows of that car, because inside was Lisa, and she was simply a delight. Throughout her life Lisa was a wonderful companion, a great person just to sit with and talk to. Lisa’s last job as a nurse was visiting people in their homes to give them infusions of medication, sometimes lasting for hours, and we recently heard from some of her patients how pleasant it was just to sit with Lisa through those tedious procedures.

I have no memory of the wedding at all, and the marriage didn’t even last five years, but that drive was one of the key events of my life. Here was a woman who had all the qualities I was looking for, and whose company made me happy.

So I bought the ring. And at least I never had to wonder what the right ring was. 

Lisa and I spent much of the year before our wedding apart, because I was doing research in London. One advantage of this is that I still have all the letters we exchanged during that year, a great record of that time in our lives, when we were crazy in love and looking forward to our life together. Reading over them I was also struck by how tentative we were, and how little we knew of each other, compared to ten or twenty years later. Marrying young enough to raise a big family means throwing yourself into it before you have any idea what life is all about. It's a leap into the dark. Lisa and I held hands, and jumped.

Honeymoon in Paris, January, 1991

We had our honeymoon before our wedding. Lisa flew over to London join me and we went to Paris together. That was back when you still rode the ferry across the Channel, and we crossed in the middle of a January storm. The ship was surging up and down, and people were lying all over the floor in pools of vomit. Lisa and I loved it. We even managed to find out way out onto a small balcony, a place I'm sure we were not supposed to be, to feel the wind and the spray on our faces. We shared a kiss there, the best kiss of the whole honeymoon.

We had no money, so we stayed in the cheapest room we could find and ate the cheapest food. But it was still glorious. Lisa and I both loved medieval history and art, and we basked together in the wonder of Notre Dame, Chartres and Sainte Chapelle. I was over the moon.

September 28, 1991

When I came back to the US we lived at first in Williamsburg, Virginia. We married in 1991, in the reconstructed church on Jamestown Island, with the ruined tower built in 1622. This caused Lisa’s Baltimore grandma to ask, “Why did they have to get married in the dilapidated old church, anyway?” Lisa and I could make each other laugh by bringing up that memory any time over the next thirty years.

For most of her life Lisa was very reluctant to be the center of attention. She loved for her children to shine, or me, but she preferred to stay off to the side, to be the helpmeet. She never wanted to be on stage, literally or metaphorically. But for her wedding Lisa put that all aside and shone forth. She dressed and made herself up to the top and played the role of bride for all she was worth. Of all the photographs in existence that show Lisa actively showing off for the camera, most were taken on that one day.

Lisa was radiant, and it was an amazing day, one of the best of my life, and hers. I remember being impressed that although there were a bunch of last-minute glitches, Lisa was calm. Our minister had to cancel and sent a replacement we had never met, who had never seen the service we wrote, and the wreath for Lisa’s hair did not arrive until five minutes before the ceremony, but Lisa was unbothered. There was no hysteria in Lisa then, and very little at any other time. That was part of what made her a great mother to small children, and a wonderful wife. I never saw her as a nurse, but I imagine that was part of what made her a great nurse, too.

After our wedding we moved to Baltimore and began having children, and I mean we started working on it right away. We had two children in rapid succession. Lisa loved everything about having babies. She loved getting pregnant and being pregnant and planning for the birth and breast feeding and holding her babies in her arms and watching them grow. And though she was no athlete and never otherwise sought out demanding physical activity – it is impossible to imagine Lisa climbing a mountain – she even loved giving birth, and I mean loved it. I have a semi-secret folder of photographs of Lisa taken within hours of each birth, lying half naked in bed, a baby at her breast, exhausted but radiating joy. I helped Lisa through natural childbirth four times, and that was by far the most beautiful and powerful experience of my life.

Lisa was wonderful with babies. She loved all of them, and all babies loved her. They knew at once that she would care for them and keep them safe. Lisa was a giver, a caretaker, someone who wanted most of all to help others. She threw herself into caring for her babies, and they thrived.

1996

We made homes together, two apartments and then a townhouse. I planted flowers in the yard, but Lisa did everything on the inside: painting, decorating, wallpaper. We all lived in a home she made beautiful.

