Thank you for coming - it's heartwarming to see so many of you here to say goodbye to my mother. I know some of you traveled across the country to be here, and my family thanks you for that, and views that as a testament to the depth of your friendship.

My name is Keith Cronin - I'm Carolyn's youngest son. And I just want to say a few things about my mother. I could talk about her forever, and frankly, as I go through my life, I will talk about her forever, but today I just want to highlight what I think were some key aspects of the personality of this incredible woman.

First and foremost, my mom was enthusiastic. She savored life with a depth and vivacity that will inspire me forever. I had a wonderful visit with her last week, sharing some marvelous experiences with her as she basically took me on a tour of her favorite places and activities. We ate at her favorite restaurants, drove out to the country surrounding New Salem, visited an art exhibit she particularly enjoyed. At night we'd watch movies together, old favorites with Judi Dench, and new movies recommended by family and friends. For the better part of four days, from sunrise to well after midnight, we had the best time, and I was blessed with some amazing parting memories.

But what I noticed most was that throughout each day, she'd comment continually on how much she enjoyed her surroundings and experiences. Whether she was gleefully recounting the social activities of the swans in her backyard pond, or expressing her delight in the new carpeting she just put in her house, or her thankfulness for having such wonderful friends and neighbors, or simply commenting on the crisp, clear October air, her enthusiasm was truly contagious. It's funny - my brother's 2-year-old son Daniel is here in town with us, and it is so life-affirming to see the pure, unbridled enthusiasm he shows for each new sight, each new experience. Yet I am struck by how similar his enthusiasm is to that shown by my mother; he at the beginning of his life, and she at the end of hers. This was truly a woman who knew how to be happy with where she was in life, and from her I have much to learn.

My mother was inquisitive. She always wanted to learn more, to experience more, to more fully understand the world around her. Her idea of a good time on a Sunday morning was to take the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the State Journal-Register and read them all, cover-to-cover. She'd always start with the comics - I can still remember her musical laughter as she'd chuckle over the trials and tribulations of her favorite cartoon characters. But then she'd dive into world events, book reviews, politics, and everything else. Then she'd hit the crosswords. She could spend most of a Sunday on this, and consider it a day well spent.

But that inquisitive nature extended throughout her life. When she picked me up in Bloomington last week, we noticed a road sign for Peoria on the way home, and got into a discussion of whether that was the city referred to in the old line "will it play in Peoria?" Although I promptly forgot about the conversation, the next day she greeted me at breakfast telling me how she had researched it on the Internet - turns out Groucho Marx is believed to be the originator of that question - and regaled me with her newly acquired knowledge surrounding that phrase.

Although she embraced computers, she loved books above all else. When I mentioned an online dictionary website I use to look up words, she said she much preferred to use a regular old dictionary that you could hold in your hand. After all, she said, what fun is it to just look up a single word, when there are all those other wonderful words to learn about as well? My brother pointed out to me that any time you visited Mom's house, you'd always see new books on the coffee table - a testament to her constant quest to read and absorb more information. Those books might range from a best-selling novel to a probing piece of non-fiction, or a biography of some individual my mom found interesting. Last week she recommended a biography of artist Andrew Wyeth to me, which you can be sure I'll be reading soon.

Her inquisitive nature was always evident. She was always paying attention to her surroundings. She'd slow down the car as we drove, saying, "Oh, there's a crane over there - I wonder what they're going to build?" Or "Oh, there's a new duck on the pond, and he doesn't match any of the photos in my books - I wonder what kind of duck he is?" One night last week we went to dinner at one of her favorite restaurants, and she suddenly pulled out her checkbook and began writing on a deposit slip. Then she dramatically slid the slip of paper over to me, and nodded to my right. The deposit slip said:

To your right is former Governor Ryan, who is due to go to prison in two weeks.

Yes, Mom was always paying attention. Even as I drove her to the hospital on Wednesday - it's 4:30 in the morning and we're both half asleep - she pointed at a neighbor's house and said something like, "Oh, there's a car in Mary Jane's driveway - I wonder if her family is visiting?" She never, ever stopped paying attention.

My mom was a writer with a sharp, incisive mind. In a speech that she wrote for a prominent senator in 1993, she made an observation about how long it takes modern politicians to pass or amend new laws, compared to the relative swiftness with which the entire US Constitution was drafted and approved. She wrote:

As a legislator, I see every year the lengthy battles that can take place over even an innocuous and obscure law. And two years later, we may be back amending that law, changing the wording or the provisions, because we didn't get it right the first time. How did those 55 men who met in steamy Philadelphia during the summer of 1787 manage to produce a workable plan that has now stood for more than two centuries, needing only 26 amendments in all that time?

After Mom went on to describe the process of drafting the Constitution, she concluded with this:

And to think they did all this without computers, copy machines or telephones, and in a place without air conditioning! I have no doubt that the conclusion of our legislative sessions in Springfield - and for that matter, of Congressional sessions in Washington - would come much more quickly without air conditioning.

