Constance Jovan Hinchcliff
1945 – 2025
Greenville, SC

So, much of this may sound familiar as it is based upon the obituary I wrote when my mom passed away. However, when we lost my mom I was in a state of shock. Although we all knew she had a number of health problems, she had a tendency to bounce back and surprise us all with her recoveries, so until they told me Saturday evening after the surgery how impossible her situation was, I honestly never counted her out. We joked a lot through her many medical misadventures about how much “pivoting” was involved in terms of planning for the future, but this was a hard pivot I wasn’t ready to make. Combined with a heaping helping of caregiver’s fatigue and being overwhelmed by the to-do list that lay in front of me, I wasn’t in a place to process my own feelings coherently. Knowing that there was no rush for the memorial, I decided to put it off so I could deal with all the “stuff” she left behind.

My mom loved stuff and struggled to part with anything, especially anything pertaining to her family. And although her love of stuff and her storage unit filled with mementos, wreath making supplies, cat toys and random bits of life collected along the way was a constant source of frustration between us, in it I found tubs and tubs full of photos. Double printed, envelopes full of photos. And, for me, making her a slideshow to celebrate her life had always been important and so I set out to go through each and every one of those photos as part of the process of getting things in order. As I’ve often found in life, something that I didn’t anticipate being beneficial wound up being extremely cathartic. I was able to remember lots of great times, discover things I’d completely forgotten happened or existed and let go of the struggles and challenges that had become part of our daily lives in the past few years. So it is with that perspective that I now sit down to write her eulogy three + months after she passed away.

My mom, Constance Jo Jovan Hinchcliff, was born on November 12, 1945 in Mattoon, Illinois to Pano Jovanovich and Georgia Baleja Jovan. Her father immigrated from Yugoslavia alone at the age of fourteen, sponsored by a man from his village. He taught himself to read and write in English and worked his way up on the Illinois Central Railroad to become a bridge foreman. My mom’s mother, Georgia Baleja, was born in Texas but was of Czechoslovakian heritage. Her mother, my mom’s Grandma Ida, lived with the family. My mom also had a brother, George, who was 12 years her senior and a brother, Johnny, who had died prior to her birth at the age of 5 of childhood cancer.

Growing up, the common languages spoken in their home were German and English. However, my mom was not allowed to speak German after starting kindergarten as her mother was worried about her carrying the stigma of being the child of immigrants.  My mom’s father, Pano, was gone throughout the week working at bridge locations and only came home for the weekend.  Though their home’s close proximity to the train tracks might have been considered less than ideal normally, the sounds of the train whistles reminded her and her mother of her father when he was gone working and brought them great comfort.  My mom’s dad passed away suddenly when she was twelve, but even when I was a kid, my mom and grandma would talk about how peaceful they found the train whistles and I find that I enjoy them to this day.

Growing up, my mom forged strong friendships and those friends sustained her throughout her life. From climbing trees to dating to marriage and children and into their senior years, she and her group of girlfriends kept in close contact and supported and loved each other. As part of Rainbow Girls, a Masonic organization, my mom and her girlfriends attended countless formals. I have no idea how her mom could afford the dresses and shoes, but she did and my mom developed her love of heels and fashion from these dances. She and her girlfriends were always dressed to the nines. They also managed to get into their fair share of mischief in high school and college and were known to bend the rules, like when they frequently rolled up their pajama pants and wore trench coats to the cafeteria for breakfast to avoid “breaking the rule” about wearing a dress or skirt to meals. Even well into their middle age, they might have been known to toilet paper former classmate’s homes, much to the chagrin my Grandma Georgia.

My mom graduated from Mattoon Senior High School in 1963. She continued her education at Eastern Illinois University less than 20 minutes away from her mom in Mattoon and graduated in 1967 with a Bachelors of Education, specializing in French and English.

After college, with her love of language, my mom went on to teach English and sometimes French for the next 30 plus years with the vast majority of that time teaching at Beardstown Junior High School in Beardstown, Illinois. She was a lover of sentence diagramming and delighted in introducing her students to short stories, books and poetry by some of her favorite writers including Alice Walker, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Shirley Jackson.

