Kathryn was born on August 13th, 1965 in Atlanta, Georgia to Mary and Charles Ginden. She spent her childhood and adolescence less focused on school and more focused on dance, frequently “dancing through the halls of Westminster School instead of attending her classes.” She quickly decided to pursue a life dedicated to ballet, first attending the National Cathedral High School in Washington, DC and then joining the Washington Ballet. Shortly after, she joined the prestigious Joffrey Ballet in New York City. She danced with beauty and grace and offered awe-inspiring performances to thousands as she traveled around the world.
She was so beautiful on and off stage that she captivated the attention of her future husband, Jim Claffey. They were married in June 1993, adopted Chester the black lab shortly after, and moved back to Atlanta in August 1994 where Kathryn pursued a bachelor’s degree from Emory University in Psychology and Anthropology. She graduated cum laude in 1996. Years later, in 2008, Kathryn would return to Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health to received her master’s in Behavioral Science and Health Education.
Kathryn got her first taste of motherhood in 1996 when she helped her sister, Julie Sears, with her two young daughters in Florida while her husband battled and ultimately passed from pancreatic cancer. She loved caring for her nieces so much that in January 1998, Kathryn gave birth to her first son, Charles Wilson Claffey. With her hands full, their second son, James Patrick Claffey, was born shortly after in June 1999. She spent the next two decades raising and caring for Charlie and James with the same vigor and passion that she danced, helping mold them into the incredible young men that they are today. Kathryn was a supportive and thoughtful mother, and her heart was full of love for her two boys.
Kathryn was much more than her accomplishments. She was a loving mother and a close friend to her boys, a painstakingly hilarious sister, a doting aunt, a dependable daughter, and a loyal friend. She was a lover of animals (especially dogs and cats), coffee enthusiast, mint chocolate chip ice cream connoisseur, an adept fashionista, and a passionate cinephile. While her body remains on this Earth, her adventurous spirit lives on in Heaven with her King. She will be terribly missed by all those that she left behind.
In lieu of flowers, donations can be given to organizations fighting for cures and answers to mental health diseases, your local arts and culture center, or your favorite animal rescue.
JAMES & CHARLIE'S REMEMBRANCE SPEECH
I’d like to start with a prayer so if you’ll please bow your heads with me.
Dear God,
Please give us your strength and a shoulder to lean on as we work through reconciling the death of my mother. Help us feel you and her in this room as we grieve our loss but celebrate her incredible life. God, we have already felt you working in your mysterious ways over the past two weeks and ask that you continue to guide us through this process. Allow your words to speak through me as I try and honor my mom in front of this community that loved her so much.
Amen
Hi family and friends from all over. I’d like to start by apologizing in advance for the impending waterworks that may make an appearance. My public speaking professor would scold me for the extended dramatic pauses, the um’s and other fillers I will undoubtedly scatter throughout my speech, and the lack of eye contact. How unprofessional.
In case anyone doesn’t know me, I’m James, Kathryn’s youngest son. This is Charlie, Kathryn’s oldest, who will be serving as my rock up here with me as I work my way through this speech. I want to say how much we appreciate you all taking the time to be here. The support from this community has been incredible over the past couple of days. I know this was sudden and unexpected, but the fact that you all were able to make it means a lot to me and shows how much you cared about my mom at one point or another and allowed her to touch your hearts and lives as I’m sure you did hers.
My mom fought a tough, unyielding internal battle with herself for many years. As she raised Charlie and me, in our early years, she was the decisive victor. She gave us an incredible childhood that I will be able to cherish forever. It is so easy to look back and know how loved I was. However, at some point in the last decade, her condition began to deteriorate, and this relentless struggle became more and more difficult for her to keep fighting. Throughout the entire process, I stayed with her and did my best to help her with her fight. I saw how hard she tried to get better for her friends and family and herself, and I think that is a testament to the vigor and tenacity that she approached every aspect of life. My last words in person with her was when she was dropping me off at the airport in May to head back up to Purdue for summer, and I told her how proud I was of her for doing better. That brought me a lot of joy because we cried in the drop-off area of the Atlanta airport, and I could tell how hard she was working and how long it had been since she had felt good.
While I still have so many questions both about her fight, and who she was and her life that I may never get answers to as I am sure many of you do too, I think it is important to recognize something that I have worked for many years to try and reconcile. And that is that the person that my mom became throughout her affliction was not who my mom truly was. It gave me so much hope and happiness over these past couple of years to see the person that raised me shine through in the brief moments where she was better. That person that I saw in those moments is how I will try and remember my mom and how I would like her to be remembered.
