Trauma Healing and Twists in the Road: Eulogy for Phyllis Nicholas (1/25/19)

Sherri A. Nicholas Author

As a child, my mind tried to make sense of the things I saw. Keep this in mind as I tell you about a woman my dad called Phyl.

The sun comes up, and the sun goes down.

The moon gets full, and the moon is new.

Time turns —

And people fall like rain to the floor,

Puddled together — a reflection left in my mind.

The air we breathe, the song we sing; that’s all we have

Till we have no more.

© 2025 Sherri A Nicholas All Rights Reserved

Looking back on someone's life allows you reflect on your own life. The choices we make are affected by who brought us into this world. This is a reflection on my mother's life as remembered and interpreted by me. Trauma is far-reaching.

 This was written by me, but mostly I just listened to what I heard come up inside. 

🎶"First things first I'ma say all the words inside my head."🎶

Believer - Imagine Dragons 

Eulogy for Phyllis Nicholas (1/25/19)

Last Saturday, I played Frank Sinatra songs all morning. I must have listened to 🎶“My Way”🎶 a dozen times.

Growing up, I heard Frank Sinatra so often that I thought he was a close family friend.

My parents even referred to him as “Frankie,” the same name as my father’s brother.

My father had a brother named Ray, and so did my mother (Uncle Ray Wisniewski). As a child, I thought of them as “Mommy’s Ray” or “Daddy’s Ray,” and the same with “Mommy’s Frankie” or “Daddy’s Frankie.”

With my last name being Nicholas, I was also led to believe Santa Claus was a close relative.

I only heard 🎶“Sherry Baby”🎶 playing in my Uncle Frankie’s car, so I assumed it was him singing on the radio.

As a child, my mind tried to make sense of the things I saw. Keep this in mind as I tell you about a woman my dad called Phyl.

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🎶“I’ve lived a life that’s full”🎶

Today, I’m here to tell you about a woman who wore many hats—and wore them well.

Phyllis Wisniewski was born in 1935 in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. She was the second child of my grandmother, who had lost her first little girl during a chickenpox epidemic a few years earlier.

My mother didn’t share many stories about her childhood, but my grandmother told me plenty during the time she lived with us.

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The Story of Dirt in Her Hair

One day, my grandmother dressed my mother to go out, leaving her in the yard while she got ready herself. In that time, my mother managed to run dirt down the part in her hair. My grandmother cleaned her up and went back to getting ready, only for my mother to do it again. I’m not sure how many times this happened, but it sounded like more than once.

My grandmother said my mother was persistent, smart, and stubborn. My mother’s response?

“She should have dressed me last, not first.”

Even at a young age, my mother was willful, and my grandmother showed her unconditional love and patience. That love gave my mother the confidence she carried throughout her life.

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Why She Was Named Phyllis

After the loss of her first child, my grandmother was surrounded by relatives telling her superstitious stories about what to name her unborn baby. Feeling guilt and pressure, she turned to her father, who told her, “You name that baby whatever YOU WANT.

My grandmother chose the name Phyllis because a girl in her 8th grade class named Phyllis was the smartest girl she knew. She thought if her daughter shared that name, she would grow up to be smart too.

My grandmother supported my mother through everything, and in turn, I’m sure this is why my mother learned to support others in difficult times.

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A Lifelong Learner

What I remember most about my mother growing up was that she was always learning something new. She loved to read—often juggling three to five books at once. She dabbled in ceramics, sewing, macramé, embroidery, cooking, wallpapering, gardening, and even laying floor tiles or carpet blocks. She was constantly busy and always curious.

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Her Health Challenges

In 1993, my mother began a challenging health journey.

🎶“My Way”🎶 became her anthem, and she often said of her treatments:

🎶“I ate it up and spit it out. I faced it all and I stood tall. And did it my way.”🎶

She faced ovarian cancer in 1993, the removal of a kidney in 1994, chemo-induced diabetes, peripheral neuropathy, a lumpectomy in 2005, and her first heart attack in 2007.

When her main arteries were blocked—100%, 100%, 90%, and 85%—she was running on collateral arteries (the smallest blood vessels fed by the main arteries).

Hmmm we thought how did this happen?

She was transferred from JFK hospital to Beth Israel hospital where another doctor offered her the by-pass. She asked him rather pointedly how many of these have you done. He said thousands. She asked how many hearts that looked like mine. He said 15. She said, “That’s ok. I’ll go home on meds.”

🎶“I planned each charted course, each careful step along the byway. And more, much more than this, I did it my way”🎶

After that heart attack she quit her bookkeeping job and decided to join the Golden Age club of Rahway to take it easy in retirement.

Well that turned into her reading all the bylaws of the club and holding treasurer and president positions several times. The Golden Age club let her do what she loved, serve others, add and balance numbers and basically keep busy.

There was a car accident in 2009, a fractured humerus and brain trauma followed an incidental finding of a parietal lobe stroke. Breast cancer and Mastectomy in 2010 and more chemo. Second “mild” heart attack in 2012 followed by unstable angina from 2012 to 2018. A toe ulcer and amputation and a femoral artery stent in 2015.

I am purposely reading this like a laundry list because this was an absolute feat for anyone to persist through all this and live to 83 years and pretty much call the shots until the end.

Even over this past year there was another list of health challenges that read just as long.

🎶“I did what i had to do, And saw it through without exemption”🎶

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Her Strength and Legacy

My mother was tough. She took no nonsense and told it like it was. She was a high-end bookkeeper, working well into her later years.

Phyllis had a devotion to the church, she said the rosary or chaplet to fall asleep, attended the weekly mass when she could and had a devotion to the divine mercy.

She made sure my father’s aunt wasn’t alone on holidays and monitored the care for an older close friend after her husband died and she hadn’t any kids to fill that role.