A fellow teacher, my Aunt Betty introduced my mom to my dad, Del, in 1972. They were married on August 5th of that same year. On May 12, 1974, I was born. My mom had me on Mother’s Day and she always claimed I was the best Mother’s Day gift ever. My mom and dad divorced in June of 2001.

Everyone who knew my mom, knew that she loved animals, in particular dogs and cats. In recent years, she was infamous for spoiling her granddogs and flagrantly ignoring rules about feeding dogs directly from the table. After she rescued her first cat as a stray when I was in high school, she was never without a feline companion. The vast majority of her cats were rescued from the streets where she attracted quite a following with the neighborhood cats, squirrels, raccoons and possums.  She has left behind an extremely needy cat, Felipe, who demands constant attention and admiration and expects frequent feedings. He has taken up residence with my sister and brother-in-law, where his “little grey nose” is admired daily as per my mom’s expectations.

My mom was also passionate about many other things. She loved gardening, flowers and trees and was constantly admiring various flora and asking about the plants and trees of South Carolina with which she was less familiar. I, of course, know very little about plants and trees and so was constantly driven slightly insane by her questions. She used to plant elaborate flower gardens at the front of our house each spring and never stopped subscribing to various flower magazines. In the last few years, her gardening was relegated to a selection of potted plants on her patio. Regina and I were required to care for them each and every day and cover them in the winter under her watchful (read: bossy) eye. I felt like those plants were the bane of my existence sometimes, but just as she passed away on March 15th, they began to green up. She and Regina had actually discussed giving up on them a month or so prior to her death, but after so much effort,  I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Somehow, my mom turned me into a reluctant gardener and I’m proud to report her plants are currently flourishing on my back deck and I’ve already been looking into buying them plant blankets for the winter. I’m pretty sure she finds the situation hilarious.

My mom also enjoyed crafting and was known to make a myriad of homemade gifts throughout the years for family and friends. Her enjoyment of the creative process continued throughout her life and she couldn’t resist even the most basic craft project, like making slime with her granddaughter.  I shared her passion, although we were very rarely interested in the same craft at the same time. Thanks to my mom I can make an extremely large wreath bow, do some basic crochet and come up with some solid arts and crafts projects for my K4 students. She also taught me to sew, which was a great passion of mine for quite some time.

My mom also shared her love of old movies with me. Her devotion to the movies began when she was a child and her father took her to the theater every Friday when he got home from the railroad. She introduced me to some of the greats, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Gregory Peck, Alfred Hitchcock and we watched countless old movies and musicals together. Her passion for actors continued throughout her life and she was infamous for searching actors up on Wikipedia (be they screen legends or bit characters on Hallmark movies) and learning all about them. Thanks to her vast knowledge, she was known for interrupting whatever was being watched to identify an actor on the screen and provide his or her filmography whether anyone was interested or not.

She was also an avid reader and devoured books, particularly romantic historical fiction. Her love of the written word, history and movies made her an ace at crossword puzzles and her family enjoyed using her extensive vocabulary and exhaustive memory to complete crossword puzzles together.  Several years ago we discovered my mom’s crossword ability on a beach trip and from that time forward I often brought crossword books to her appointments to keep us occupied during long waits. You’d be surprised to know how many doctors in the Greenville area have helped us answer a clue or two when they found us working a puzzle in their exam room.

Laughter was another big part of my mom’s life. With a sarcastic family and prone to silly antics herself, my mom often made others laugh. Sometimes at her expense, but often due to her willingness to embrace her inner child. She was not afraid to laugh at herself and enjoyed making others smile. My mom brought me to tears laughing more times than I can count. Sometimes without meaning to, but often on purpose. We were often a spectacle when out shopping together using strange vocalizations to locate each other or trying on ridiculous hats or sunglasses to amuse ourselves. Perhaps due to a lifetime of shared experiences, she was my absolute favorite person to play games like Apples to Apples with as she and I both always tried to play the funniest answer and we both always thought we were hilarious which meant I could always count on her to pick my card and vice versa. Pretty sure my odds have diminished dramatically at games like that without my mom around. As things got tougher in terms of her medical conditions, she and Regina and I often resorted to laughter to get through the hard times. We had countless inside jokes about her surgeons and other caregivers. Especially when things are tough, sometimes laughter is really the best medicine and my mom loved a good laugh. How fortunate I was that we could share a means to let out the frustration and stress of difficult situations by laughing through them.

