Myrtle Anderson's life was celebrated Tuesday afternoon at a funeral attended by close friends and family, including her daughter, singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell.

About 55 people gathered at the Saskatoon Funeral Home to remember Anderson, who died on March 20. She was 95. "Myrtle Anderson could play a piano, plant a garden or plaster a wall with her talented hands.... She was a strong, caring woman with a spirit of vitality," said Rev. Dale Morrison in his eulogy. No one else spoke at the funeral.

Anderson's husband, Bill, and Mitchell sat in the front row of the pews and sang two hymns along with others in attendance. Anderson's life was celebrated rather than mourned: Before the ceremony started, her close friends and family chatted in a room adjoined to the main chapel. As they visited, laughs could be heard.

"(Anderson) survived many hardships and she never forgot the lessons of those hardships," Morrison told the mourners. Born in Heward, about 125 kilometres southwest of Regina, Anderson eventually moved to Regina to complete her teacher training. It's there she met Bill. The two were married within a month of meeting and had Mitchell about a year later. The family moved to Fort Macleod and lived in Maidstone and North Battleford before settling in Saskatoon, where the couple remained until Anderson's death.

Anderson was a meticulous clipper of stories and photos of her famous daughter, some of which made it into a installation on Mitchell's career at the Mendel Art Gallery.

"There was no more faithful supporter than your mother, Joni," Morrison said to Mitchell during the eulogy. Mitchell's poem, Passion Play, was included in the funeral program.