There she was writing as a state senator. But she continued to write even after she retired from that job. One of my favorite examples is this letter to the editor that she wrote in 2006, which some of you may have read in the State Journal-Register:

I know you don't control what goes into Parade magazine, but could you please give us a break from Paris Hilton in the rest of the paper for the whole month of October?

That would be a real treat.

She got a lot of responses to that one, from people who shared her disgust with the public's obsession with celebrity for its own sake.

Man, I'm going to miss that mind of hers.

What else can I say about her? My mom was independent, traveling on her own to Europe, Australia, New Zealand and more. My mom was modest, always saying that she “wasn't creative,” even though she wrote and designed newsletters; she designed, knitted, and sewed clothing, bedspreads, afghans and more, in addition to decorating her house with the eye of an artist. And most of all, Mom was generous, always giving of her time, her energy, and her care. I've lost track of how many of you talked about that aspect of her in our phone conversations over the last few days.

Finally, anybody who has visited my mother's always-spotless house knows that my mom was incredibly organized. Now, unfortunately that gene or chromosome somehow doesn't seem to have been passed on to my brother or me, as anybody who's visited my house can tell you. But Dennis and I have talked, and it's something we're both going to work on, largely because of a final set of gifts Mom left us.

Earlier this week, my mom took some time to show me a couple of envelopes she kept in a desk drawer. One envelope contained all her financial and legal information, including a one-page summary of her financial situation and her wishes regarding funeral arrangements. I want to say this to all of you - as difficult and grim as it must be to write a thing like that down on paper, you have no idea how much easier it made things for my brother and me, who were faced with making difficult decisions while wracked with grief. That was an amazing gift, and unbelievably helpful. I will be creating a similar set of documents for my family, and I urge you to do the same.

But the second envelope was even more special. In it were three more documents, each of which I will cherish forever.

One was a family history. Mom outlined her career, the cities she lived in, how she met my father, how their life together progressed and how she went back to work after his death. Reading through this three-page document, I found some things I knew, some things I'd been told but had forgotten, and some things that were utterly new to me. It's so easy in our busy lives to lose track of some of the details in the lives of the people most familiar to us, but this document will help ensure that this never happens within my family.

Next was a history of some family items. In this document, my mom described where so many of the things in her house came from - these were things I had grown up with, but about which I'd never known the history or origin.

But it was the last document in this envelope that struck me most - two pages stapled together with this simple title at the top of the page: THINGS I HAVE LIKED ESPECIALLY.

When you visited my mom's house, you couldn't help but notice how simple and clean its décor was, with a sleek, sparse elegance that she cultivated over the last fifty years. This was not the typical grandma house, laden with doilies and knickknacks. Instead, it was more of a testament to modern Scandinavian minimalism and a celebration of primary colors. Well, this document that she left us helped identify the various objects that together created that look, and how and why those items appealed to my mom. She described her favorite books, jewelry, and other personal items. This was a fascinating document, which Dennis and I will find vital as we face the daunting task of going through and packing up Mom's things. But more importantly, it captured the tastes and personality of the woman who in turn helped mold so much of my brother's and my tastes and personality.

I can't tell you what a gift these documents were to my brother and me. So often, things like this go unspoken, but the problem is, it's easy to forget - or to never even know - some key facts about the lives of the people we love the most.

So I ask all of you here to take a lesson from Carolyn, and take some time to capture some kind of record of your lives, and of your final wishes. I know, not all of you are writers, and this is a task that may seem awkward or depressing. But I think it could make a marvelous family exercise between parents and children, perhaps going through your house together, picking up an item here or there and saying, "Have I ever told you the story of where this came from?" Or even "have I ever told you how I met your father?" You don't have to be a writer to do this - you could even do this with a video camera, which might produce some amazing memories for your family to cherish.

I'm standing here in a position I hope none of you are ever in, but I know that in the circle of life, all of you will someday be in a similar situation. Standing here, I urge you to at least think about creating something similar to this incredible final gift my mother left my family.

Okay, I didn't come here to lecture you, but to celebrate the life of a wonderful woman. So I'm going to close my remarks with this:

When you live in Springfield, it's inevitable that you live in the shadow of Abraham Lincoln. And really, that's a pretty nice shadow to be under. My mother in particular had a deep fascination and respect for Lincoln. She loved taking visitors to the Lincoln museum, and to New Salem, a place where I have many wonderful memories. When I showed up this week to visit her before her surgery, there were two new books about Lincoln on her coffee table, each of which she was eager to discuss with me. She admired Lincoln as a great leader, a great thinker, and a great writer.

So I think it's fitting that I close with something Abraham Lincoln said about his own mother, which I think beautifully sums up how Dennis and I feel about our mom.

All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.