Birth date: Jul 1, 1936 Death date: Aug 3, 2025
It is with hearts full of love as well as a sense of loss, that we four siblings (Linda, John, Diane, and Steve) announce the passing of our beloved mother, Shelia Ruth (Williams)Urich at age 89 following our dad and her husband, Read Obituary
I first met Mom in 1993 when I traveled from Minneapolis to Fort Myers as John’s girlfriend. John asked me in the airport if I wanted to go straight to the family dinner or pause first at the beach. I chose a moment alone to reacquaint with John at the beach. I was a bit nervous to meet my future “in-laws”!
I had nothing to be nervous about! From the moment we entered Dad and Mom’s home, the aroma of the best cooking flooded my nostrils. Mom came out from the kitchen wiping her hands on a towel and smiling. She did not shake my hand. No! She hugged me tight and said, “Welcome to the family.”
If Dad was the kind of loving man to invite near strangers to his family table, Mom was the kind of loving woman to make sure she cooked enough to feed the near strangers Dad brought in.
Dad would say, “There’s always room for one more at the table” and, while he grabbed another plate and glass, Mom added one more jar of spaghetti sauce and one more box of noodles to the pots on the stove. She shared Dad’s heart to adopt people who might be temporarily homeless in life and in need of the nurture and warmth that Dad and Mom so generously provided.
I was one of those people. From that first night at the Urich table, Mom made me feel at home. She gladly received me into her kitchen to peel cucumbers and cut tomatoes while she mashed potatoes and checked the temperature of the turkey or ham. We had most of our private conversations there at the small kitchen table while the banter and jokes of the rest of the family echoed from the dining room.
During Mom’s first trip to India in 1998, she and I laughed together making pumpkin pie by boiling the fresh pumpkin. (No Libby’s cans of pumpkin there!) And we laughed as she described the driving in India as we ate at a restaurant near the Taj Mahal. She waved her hands back and forth, “They keep coming and coming and beeping and beeping!” She hugged slum children, she valued every level of people she met, and she adopted every person God brought to her arms.
In 2002, she returned to India for her second trip to meet her Nepali grandson named after Dad, David. In 2008, she and Dad prepared their small home for our family of three to return from India together for the first time. Mom loved David as much as she loved me and any other son or daughter.
In 2010, again, she embraced our second African American son as her own grandson. There was no color in her heart, only love. And when he regressed into low functioning autism, she would regularly pat me on the back and say, “It’ll be alright, Sarah. He will keep growing.” Those words still sing in my heart to this day.
After Dad went to heaven in 2022, Steve and Amy arranged for an Alexa screen so we could speak to Mom each night. For the next three years, I looked forward to six o’clock when we could call Mom, listen to John share the Bible with her, and pray. Though she was progressing in dementia, her love and sweetness remained. Her heart was still the welcoming Mom I had experienced from that first meeting in 1993.
On the Sunday afternoon, August 3rd, after Mom passed at 12:30 a.m. that morning, I was leading worship with our online church. Suddenly I saw a vision. As we sang “Hallelujah” in our worship, I saw Mom and Dad holding hands with their hands raised looking up to Jesus and singing, “Hallelujah”. They were aware of us in the church (they attended our fellowship online a couple times in 2022) and I was aware of them, but neither of us looked at each other. We only joined our voices, Dad and Mom from heaven, and John and I with our fellowship from earth, worshiping the Lamb together.
I remember thinking when I saw Mom there, “Hey, aren’t you still checking in or something?” How human we can think at times! She had passed into eternity a few hours earlier and was already fully engaged in worshiping her Savior.
Thank you, Mom, for giving me your wonderful son as my beloved husband. Thank you for teaching me to cook. Thank you for giving me encouragement in parenting two incredible adopted sons. Thank you for all the acts of generosity you demonstrated in the thirty plus years you were my mom. I will see you soon.
Love,
Your "Daughter-In- Love", Sarah Urich
