A
Reflection on the Occasion of A Memorial Service for Rosemary Rosenburg
June
19, 2017 All Saints’
Episcopal Church, Southern Shores, NC
Thomas
E. Wilson, Rector
Isaiah 40: 1-5, 28-31 Psalm 23 John
10:11-16
Rosemary
Usually I start off with many quotes from the Bible,
but today I want to start with a line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Act 4 scene 5, where Ophelia has died after going mad with sadness
over death of her father and her rejection by the Prince Hamlet. Queen Gertrude, Hamlet's mother, mourning her,
comes in carrying flowers and says “There's rosemary, that's for remembrance.
Pray you, love, remember.”
Today we come together for a service of remembrance
of Rosemary. The family has shared with you some thoughts and pictures; they
have known her their whole lives, and they know her better than me. They know
what it is like to need her and to be needed by her. They know what it is to
live with her day in and day out and to fight with her sometimes. I have not
known her my whole life, and I have never fought with her. I have only known
her for what seems like too short a number of years. She did not unload all her
history with me, and I could see she
kept many things inside herself because she did not want to burden people.
When I saw her, she was always worried about other
people, acutely aware of the pain and suffering in others. I saw her when she
was with friends offering them a listening ear instead of dominating the
conversation. When she would fill in at the office, she would turn on that dazzling
smile and make people feel welcome. The way she dealt with interruptions
reminded me of a conversation I had with a retired Priest when I was in the
first year of my ordained ministry. I was complaining that I was getting behind
in my work because I had so many interruptions from parishioners, and Herb
Myers - I later was to call him “Uncle Herbie” – said, “In ministry the
interruptions are the work.” Rosemary was a minister, but the church overlooked
her, underestimated her, and never got around to ordaining her. 99% of the real
Christian ministry in churches is done by lay people.
In the lesson from Isaiah for today, the prophet is
telling the people coming home, back from exile in Babylon, that the LORD would
be with them as they walked that perilous journey:
“Creator of the ends of the earth does not
faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the
faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and
the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the LORD shall renew
their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and
not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”
Rosemary had a tough life, but her strength was
renewed every day, and while she may have looked faint at times, in the quiet
moments with her, we knew that her faith allowed her to soar like an eagle
through things that would have hobbled others.
When she fell off that kitchen stool when she was trying to get things
off the upper cabinets, I lamely joked with her at the hospital that she must
have been trying to fly. As in all humor, there is a hidden truth; she believed
that, whatever happened, she would not be ruled by fear. She was, as I told her
using the totally inappropriate comment, “one tough broad”.
I see the pictures of this beautiful woman taken
more than three score years ago, the pictures after she had many moments of
hard times and before she faced so many obstacles, disappointments, losses, and
abuse, and I could see that Rosemary of so many years ago in the woman I last
saw several weeks ago, looking weak but full of inner strength. Rosemary knew
that the Good Shepherd was walking with her through the valley of the Shadow of
Death. She lived a life of being a Good Shepherd, laying down her agenda for
others.
It was her ability not to hold grudges that set her
free to save her energy for the important things like helping others, as in
developing and strengthening food banks to feed the less fortunate. It was her
knack for refusing to dwell in the past that left her free to thrive in the
present and have hope in the future. Anyone who loves to plant flowers like she
did has to have hope for the future. She planted flowers and she raised
children and cherished friends because she believed that God’s creation should
be a place of graceful blessing rather than a bitter habitat of weeds.
We come together to thank God that she is free from
her distress and has finally come home where she can rest in the Divine arms.
We come together to mourn that she will not be with us. But the deeper reality
is that she is still with us in the space between us. My theology is that in
communion, that service of the remembrance of Jesus' love as he gave himself
for us, she is on the other side of the table, eating the bread of heaven with
us. She is here whenever we have the strength to forgive and to love, for she
taught us by her life how to do those things. She is in the middle of the
laughter of a well-told story. Her invisible arms are comforting us in our
sorrows and strengthening us in our resolution to go on, to soar like eagles.
When we remember Rosemary, it is not meant to be a mere intellectual exercise
of recollection of facts and stories but a spiritual experience of seeing her
and the gifts she had still living in our lives.
“There's Rosemary, that's for remembrance. Pray you,
love, remember.”
ROSEMARY
The
best poet has Hamlet’s mother say:
“There’s
Rosemary, that’s for remembrance.
Pray
you, love, remember.”
As
if our days from her would stray?
Forgetting
that shy smile and soft laugh?
Her
arm entwining welcome as wing of bird?
That
solid dependability to keep her word?
Those
words “I love you” when she would leave.
with
laughing reckless promises to see us again?
That
easy forgiveness while dismissing her hurts?
That
courage to pick herself up and try again?
We
take all of her members, reconnecting them
together,
holding, encircling them in our hearts,
no
mere mental exercise but an act of
defiance
of
death which has no power to rob us of her love.
She
is in the Divine arms and in the between us
as
we tell the stories, giving thanks for the tears
and
the laughter mixing the hope to see her again.
“There’s
Rosemary, that’s for remembrance.
Pray
you, love, remember.” As if we could
forget.
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