Those were great years for Lisa. From our engagement to the birth of our second child, Lisa loved her life and knew she was on the right path. But after our elder daughter was born, Lisa fell into past-partum depression. It was post-partum depression, and passed quickly, but it was a frightening experience for me. I first learned then about her demons, and saw that they could drag her down to depths where I could not reach or help her. But she recovered and we had another child.

The experience of childbirth and motherhood was so profound to Lisa that after training as a historian she went back to school to become a nurse.

2007

She had three children and a part-time job, but she sailed through nursing school on time, with straight A’s, and then continued on to get a BSN. She went to work in labor and delivery at the University of Maryland hospital, helping other women have babies. In nursing she found her second vocation. She loved caring for people, especially other women, and always told me when any of her patients had praised her or thanked her. She loved mastering the technical skills of nursing, and the sense of competence she got from that. Lisa also loved the camaraderie of nursing in a big hospital and I heard many stories about her nurse friends and their antics. Some of our favorite photographs of Lisa are the ones taken with her nurse friends. The only thing Lisa did not like about nursing was doctors; she told me that one reason she preferred to work the night shift was that there were fewer doctors around.

We bought a new house, and Lisa threw herself into decorating it. Pregnant with her fourth child, she plunged into a frenzy of nesting and made another home beautiful. Looking around me as I write this, I see only Lisa: wallpaper she hung, decorations she bought, furniture she picked out. Just another way she made my life lovely.

2007

Lisa then found a new project to throw herself into: adopting a child. When her father died Lisa inherited some money, and I said, well, it's your money and it's off budget, what do you want to do with it? She said, "I want another daughter." This was 2007, and Lisa was then the mother of four, with a demanding full-time job as a hospital nurse. But she found a child in China she wanted, a little girl with a heart condition, and she handled all the adoption paperwork and made all the plans to take our whole family to China. All I did was sign forms.

Our trip to China was a wonder. We took all four of our children and Lisa’s mother. Lisa planned everything, supplying each of our children with a perfectly sized backpack and rolling suitcase, getting their passports, taking care of every detail. We saw amazing things, met great people, capped off by our meeting Clara and bringing her into our family. She was a frightened girl not yet two, handed over to strangers with whom she could not speak, but Lisa won her over with love and lollipops and she settled into Lisa’s arms. Lisa had done another wonder, bringing a little abandoned girl into our family.

You might imagine that the most memorable part of a trip to China would be the Forbidden City, or our cruise on the Li River. But other than meeting Clara I remember best two things that happened in the Newark Airport during our return. The first took place as we went through customs. This big Italian New Jersey guy looked through Clara's paper work and then got out a stamp. Lisa asked, "Is that the stamp?" He said, "Yeah, yeah, this is the stamp" and then brought it down with a flourish and a loud BANG. "She's a citizen now."

After we cleared customs we were stranded in the airport for hours. We found a spot on some benches at the end of a long, carpeted hallway and plopped ourselves down.  Our older children got bored and started rolling down the carpeted hallway, and when Clara jumped up and started rolling beside them I knew she would be happy in our home. It would never have occurred to Lisa to correct her children for rolling across the airport carpet; she wanted them to be happy, and in that moment rolling brought them joy and hurt nobody, so she smiled. 

2009

I think those twenty years, from when she and I started dating until we returned from China, were the best of Lisa's adult life. It was a crazy time with so many babies and lots of money worries, and some  periods of sadness, but on the whole things were good for both Lisa and me. I have been trying to remember her as she was then, to dwell on those memories, those times. She was a whirlwind of energy, always doing something, always with a new project and something new to talk about. I was totally caught up in that whirlwind, and in her.

Tintagel, 2005

But a year or two after we got back from China Lisa fell into another depression, the worst of her life. Despite a job that she loved and her big, thriving family, the world became a bleak and empty place for her. She tried all kinds of treatments, but nothing helped. Until she tried opiates. That did help; she told me much later that when she first took those pills she finally felt alive again after more than a year of utter misery. But that "help" only mired her a different struggle that ended with her death.

The years of Lisa’s first addiction crisis were bad for me but worse for her, an awful series of attempts to get clean, followed by relapses, followed by more ugly scenes and more attempts to get clean. She lost the job she loved, and the friends that went with it. We nearly went bankrupt. But the worse loss was her own self-esteem. Lisa was deeply ashamed of what she had done and what she had become. Everyone around her wanted to help her, but she found it very hard to ask for or accept help. Lisa always thought of herself as the strong one, the big sister, the mom, the nurse, the one who cared for others, not someone others had to care for.  She once said to me, “I don’t want to be a patient.”

