Patricia Grant Lewis Elliott passed away peacefully at the Sackville Memorial Hospital on April 22, 2012 at the age of 82.

Born in Regina, Saskatchewan, she enjoyed a career as a brilliant pianist and teacher. She studied with piano greats Rudolf Firkušný and Claudio Arrau, and performed as a concert pianist across Canada, the US and Europe.  In 1957, she moved to Sackville to teach at Mount Allison University where she met Carleton Elliott (composer, theorist and choral conductor) and they married two years later. Pat continued to perform and teach while raising a family of three children. She was past president and an honorary life member of the NB Registered Music Teachers' Association and this year was made the honorary Chair of the Provincial Music Festival. During her retirement years she continued to practice daily and perform for her friends in the "Once in a While Club". Her last concert, performed at age 80, was recorded on a beautiful CD.

Among her many interests, Pat was a member of the Altar Guild at St. Paul's Anglican Church, loved playing bridge every week, partying with the "Birthday Girls," and accompanying her young musical friends.

Pat is survived by her three children, David (Christiane), Halifax, NS, Ann (Robert), Victoria, BC and Grant, Sackville, NB, and four granddaughters, Carla and Anna Elliott, and Ella and Abby Goldschmid.

Sincerest thanks to the remarkable staff at the Georges Dumont and Sackville Memorial Hospitals whose compassionate professionalism gave strength, hope and comfort. The family also wishes to convey their profound gratitude to the families, friends and caregivers who dedicated themselves to her with such kindness.

Visitation will take place Thursday, April 26th, from 7-9 PM at Jones Funeral Home, 70 Bridge St., Sackville (506-364-1300). Her funeral service will be held at St. Paul's Anglican Church, Sackville on Friday, April 27th at 2:00 PM, Archdeacon Reginald Stockall officiating.  Burial will take place in the Westcock Cemetery.

Those wishing to make a donation in Patricia's memory may do so to the New Brunswick Registered Music Teachers' Association.

Eulogy for Patricia Grant Lewis Elliott
Delivered by her son, David Carleton Elliott,
 at St. Paul’s Anglican Church, April 27, 2012

As I was attempting to find some way of conveying to people the nature of Pat’s life I was inspired by the thought of relating it to music, Beethoven in particular.  As I was attempting to recall specific pieces that might be appropriate, my daughter came up from the basement where she had been sorting old papers.  She was holding a Peanuts cartoon from a 1969 paper from Bloomington Indiana, spirited away while we were living there during our father’s sabbatical at Indiana University.  It was a Lucy - Schroeder interchange with Lucy inquiring of Schroeder, "I’m looking for the answer to life..." to which Schroeder emphatically replied, "Beethoven is it, clear and simple!!"  If you believe in a voice from beyond the grave - this was it - I knew I was on the right track.

So I give you Patricia Grant Lewis Elliott, a life in three movements.

For the first movement I want you to think of the opening of Beethoven’s Waldstein piano sonata, "Allegro con brio" - a virtuoso piece, not for the faint of heart.

Pat Elliott was a prairie girl born to a beautiful Irish nurse and a handsome chemist.  She showed incredible musical talent at a young age, playing her first recital at age eight and performing with an orchestra at age eleven.  These accomplishments are astounding even in this age of YouTube prodigies.  Sadly, she lost her dad when she was only eight.  I can’t imagine what life was like for a young widow and her exceptional daughter who eventually outgrew the teaching available in Regina.  In her teens, Pat and her mother moved to New York so that she could study at the Juilliard school of music and later moved to Toronto to continue studies at the Toronto Conservatory.  And so began a career that would see her study and perform with some of the greatest artists of the time in the US, Canada and Europe.  How many kids can say their mother has played at Carnegie Hall?

Fate lead her to Sackville in 1957 when she substituted during a sabbatical year for the late Howard Brown, then head of the music department.  (Howard later became Godfather to our sister, Ann)  While teaching she met a young composer and conductor, Carleton Elliott, and they married in 1959.  Some of you may be aware that Pat was not my birth mother, so with her marriage to my dad she also got a four year old boy as part of the package.  (I have been given to understand, on good authority, that I was no little angel!)

And so began the second movement of her life, a movement too complex to be written for piano, scored instead for string quartet.  For this movement, I want you to imagine Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge.  This fugue has two main subjects and in my mother’s case, they were her art and her family.  These two themes struggle throughout the work, often discordant and chaotic with apparent resolutions interrupted by recapitulations of earlier turmoil.  Pat’s performing and teaching career continued but it had to be sized in a way that also allowed for care of her growing family.  We discovered that not only was she an accomplished artist at the keyboard, but in the kitchen as well.  Any of you who experienced a meal or a party at our home in Westcock will remember food like perfectly pink prime rib roasts with Yorkshire puddings plated out on immaculate place settings of Limoges china.

In the latter part of her career she found a greater peace and just as the Grosse fuge resolves in a unison and more peaceful ending, so did the final years of professional career.

The final movement begins with the retirement of her and her husband Carl from the faculty at Mount Allison.  I imagine this movement as the Allegro from Beethoven’s 15th piano sonata, often called the "Pastoral Sonata" because of its simpler and almost playful melody.  With their new freedom they were able to do a number of things including travelling with my sister Ann and the Lafayette String Quartet after Ann had her first child.

As my father became increasingly infirm, Pat was devoted to his care and comfort.  She developed a degree of empathy and compassion that had been difficult earlier in her life.  Her musical pursuits became directed toward the studies of younger students and she very much enjoyed accompanying her young musical friends, some of whom are playing for you today.

She continued to practice and perform for her dear friends in the "Once in a While Club," motivated purely by her continued love of music and performance.  Shortly after my father died she, too, experienced medical challenges but, like some young hockey player, her most pressing question to her surgeon was, "Doc, when can I play again?"  And so she continued for a number of years and we are all fortunate that she was able to record her final concert program on a CD - a testament to both her indomitable will and consummate musicianship.

A year ago she experienced a significant relapse and was very ill.  However, between excellent medical care and her own perseverance, she rallied back and thus began an unexpected "D.C. al coda" in this final movement.  Despite complications from her treatment she continued a full life, visiting with family, socializing with friends and playing when she was able.

Several weeks ago we came, at last, to the coda.  Her final week was shared with her family and for one glorious afternoon all her children and grandchildren were able to be with her in her room, telling stories, teasing and laughing in the way that close families do.  The grandchildren were able to give firsthand accounts of their various accomplishments.  Finally, most of the family had to return home again and the following day the music ended in one faint, wavering chord that faded away, resolved, harmonious and complete.

So ended her final concert and the life of a remarkable person, a mother, an artist, a teacher and a gracious lady.

At this point I want us all to acknowledge her accomplishment: [quiet clapping] Bravo, Pat, Bravo