Making sure she was looked after by someone other than the healthcare facility she entered into.

Jeff and I have learned to go out of our way and we understand what taking the extra step means from examples by our mom and dad.

As a child you truly look to the adults in your life to lead you to the adult you are to become. We learn by those who are bigger and older so we can eventually carve out our own autonomy.

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A Survivor’s Spirit

So let me tell you something you don’t know about my mom. She had a pretty big scar on her back.

Sometime between ages of 2-4 years old my mom told me she was scalded after backing up into a hot tub, leaving a large scar on her back. She remembered lying on her belly for a long time and being carried around on a pillow.

She said she ate tangerines at that time but never ate another tangerine since. That’s all she told me cause that’s all she was able to remember.

My grandmother told me more surrounding of this story when she was living with my mom back in 2001. She said My mom had to stay in the hospital while recovering from the burn wounds. My grandmother said my mother would become extremely agitated as my grandmother was posturing to leave the hospital ward. One day she stood beyond the doorways to see if she settled after she left. What my grandmother saw was an insensitive removal of the giant bandage that was on my her child’s wound. As she saw the nurse and her child’s reaction she told me, “I took that baby home that evening and we nursed that’s wound better at home.”

My grandmother was very willful. My mother grew up very willful.

My grandmother wasn’t afraid to stand up for her child even with a severe health condition. I learned so much from these two very willful women.

🎶“I did what i had to do, And saw it through without exemption”🎶

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Trauma Healing and Twists in the Road

So why is this story important for you to know?

It has stayed in my head for 18 years since my grandmother told it to me. That story had a message and that message is more clearly understood now.

Between the ages of 2-4 a child is developing autonomy. The ability to have control. When a trauma takes place at any age in our lives it changes our brain chemistry.

We are brilliantly made to survive. But once that survival switch gets flipped on it has the disposition stay on our whole lives. It was made to get us out of danger and then go back to everything is “ay-ok”.

The trauma of the burn was one thing, the repetitive trauma in the hospital locked in that survivor WE all got to know very well.

The sense of control that was supposed to develop normally at that age become greatly amplified without much restraint.

My mother has no recollection of the hospital incidents and she would have never known the rest of the story if my grandmother hasn’t shared it with me.

Remember earlier I said my child’s mind made the best meaning of things I observed. Well my adult mind tries to do the same.

I know where her survivor comes from now, I know where the distrust of the healthcare system got its roots. I understand why prevention magazine was laying all over the house growing up, I understand why I was made to drink diluted apple cider vinegar when I complained of the beginning of a sore throat. Vitamins, essential oils and homeopathy become my second language as I walked into allied health field as my profession.

I was influenced by my mother’s pursuit of let’s take care of this at home.

She recently told me she would tell others she started me on apple cider vinegar and I just got better than her.

I have looked to my mother for answers my whole life because I knew she could just figure it out(imma gonna miss that).

I haven’t met many people with that much “persistence”. I know I have that annoying persistence also.

My both parents had this persistence in improving things around their houses that gave them a sense of home, comfort, and security and burned up a lot of their excess energy driven by their inside survivors.

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Final Reflections

So for the last 15 months I got to see my mother from many angles that were lost on my child many years ago. As me and my family moved lived in with her, after living just across the street from her for 23 years.

To be honest with you when you put two bullheaded Taurus’ in a room communication wasn’t always clear and easy.

After my dad died these were one of those times. At that time my brother and sisters-in-law stepped in and supported my mom finding herself in new waters of grief and loss without my Dad’s presence. I was having my own a slue health and financial challenges after a major car accident that left my family without the ability to continue to own our house across the street from my mom’s house.

When I finally shared this with my mom she matter of factly said move in here with me. The house is big enough and I need you and you need me that is why family is for.

She would tell you it was convenience for all - not just her needing more personal help(not an easy admittance for a very independent person.) Her last gesture of helping another.

Living across the street never brought the insights I have now about her and about me.

My mother persisted through every challenge life threw at her, always “doing it her way.”

🎶“For what is a woman, what has she got? If not herself, then she has naught. To say the things she truly feels and not the words of one who kneels.”🎶

The last three months my mom entered the health merry go round dance out of this life. Another mild heart attack, almost three weeks ago, brought her to a place where she decided to have hospice at home. I believe she thought she would have a bit more time, since the other two mild heart attack didn’t really stop her.

I thank Ann Sheridan for supporting me through the last two weeks of marathon Phyllis care. And my brother for consistently calling my mother everyday at 245p.

Ray, you are a wonderful brother and she did come back after running away when you when born.

Monica, you have more hobbies in common with my mom and you both liked to get your hands in dirt more than me.

And Maria she does give advise no one else will!

Thank you Justin for being vigilant at night when Ann and i would fall asleep and he needed to wake us up when we didn’t hear my mom asking for us in the wee hours of the morning.

As an adult i have more clarity of her life as a whole. I know she had to handle a lot very young and she always persisted through it all.

🎶”I've loved, I've laughed and cried I've had my fill, my share of losing. And now, as tears subside

I find it all, all so amusing

To think I did all that

And may I say, not in a shy way

Oh no, no, not me

I did it my way.”🎶

Her little child survived and that set forth in a personality that was persistent, smart, and calculating and always looking for answers anywhere she could. No wonder why Frank Sinatra’s song 🎶My Way🎶 was her anthem.

🎶”For what is woman, what has she got?

If not herself, then she has naught

To say the things she truly feels

And not the words of one who kneels

The record shows I took the blows

And did it my way”🎶

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Anyone who ever met Phyllis Nicholas knew her strength and honesty. She did her absolute best because that’s all she knew—to do it “her way.”

© 2025 Sherri A Nicholas All Rights Reserved

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