Biography of Valerie Bodo

Valerie Alice Bodos children knew her as a sensitive, caring, loving mother, grandmother, and wife - a hard worker, a great friend, and a devout catholic - a true follower of Christ.

We didn't really think much about the fact that she remembered everything for us.  Ask her for a number, or a name, or the quickest way to get to places she might have seen once on a map, and she had it for us.  The fact that she pulled answers to everything out of thin air was unremarkable to us because we were so used to it.

There was nothing incredible to us about mom except the love she had for us.  And we didn't care about anything else.  When she took us in her arms, and told us how much she loved us - she called us "my darling girl" - "my darling son" -  "love of my life" - and pressed her head against us - that was all there was.

Reflecting on her life - pictures, documents, and mementos, one sees the bigger picture.

Turns out, put her in a room full of people - she was usually smarter than the whole room.

Valerie was born on the 23rd of January, 1932 to John and Christine Palmer in Gateshead, England.  Her parents were loving, stable, patriotic, and good humored.

World War II would start when she was 7.  She, one of her brothers, and her parents survived.

One document I found in her notes contained the signatures of all the men in her family - permission to allow her into a trade school after the war.  Different times.

From 1952 to 1954 she completed training simultaneously as a nurse and a legal secretary.  One has to admit, in retrospect, that if she were thinking ahead, she was thinking quite clearly, for these skills were amazingly, generically useful throughout her life.  

When we had an injury, she took care of it.  None of her children could break themselves in any way that could not be fixed by mom or by a very fast trip to the hospital in a surprisingly powerful station wagon.  It no longer seems like a coincidence that Valerie and Joseph chose to buy a house a few blocks from an excellent hospital.  I wouldn't be here to speculate on the matter if they hadn't.  

The choice to standardize on station wagons for the Bodo fleet was proven to be wise as well - the kids totalled all of them, with nary a scratch on a kid.

When offered monologue, she simply listened, and occasionally scribbled a few symbols in a notepad.  The pertinent facts of a conversation, if any, had been translated into a few centimeters of shorthand.

Valerie also used those skills to earn money, of course.  She worked as a legal secretary in England, Canada, and New York, and as a CFO in Sunnyvale.  She rarely spoke ill of others, but did speak with some exasperation of the disparity in pay and intelligence between lawyers and their secretaries.  The commendations in her files spoke with clarity of her value to them.

She met her husband, Joseph, in New York, and was married in London in 1961.  They settled in Los Altos and shared 55 happy years together.

She loved her Church, St. Simons; she became active in it's community, and attended the first mass every day, when she could.  

Valerie became a naturalized citizen of the US in 1971.  She would always be a patriot of both England and the US.

Her children, Martin, Christine, Richard, and John, challenged her in every way imaginable.  Every week she would contact them in an attempt to get them together for Sunday dinner, often succeeding.  

She loved having them close, and seeing them behave as she knew Christians to behave, more than anything.  

It's not an easy struggle to bring peace to four very different kids.  She worked tirelessly at it.  She wasn't always successful, but no one moved more than a few miles away from her for long, and she kept at it.

She forgave us every time we hurt her.  Not with lip-service forgiveness.  When she forgave someone who hurt her - even someone who hurt her kids - she ultimately reached out to them, forgave them earnestly, and put real time and effort into helping them.  

She loved her seven grandchildren (Joseph, Matthew, Sarah, Anne, Brandon, Josephine, and John Leonard) the same way she loved her children, and they knew it.  One thing everyone could agree on was that we loved mom/grandma like crazy, every day.

Later in life, she was hospitalized several times with life threatening illnesses.  Her faith made a mockery of pain and fear.

I recall once she was asked, when conscious but with a few major organs in failure, what her pain level was.  

She looked at the doctor and said, "About a 2."  

The doctor looked at me with a "What do I do?" kind of look.  

I gave him the, "Listen, that's just mom." look back.  

Another time, again in a hospital, in severely bad shape, she was asked "What are your concerns, your top fears." She responded, "Jesus has me on his back.  I'm not afraid of anything - certainly not death."  Then she asked to see her children.

It went on like that for the last ten years or so of her life.  Every few years she would get into the ICU for some reason, and doctors gave her a few weeks.  She would simply plug through it, get healthy, take care of us, and a few years later something else would happen.

Her last illness was brain cancer.  She was, of course, given three weeks to live after the operation.  But she had to stick around.  She kept taking care of us, for another year, as we took care of her.  She took care of her husband until he passed, at home, holding her hand.  She prepared her children, her grandchildren, and her friends.  She stuck it out, at great expense, until her final day.  On that day, the last kid came home, said the last thing that needed to be said, played the last note of music, and held her hand as she passed into the next life.

There was nothing more for her to do.  She lived the life she explicitly made for herself and her family, and followed Christ until her last breath, bringing peace to others.  She died on Memorial Day, May 30th, 2016, at home.

If you want to remember Valerie Bodo, then find faith in Jesus Christ, in whatever form you must.  And with that faith, cast aside fear and hatred - reconcile your differences with another - and bring them peace - then see how much stronger you are.

Praise be to our Lord, Jesus Christ.