Saying Goodbye

I cannot believe that we are almost in July! Between work, the children's programs of Karate and Tumbling and endless loads of laundry, this year is flying by. 

Not all of it has been the chaos that we encounter on a daily basis. 

There has been deep, cutting sadness that I am still attempting to deal with. 

The day after Easter I received a text message from a friend on mine asking if I had seen Facebook. I hadn't as I had been attempting to snooze on the sofa trying to recover from hosting a huge gathering for the Holiday. 

After receiving the text I jumped up and ran to my computer to see what was going on and was horrified to read that our friend had passed away at the age of 31. 

Tears sprang from my eyes and cascaded down my cheeks. 

How? How does this happen? 

I sat and prayed for understanding and acceptance but the pain was deep. 

Knowing that I would never talk to Jessie again nearly crippled me. 

Weeks passed and I found myself unable to move on. Not that I thought I should just be able to accept this, toss it aside and go on with my life but that there was an emptiness or hole that I couldn't seem to fill. 

I reached out on the very page that delivered the bad news and asked if there was a way to hold a service for her in Virginia. The pastor of the church that she had attended contacted me and her father and together we picked a date and got to work. 

Phone calls, emails and writing gave my life purpose and direction. I was no longer struggling through a quagmire of numbness that seemed to anchor my feet to the floor. 

I still miss her. I always will but that day I was able to release some of my sadness and say goodbye. 

I wanted to share my eulogy with you to have you know her the way I did.  

I met Jessie in the spring of 2008 at the NRA Annual meeting in Louisville, Kentucky. This sweet, shy, quiet (little did I know) young lady had my heart from the beginning. Always ready with a smile and a funny story she could turn almost any situation into one filled with laughter.

After we began working together I quickly learned that Jessie was neither shy nor quiet and, aside from saying things like Sir, Ma’am, y’all and “Bless her heart” she blew just about every stereotype of a southern girl out of the water. Being from NH I had mistakenly believed that all southern girls were born knowing how to two-step and spent their Saturday nights in bars listening to country music and learning to line dance. 

That was not the case with Jessie…At all. She was a free spirit who was moved by the things that she loved which could include anything from competitive shooting to knitting and if she could combine the two while listening to Ludacris she would! 

Jessie had a wicked sense of humor that ranged from silly to completely sarcastic and had the ability to make me laugh to the point that I’d have tears streaming down my face and my stomach muscles would hurt for days. She was a fierce competitor who gave it her all whether she was competing with a rifle or in the annual Spoons Tournament at the NRA. 

Jess was just amazing! She truly never met a stranger. Her love of others transcended age, race, religion, marital status and politics. She never let her personal opinions get in the way of being a friend. No matter what, she saw the good in people and there was no gap too wide to bridge. 

She had a deep and abiding love of Christ. Jessie was a living example of unconditional love and was always available to help others regardless of their need. Her devotion helped lead me back to church. She never said, “You should go.” Or “you’re going to rot in hell.” She simply lived her life in a way that made me want to emulate her love of others, as Christ loves us. 

So what is this love? Merriam-Webster defines love as: 

·     a feeling of strong or constant affection for a person


·     attraction that includes sexual desire : the strong affection felt by people who have a romantic relationship
 a person you love in a romantic way 

How’s that for not even coming close?! 

When thinking about Jess, the impact she had on me and on those around her the one passage that keeps coming to mind was First Corinthians, Chapter 13: 4-8 The gift of love. 4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends. 

My father’s side of the family is Quaker. In a Quaker funeral everyone sits in silent prayer and then, if they feel moved to do so, can stand and talk about the deceased. At my grandmother’s funeral back in the 90s some people read bible verses and others shared stories. 

As the service neared the end a gentleman, that no one recognized stood up, introduced himself and said that he’d been having breakfast with my grandmother every Sunday after church for the past three years. He went on to say that he was sorry that he’d only known my grandmother for three years but after listening to everyone that day he felt blessed to have known her for three years. 

This is how I feel about my friendship with Jessie. I’d only known Jessie for 8 years but am blessed to have known her for that long. I am very proud to call her friend but I do not believe that our friendship happened by chance. CS Lewis summed up friendship the best in The Four Loves:  “In friendship...we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years' difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another...the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting--any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," can truly say to every group of Christian friends, "Ye have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another." The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.” 

Jessie’s beauty was Love. 

To know Jessie was simply to know love.