Maureen E. Smith

Maureen Smith Obituary

SMITH - Maureen E. (nee Cooney) on June 6, 2008 of New Hyde Park, NY. Beloved wife of Francis. Loving mother of Alicia Hayes (John), Karen Tumulty (John), Christopher (Thomas Foulkes), Maureen Maloney (Matthew), and Sarah Smith. Adoring nana of Evan, Sean, and Aiden Hayes and Diana, Grace, and Brendan Tumulty. Caring sister of Dorothy deSeve and Pat DiScala. She will be missed by many nieces and nephews. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the SASS Foundation 1025 Northern Boulevard Suite 302 Roslyn, NY 11576. Friends may visit on Sunday and Monday 2-4:30pm and 7-9:30pm at the New Hyde Park Funeral Home 506 Lakeville Road, New Hyde Park, NY 11040. Mass of Christian Burial Tuesday 9:30am Holy Spirit R.C. Church, New Hyde Park, NY. Interment St. Charles Cemetery, Farmingdale, NY. www.nhpfh.com

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Published by Newsday from Jun. 8 to Jun. 9, 2008.

Memories and Condolences
for Maureen Smith

5 Entries

kathleen o'neill

May 20, 2009

It is hard to believe that Maureen left us almost a year ago. She was such a wonderful friend and an inspiration to us all. She is deeply missed but I know she would be proud to see how wonderful her family has pulled together and we admire them all and especically Frank for his strength and dignity to carry on. We are happy he is in our lives.
Love, Kathleen and Bill

Leslie /Joel Appelbaum

August 15, 2008

Dear Franjk,
Although nit's been a nfew monthsl, we sqnted you nto know how sorry we were to hear about Maureen. She made out cruise nso much more than it could have beenn with her wit and humor. What a brave woman. I'm sure you and the children and grandchildren are proud to have had her, although it was far too short. With our sincere sympathy, The Appelbaums

Diane and Steven Keuler

June 18, 2008

The eulogy for your mother was beautiful. Thank you for posting it here for us to read and at the same time reminding us what we should all be thankful for. Our most sincere condolences to all of you.