2004

So Lisa tried to hide everything, to paper over her crisis with lies and weak smiles. The most common thing I have heard, as people have learned about Lisa’s death, has been, “I had no idea.” That was Lisa’s intention. She hated the thought that anyone would worry about her, or pity her. She made me her accomplice in her deceptions, and I went along as the price for remaining close to her. I lied for her, including to our own children. I suppose I will never sort out what I might have done differently, and whether it would have mattered.

Not that Lisa told me everything; she did not. She hid much from me. Which means that although she was surrounded by people who loved her, she faced some of the worse moments of her life entirely alone.

If you are wondering why I am up here, telling you about these things, it is because I believe that shame and secrecy and lies are a big part of why Lisa died as she did, and I am through with them.

Lisa did recover. With the help of our families and a good program for addicts, she stabilized herself. She went back to work, went back to her craft projects, adopted cats and dogs. She watched her children grow to adulthood. I extend my sincere thanks to everyone who helped her in that time, wherever you are, so that we were able to have another dozen years of her love.

2020

And yet Lisa was never what she had been before. It is hard for me to think straight now about the past decade, with the image of Lisa’s dead body in my eyes. It may be that I am looking through – what would the opposite of rose-colored glasses be? Doom-colored glasses? But as I think over those years I see decline, contraction, loss. She never had another burst of energy like the ones that carried her through nursing school and adoption. She said several times, "I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing with my life now." The death of her mother and three of her friends hit her very hard. She stopped going to family events because she did not want to see people who knew about her fall. Some of them had had equally spectacular falls, but that did not matter to Lisa. She never passed judgment on others, only on herself. She forgave everything those she loved, but was never able to forgive her own mistakes. She never escaped her shame.

I believe that Lisa was at least mildly depressed for all of the past decade, but that in the last two years of her life it got much worse. Her world gradually shrank, and she gave up her pleasures one by one. By last year she did little besides work and sit on our living room couch, watching television and idly surfing. She joined Spotify and made music playlists for our children that are almost unbearably sad.

Her favorite thing in recent years was to listen in on the rest of her family being happy together. She used to sit in the next room, listening, soaking in our happiness and loving that she had helped to make us and bring us together. What she loved more than anyone else was to see that those she cared about were happy.

Lisa’s body shrank along with her world. She lost interest in eating and grew thinner and thinner. I had one of my worse crying fits when I found the clothes she used to wear when she was plumper, piles of elastic-waisted skirts that she called “fat skirts.” I broke down thinking of how her body had shrunk away along with all her other losses. As I said, maybe I am exaggerating her decline. She could still be a delight to sit with and talk to. She was still my best friend. But from here, that is what I see.

2022

Lisa had a complicated relationship with religion. As a teenager she had herself confirmed as a Catholic, to the puzzlement of her unreligious parents. But she did not stick as a Catholic, nor in any of the other churches she tried over the years. She had a spiritual soul but also a deep skeptical streak, so although she longed for religious comfort she was never able to accept the teachings of any particular church. She loved religious music, everything from Bach and Handel to bluegrass gospel. For years she made a point of seeing the Messiah every Christmas. Her commonplace books are full of religious sayings. This was one of the things she and I had in common, one of the million things we shared. But whereas I have always been comfortable thinking of the universe as a great mystery, Lisa could not be. She wanted to believe in something.

In particular, Lisa wanted to believe that something would endure. Lisa had a bad relationship to the passage of time. Except during those times when she had a great project under way, she spent much of her life looking backward, regretting things she had lost, not able to see much in the future to compensate for what was gone. Each death of a relative or friend hit Lisa very hard, because she never imagined herself making new friends in the future. 

Lisa practiced many crafts in her life – crochet, knitting, needlepoint – but the one she stuck with the longest, and that I think she was best at, was scrapbooking. Our house is full of beautiful collages she made. This makes me wonder, because it seems to me that scrapbooking is an art form dediced to freezing time. Lisa's best work is memorials to people recently dead; the ones she made for her father are magnificent. Others document our children at particular ages, trying to preserve the memory at some delightful point in their young lives. Lisa wanted desperately to hold on to every good moment in her life, every happy memory, and dreaded their loss. Lisa had always been a saver of things – going through her stuff we found her first driver's license, and all of her college IDs – but later in her life she became something of a hoarder, reluctant to throw away anything that tied her to the past.

