Nancy and Let Evening Come (Jane Kenyon), Crossing the Bar (Alfred, Lord Tennyson), When Death Comes (Mary Oliver)

Tonight, I would like to say a fond farewell to my mother-in-law, Nancy. While I have known her for a quarter century, many people who may see this have known her for much, much longer, as she had a rich and vast array of friends who loved her dearly. I want to speak only about her last few weeks, however, as I found them remarkable and transforming and worthy of many more pages than I will write here. Truly, i know i speak for her daughters and her son when i say that she saved some of her very best living for last.

We were quite concerned that her very difficult cancer diagnosis might well lead to a very difficult end, but like many, many times in the past, Nancy had a surprise for all of us. With her daughters firmly camped at her side, she spent three weeks showing us all how to be open, vulnerable, scared, funny, sad, repentant, feisty, and loving as she came to terms with the inevitability of her death. Even when she couldn't swallow her own secretions....even then, she found ways to laugh at herself often, to delight in the love of her children, and to charm everyone who came near her. Not once did she ever utter a word of complaint. To those of us in her room during the last few days of her life, her struggle to understand just how to "let go" was so.... Nancy. She needed to talk it through, out loud, and this process was so open and honest, and so woven through with laughter and stories and tears, that we felt we were bearing witness to something quite miraculous.

She talked herself and us through her death, and the experience was transformative for us all. Leave it to Nancy, all 60-some pounds of her, to transform herself and heal her children in those final few, remarkable days. And she died on Easter morning, no less, as if we could have forgotten! So here's to Nancy! May she rest in peace and be surrounded by love. She certainly was so surrounded here. I will never forget the end of her life; she surprised and delighted and taught us all, and I'm sure she planned it just this way. Rest easy and go with God, Granny-Nanny! We love you.

Here are three wonderful poems that are fitting for this post.  I am very sure that Nancy was much more than a visitor on this earth, the Kenyon poem I find so soothing and lovely and comforting, and the Tennyson is a classic and yes, send me out to sea when it is time.

Let Evening Come (Jane Kenyon)

Let the light of late afternoon shine through chinks in the barn, moving up the bales as the sun moves down. Let the cricket take up chafing as a woman takes up her needles and her yarn. Let evening come. Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned in long grass. Let the stars appear and the moon disclose her silver horn. Let the fox go back to its sandy den. Let the wind die down. Let the shed go black inside. Let evening come. To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop in the oats, to air in the lung let evening come. Let it come, as it will, and don't be afraid. God does not leave us comfortless, so let evening come. Crossing the Bar (Alfred, Lord Tennyson) Sunset and evening star    And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar,    When I put out to sea, But such a tide as moving seems asleep,    Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep    Turns again home. Twilight and evening bell,    And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell,    When I embark; For though from out our bourne of Time and Place    The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face    When I have crossed the bar. When Death Comes (Mary Oliver)   When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse   to buy me, and snaps his purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox;   when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,   I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering; what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?   And therefore I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, and I look upon time as no more than an idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility,   and I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular,   and each name a comfortable music in the mouth tending as all music does, toward silence,   and each body a lion of courage, and something precious to the earth.   When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.   When it's over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened or full of argument.   I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

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