Though she had a number of loves, the role which she most relished was that of Gaga  to Quinn and Ada. My mom treasured her time with her grandchildren and enjoyed indulging their every wish. I can clearly remember a car trip with my mom when a less than two year-old Quinn demanded that we listen to “Hey, Soul Sister” by Train for the entire trip back from Springfield. And, that we did, all singing along to the song over and over and over again for the 30 minute ride. My mom loved to make her grandchildren happy. With a wicked sweet tooth of her own, she never could deny her grandchildren a chocolate or three and often advocated for extra desserts for them all. She kept every drawing and note they ever made for her, and her refrigerator was covered with their masterpieces. When the kids were little, she pitched endless games of baseball and played Barbies exhaustively. As they grew, she was often found goofing around with Quinn (last summer they played a game of pickleball in the dining room of our beach house) and was famous for Snapchatting Ada and her friends (Gaga Connie loved a filter).  While working on the slideshow, my mom’s obsession with and devotion to her grandchildren was so evident. I’m pretty sure if pictures are to be believed, my mom smiled about 100% more frequently with Quinn and Ada in her life. I think in many ways, they allowed her to relax and just be herself. They brought her so much joy and she was so proud to be their Gaga.

As I mentioned before, I struggled to write about my relationship with my mom immediately after her death in large part due to shock and emotional exhaustion. However, at that time, if you’d asked me about my mom and me, I would have said we were extremely different people. In many ways, that was true, but in going through memories and photos in the last few months as well as surviving the day to day without her constant support, I’ve realized how much we were also alike and how much I depended on her even though I would have argued she was the dependent one. My mom was a bit of an introvert, which I can only assume will surprise some of you to hear me say. She was quite talkative when she was comfortable (like someone else we know), but she didn’t make connections easily. However, when she moved to Greenville, she lucked into a big family in the Turners and extended framily (friends that are like family) with our closest friends. All of the people in this room, whether she knew you specifically or not, were her “people”. My mom was very loyal and her connection to one person built a bridge to another person. Not to mention that she was a Facebook stalker and I talked to her several times every single day, so those of you she didn’t know, she heard a lot about. She worried about whether or not your kids had enough donations for their school fundraisers, asked about you if I didn’t mention you or your kid was missing from a carpool story, and followed up on bits and pieces I told her about your highs and lows. Obviously, some of you, like Regina and the other Turners she developed significant relationships with, but even those of you who may not have felt as close to her were always on her mind. Much like her girlfriends from her school days, once you were part of my mom’s circle, you were in it for life.

Shortly after my mom passed away, in writing a thank you note to my class parents, I mentioned that my mom “Loved Big” and that was something that she had passed on to me. I think that if there is one thing I want people to take away from this, it is to love your people Big. My mom told me how beautiful I looked when I rolled up to her apartment in my pajamas and admired t-shirts she had seen countless times. She could not find fault with anything she ever saw Quinn or Ada do on the field or on the gymnastics floor. She looked for the best in her people and loved them based on that. Often, your family and close friends get a bit of the short end of the stick as it is easier to let out frustrations on those closest to you, and although she was certainly not immune to that, she definitely gave a lot more love than she gave grief. So love your people BIG. Offer compliments and words of love on the daily, tell them “I love you” one more time, surprise them with tokens of appreciation or cards or flowers out of nowhere. Encourage them, support them, praise them, celebrate them, and love them big, as a little extra love can’t ever hurt.

And with that, it’s time for my mom’s slideshow. I will warn you in advance that it is about 12 minutes long, so if anyone needs a bathroom break before it starts, we’re more than happy to wait.

Along with Loving Big, the other thing my mom would want you to remember is an extra dessert can never hurt (and although that may not always be the case), one extra dessert definitely cannot hurt so in memory of my mom, who literally pointed out Bruster’s every single time we passed it and who I would do almost anything to get the opportunity to indulge one more time by stopping in, everyone is invited to Bruster’s after the memorial service for a dessert on Connie. There is nothing that would please her more than for you all to enjoy a sweet treat and remember her.