Christopher Smith

June 10, 2008

On behalf of my father, my sisters, myself and our families I would like to thank all of you for the amazing outpouring of love and support for my mother and our family in the last seven years.
Throughout her entire life my mother led her family through all of life’s ups and downs. When it came to her illness it was no different. No matter whatever challenge that life presented her with she always tried to find what she was grateful for. She learned this from her father and this was important part of her faith. This is something that I personally have always struggled with. As the last few weeks and months got worst I tried to keep a running list of things that I was grateful for to help us through the pain.
My mother was grateful for the amazing medical care that she received throughout her illness. As someone who worked in medicine her whole life she truly believed that half of medicine was treating the body and half was treating the soul. Her theory in assembling her team was to always pick whatever doctor all of the doctors send their mothers too and you couldn’t go wrong. She had trust and faith in their expertise and in their kindness. The compassion that we experienced last week from the doctors and nurses will stay with us for the rest of our lives.
I am grateful for what I called my Tuesdays with Maureen. A few years ago my mother asked me to start attending her chemotherapy sessions with her. This was a big deal for a few reasons. For a long time my mother was not comfortable with being venerable in front of my sisters and I. She always felt that she had to be strong for us and lead us through this. We would sit there for an hour a week and discuss the world over a cup of starbucks. My mother however was never too sick not to use this private face time as a great opportunity to fix my life. I have always said that my mother would do anything to make her children happy whether they liked it or not. Seven years in a chemo treatment room is a difficult thing. Days would come and go with my mother being the only one there when it opened still there 8 hours later when it closed. Months and years would go by and other patients would disappear, some thanks to a cure others not as lucky. It was there that my mother learned that Chemo was often more a psychological game than a physical one, and I was grateful to be there with her.
I was grateful for all of the travel that my parents did while my mother was ill. My parents traveled more in the last seven years while undergoing chemo than most healthy people travel in their lives. As things got worst my family and I would run down a list of all of their destinations that they went to during this time. Hawaii, Italy, Aruba, Jamaica, st john, st Thomas, Panama, Costa Rica, the national Parks, Utah, Vegas and Alaska. Many of their trips were shared experiences with their great friends and always gave her something to look forward too. It always gave us comfort whenever she would put one on the calendar because it meant she was looking ahead. It was a little more than a week ago that she turned to my father and me and announced that she didn’t think she would be going to Ireland again in October and called to cancel from her hospital bed. When I told her not to bother calling right then since she had insurance for it, she said she wanted to make sure that someone who was on the waiting list had an opportunity to go in their place.
I am especially grateful at this time for my nieces and nephews. To know my mother was to know her grandchildren. As we assembled pictures the other night we realized that the only pictures we would find from the last twelve years were the hundreds of pictures of her grandchildren. If I were to find a picture of myself since their arrival, It was surly because I was holding one of them. In the last seven years we celebrated the arrival of 4 of them, which by all accounts was an impressive pace. Each with their own personality and their own relationship with my mom. Evan as the oldest had her all to himself. There are literally books and books of pictures that my mother put together that show his first everything. That also makes him old enough to know and understand all too much as to what was going on and what he has lost. Then we have Sean our redhead. My mother got herself signed out of the hospital to not miss his communion. It was never about the party, she drove 3 hours under difficult conditions just to physically see him receive his sacrament, and to then turn around and go home. Not everyone gets to have their communion picture with their Nana taken in a trailer park and Sean will treasure it always. (It’s a long story). Then my mother had her Diana. Diana came to us at very bleak time and had an intimacy with my Mother that amazed me. Diana made herself personally responsible for my mother’s well being. Diana always felt it was up to her to make sure that my mother wasn’t getting too much sun or checking on her to make sure she was ok napping. As soon as Diana mastered the phone she would have to call her nana to make sure she was ok, even if she had just left her. Our next is Gracie, who lives her life under a rainbow. Grace has the incredible ability to walk in to my parent’s house right into the middle of some medical chaos and brighten the room, calm my mother down and spread her pure joy. More importantly she and Diana shared their nail color with their Nana which we all know is called potato not chips. Our last two are Aiden and Brendan, two beautiful little boys, too young to know what they have lost, or the hours of joy that they gave to my mother.
I am grateful for my four sisters. These four amazing women nursed and cared for our mother with more love and compassion than I could ever imagine. They fought cancer with chi lattes and crème de la mer. It is safe to say that my mother passed with the softest, most moisturized hands ever known. I take great pride in knowing that the five of us shared the joy and the pain of the last seven years equally and together, just the way that were raised.
I am grateful for John, JT. Tommy and Matt. For sharing our lost, and supporting us through it.
I am grateful that my mother had this church and this parish. She was a member for 40 years, we were raised that. My mother’s goal was to return to mass here when she got better. The support and prayers of all of you here sustained her and made her stronger. We are thankful for the cakes, the breads, the hams, and the lasagnas that have filled our homes. I am grateful to the Eucharistic ministers who took time out of their days to minister to my mother. Fr Tony has truly shown us what it is to minister and be a spiritual advisor to the sick and their family, and he made her last rights into a moment that will sustain us for years to come. For someone like myself who struggles with faith it reminded me of the faith in action that my parents raised us with and that carried my parents through her illness.
I have left till last what I am most grateful for at this time. As I sat staring at the computer I found myself such a loss for words, which is very rare for me. How can I find the words to quantify the depth of my father’s loss? My parent’s marriage was a true partnership. They shared their lives wholly and completely. Last week they celebrated their 43 wedding anniversary in a hospital with lobster and an oxygen tank. Over the last 43 years they shared the joy and the pain, the chemo and the cruises, with the same passion whether good times or bad. Always with the motto, more today than yesterday, not as much as tomorrow.
When I was a child one of my jobs was to go up into the attic for the change of seasons and take down the Christmas stuff, or put away the summer clothes. We were not the most organized family, so often I would be sitting up there for a while while my sister ran around gathering things and packing them away. Sitting up in the attic I would thumb through my parents old yearbooks looking at the pictures and reading what friends has written. In my mother’s yearbook one of her friends had written, Dear Maureen I hope that you meet a great guy, buy a house on long island and have a bunch of kids. Being the type of kid that I was, I teased my mother, making fun of the simple dreams of a girl from Jackson heights. She got very serious and said to me, “you don’t understand, you father gave everything that I ever wanted and everything I could ever dreamed of”… and for that Daddy we are truly grateful. Thank you, god bless you all.

Mary Ellen Roughneen(Donohue)

June 8, 2008

I was very sorry to hear the announcement at mass today. I know you from Holy Spirit Church and Teen Club. It didn't seem like all that long ago since I saw your mother at mass with some of her grandchildren. I am very sorry for your loss.

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