To help facilitate this, I am going to share a couple of memories that help define who my mom was in my eyes. She was the most caring, compassionate, nurturing, patient, and loving mother I could have ever asked for. She was a lover of Starbucks coffee, roller coasters, scary movies, fantasy books, popcorn with milk duds, soft blankets, fragrant bath and body works, and any interest that her boys had. There are so many great memories that I’ve been thinking about and trying to hold on to these last couple of days. Her ability to make anyone around her feel at home, or to make them laugh, or the goofy things that she did that embarrassed me at the time but now I miss is just a taste of who she was. However, I will remember her best by the little things she did every day for me. The packed lunches with notes to make my day just a little bit better, the clean, folded laundry that somehow magically appeared in my dresser every week, the made beds and the tidy homey home that I would come back to every day from school, the meals that I never had to worry about, my favorite candy that I knew would always be in the pantry to snack on, the general interest in how my day was, the hugs that I received when I needed them even though I never told her I did. I knew that no matter where I was in the world or what I was going through, I’d always have my room ready for me back in Dunwoody with my beautiful mother waiting. It was these little things that made us feel so loved and showed that she truly cared for us.
While she was so great at these smaller daily acts, it was also the bigger things that she did that show how perfect for motherhood she was. Christmas was truly a special time in our house, and I can only attribute that to the hours and hours that she worked to make them so. She made sure that they were absolutely perfect by buying us matching pajamas, stuffing our stockings full of sweets and knick knacks that would bring a smile to our face even if just for a second and then we’d toss aside, hiding our elves with little gifts around the house in the days leading up to Christmas, the coordination to make sure that everyone had something to unwrap, the effort to make sure that I believed in the magic of Santa and Christmas for as long as possible which probably ended up being a little bit too long but that didn’t matter to her, and countless other things that she worked behind the scenes that I will probably never know about. She put this same effort and passion into every holiday including Thanksgiving, Easter, Halloween, and our birthdays just to make sure that our day was special. She was an absolute natural and she was born to be a mom.
One of my favorite stories that she loved to tell and I think shows how patient she was with me was when I was little and going through my bug-loving phase, she was doing my laundry and as she pulled out my pants from the washer discovered a messy green muck that turned out to be the remains of my little caterpillar friends that I had gathered in the back yard and stuffed into my pocket for our later play dates. I probably would have been so frustrated and a bit disgusted with my child had I been the parent, but she cleaned it up and quickly moved along with her day loving me all the same.
Another funny story that I doubt she even remembered, but I always thought was funny was when I was little, we were having a tickle fight and she twisted my nipple, so I twisted hers back not knowing that hers were a little bit different than mine. She told me that that’s not appropriate to do to a woman and I didn’t understand why, so I ran and hid in the bathroom for what felt like hours.
She was an incredible storyteller, and I loved the way she told one of her favorite jokes. If you ever heard her tell the “paying the rent” joke, you know what I am talking about. I don’t think I’ll be able to make it through it right now and give it the justice it deserves, so I’ll hold off on telling that. I remember that my rendition of it would always have her in stitches, but her version was the classic that always drew the laughs from the crowd.
My favorite memory of us was when she tucked me in every night to go to bed. She would make sure I had water and was comfortable, and as she would head out into the hallway, she would say “I love you” which I would respond with “I love you more.” Then we would proceed to say “nuh uh” and “uh huh” as she got further and further away down the hallway until neither of us could hear the other. I like to think that she would say one last “nuh huh” like I did so that we both “won.”
She had a unique animation to the way she spoke and acted, making her a much better storyteller than me. These stories would have been a lot funnier had she been here to tell them, and I am so sorry that she isn’t.
She’s the one who was there for me throughout everything. She checked on me throughout the nights growing up to make sure I wasn’t staying up late and reading by the hallway light and that I was sound asleep. She dropped me off at school and picked me up every day. She went to all my sporting events and joked with my friends. She was patient when I would be screaming at my video games late into the night and when I would toss my water polo ball at the wall behind my desk and shake the entire house. She made sure that I was never hungry. She’s the one who dropped me off at college and was always the one to greet me when I got off for breaks.
I am so sorry that she won’t be able to see Charlie and I get married or have kids or see us do any of the cool things that we hope to do with our lives. I truly was looking forward to sending the kids to grandma’s to be pampered like I know she would, and to buying her that beach house in Florida that she always talked about. However, the events and coincidences over the last 2 or 3 weeks have affirmed my faith that she is watching over all of us and dancing on the beaches of Heaven with our dogs Thunder, Scarlet, and Chester, and our cat Tanner who Charlie and I always had a love hate relationship with, but mom loved like one of her own kids. I always worked to make her proud, and now that she’s going to be hanging around me all the time, I guess there’s no more room for slacking off anymore. I will cherish the 22 years of memories and photos that I have of her. I know she loved me and all of us with all of her heart, and I am sure she touched many of our lives in ways we will never forget. I just want to finish by saying that although I am in so much pain right now as I am sure many of us are, it brings me so much comfort and relief to know she is no longer suffering. She was one of my best friends and my closest confidant, and I will miss her so much. Tell your family and friends that you love them. Thank you again for coming. I love you all.
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