In the many, many conversations when I tried to lift Lisa from one of her dark moods, I can only remember only one thing I said that seemed to help her. I told her that we don’t know what time is. Physicists do not agree about this at all. In some physical theories time is just a direction like north or south, and moving into the future does not destroy the past any more than walking down a road destroys what falls behind you. Lisa loved that. She loved thinking that maybe the good things in her life were still out there, somewhere: her parents, her childhood, her babies, her happy times. She mentioned this to me twice in the last month of her life.

2024

Around Thanksgiving Lisa fell ill. She said she was too stressed to cook Thanksgiving Dinner, so one of our sons helped me do it. I knew something was wrong, because Lisa had always loved cooking at least that one time every year.

By Christmas she was worse, sometimes so weak she could barely stand. I was afraid something very serious was wrong, but she still refused to go to the doctor. In January she started having panic attacks, and we went once to the hospital to have her heart checked out.

A few times over her last few weeks Lisa looked at me very seriously and said, “I love you with all my heart.” I knew this meant something, but I did not know what. When I asked what was wrong, she gave evasive answers. I did not push her to say more.

One Friday night in February our daughter Mary came over for dinner, but Lisa never came home from work. I was very worried, because she loved Mary’s visits. She did not answer her phone. She finally got home around 4 AM, too stoned to walk.

We knew then that she had fallen back into addiction, and she knew that we knew.

After she woke up she lay down on her couch and stayed there, radiating shame. By the next afternoon she was in withdrawal. She was obviously miserable but refused all aid beyond glasses of water. I asked if she wanted to go to the hospital, but she said no. She said, "I want to be here." That might have been the last thing she said to me. She got sicker and sicker. Her sons and I talked about what to do, but I said, she says she wants to stay home. I told her I loved her, and she smiled at me. It was beautiful.

I had a strong sense that Lisa did not want to go on as she was, and that she had decided to either beat her addiction then and there or die trying. She could not, I thought, bear the shame of rising from that couch as an addict. I believed in her; I imagined myself in a week, praising her for her courage. It seemed from what I could find on the internet that she was not in much real danger.

Lisa had very strong views about bodily autonomy. She was fanatically pro-abortion, horrified by the thought that the government could tell her what to do with her own body. As I have said, she hated going to the doctor, hated being a patient, hated letting anyone else control her body. I thought about EMTs charging into our house to inject her with Suboxone, and I knew she would hate that. I thought she was living as she chose, maintaining control of her own life and her own destiny. I thought that was what she wanted.

So I did nothing. That decision is also, I suppose, something I will never sort out.

Sometime around 3 AM on February 17, Lisa died.

We do not yet have a medical cause of death for Lisa. But I believe that she died of sadness and shame.

I believe that when Lisa felt that she had nothing left to give, that her future was to be a patient, someone who was cared for rather than caring for others, someone who was pitied, for whom others had to do the work of caring, who would be a burden, she could not bear that future. She risked her life to avoid that future, and she lost it. 

This has been a sad speech because I am very sad. But there is another way to think about Lisa’s life. She was born under a dark star, or with mangled genes, or whatever it was that gave her the curse of depression. But she lived the life she wanted. She wanted above all to marry and have children, and she raised five children with the man she chose. She made many friends, and kept in touch with the old ones who meant so much to her. She found a career doing work she loved. She did the things that mattered most to her. Part of Lisa's problem, later in life, was that she had done all the things she set out to do. She had achieved all of her goals, and she could not conjure more goals to pursue.

I have been thinking about going back in time to see the young Lisa at some rough point in her early life, say after her parents divorced or after she dropped out of VCU and moved home to finish college in Maryland, and telling her about the rest of her life. I believe that if I had told her that she would fall in love and have a honeymoon in Paris and a beautiful wedding, that she would raise five children in a homely house, that when she died she would be surrounded by people she had long loved, she would thought that sounded like a fabulous life, and she would have been happy.

To all of you I say, thank you for coming to be with us in this time. And to Lisa I say, “I love you with all my heart.”