Eulogy for my Mom
2026 Jun 27A little over 20 years ago I gave a eulogy right here for my dad, Leslie Grove. And now I am at the same place again, this time to talk about my mom. Like I said before about Dad, I am so glad to be able to tell you about my Mom!
I won’t read her bio on the back of the program to you. ••• But I will tell you about what it was like living with her.
Carolyn Grove was born on June 27, 1931, to Emil and Lillie Ahlstrand in Culver City, California. At a very early age, she accepted Jesus as her Savior, dedicating her whole life to loving and serving Him.
At the age of four, Carolyn began to play the piano. Her love for music had a significant influence on her throughout her life. Carolyn grew up in the Los Angeles area, and after receiving a B.A. in music at BIOLA College, and then a Bachelor of Music Education at Pepperdine College, she began to teach music in an elementary school, as well as teach piano privately. In 1957, she travelled abroad to teach at the Christian Academy in Japan, in Tokyo. She met Leslie Grove, a single missionary from Rich Valley, Alberta, Canada in 1958, and they married in Tokyo the following year. All three of their children were born in Japan.
For 17 years they worked in church planting, music teaching, and other areas of service with the Japan Evangelical Mission, then moved to São Paulo, Brazil to work with some of the many Japanese churches in that area. Carolyn also developed a music program at Pan American Christian Academy where their children attended.
After 20 years in Brazil, Leslie and Carolyn retired to Abbotsford, BC, but they continued to visit both Japan and Brazil, helping with churches, teaching English and music. On a trip to Brazil in 2003, Leslie passed away suddenly. While this was a shock, Carolyn gracefully accepted it as part of God’s perfect plan.
In 2005, Carolyn married Art Seely, a retired missionary from Japan. During their years together, they took several trips to Japan to serve the Lord in various capacities. Art passed away in 2015.
In her final years, Carolyn continued to play the piano at Menno Place and pray constantly for her family and friends. She was a little lady but a giant of a prayer warrior! Her greatest desire was that all of her family would personally know the Lord.
She was resourceful. As a child of the Great Depression, she knew how to be thrifty. Certainly as a missionary it was necessary to stretch family funds. As I was growing up we didn’t have much, but it always felt like enough.
Once I was visiting her after she had been retired. I was making a slice of toast and when putting on the jam I spread it thinly like when I was a kid. “Oh”, she said, “Put enough on to make it taste good!” We had a good laugh about that and were grateful for how we now had plenty for our needs. God is so good!
She was very self-disciplined. She also had opinions about how she wanted things done by others with her. For me that had been normal, so I just thought that was how moms were. Melanie described it as quietly persistent. So often things were done as mom had envisioned.
She was not an extrovert, so she often leaned on my dad to make connections to new people. But once the connection was made, she was involved.
She was loyal. I remember a time when she and dad were having an on-going disagreement about some accounting of funds. It was intense conversation but never a voice raised. I talked with mom, expressing that I thought dad wasn’t being fair to her. She immediately completely defended him and let me know that it was not my place to be judging between them. She set me right immediately!
My dad had many stories from when he grew up on the farm. When I asked mom for stories of her childhood, it seemed like she felt she didn’t have many. She was very humble. But she also seemed to doubt that people would find her interesting. In truth, she had a very interesting life. And she was interested both in people and in many things.
She had a great sense of curiosity which she also passed on to us kids. She was interested in the things that other people found interesting. When I was a kid I told her about lots of things I was discovering. I remember sitting on her lap as a 1st grader, telling her how an internal combustion engine worked. As I did, I knew she was interested in that and in me.
And she was easy to talk to. In our little house in Brazil the stairway went up beside the kitchen. I remember sitting on the stairs right by the counter while she was making bread. I was going through that teenage stage of life where you start seeing more of the connections in life, and relationships start becoming more complicated, but important too. We talked about all these things; it was rich and enjoyable.
She was a nerd. I helped get her set up with a Macintosh computer and so she was one of the early missionaries to be emailing. For myself, it was so wonderful to be able to get responses across the world from my parents so quickly. My dad even saw her effectiveness with the computer and became convinced later to give them a try. She kept on working to learn new things, right up until she couldn’t use the computer any more.
She was extremely interested in music - mostly classical and sacred music. In fact, she was very driven with respect to music. She pursued performance, music usage and teaching of music all her life. She was quite competent in all this, doing classroom music theory teaching and teaching students to play musical instruments. She produced original music programs at the schools where she taught, developing a theme around which to assemble music and involve all the kids.
She played keyboards - both piano and organ. When she was a young person studying in Los Angeles, she would go to churches with large organs to rent time on them to practice. For a special treat she would go to a church with a pipe organ!
After I finished high school my parents were living in Seattle and we were all going to a church there. The church had a good organ which she played with the choir. She had been polishing up Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in Dm and it was an open secret that she was going to play it one Sunday morning just before the service. Everybody in the know went up to the choir loft around the organ and we all just soaked in that huge piece of music. It was glorious!
For most of her life she played from sheet music. When her sight began to fail and she couldn’t read music anymore, she actually taught herself to play by ear. And so she was able to continue playing music for many more years.
She got us kids into music early and so we had a family string trio. She arranged the music and we performed in churches and other venues in Japan, Brasil, America and Canada. My dad was a church planter and mom was a music missionary. Dad highly valued what mom brought to their team and I also think it made our family distinctive.
She was serious about her faith and about praying. She loved Jesus and treasured scripture. She prayed for all her kids, grandkids and on. This is probably the greatest aspect of loss that I sense and now I feel responsible to pray more for them.
I am very grateful to have had her as my mom. She lived a life that was a great example. She was a great mom and a great friend!