On the first
Christmas an angel appeared to the shepherds and said, “Fear not.”
On the first
Easter the angel that greeted the two Marys at Jesus’ empty tomb said, “don’t
be afraid.”
The Old
Testament was full of promises and urgings to “Be Not Afraid, I go before you
always.”
Phyllis
Franklin knew for almost two years that her body was starting to fail her, and
she knew for only two weeks that she was not going to get better from her
latest illness, but she was never afraid of death.
So thank you
for being here today to remember and celebrate Phyllis, to whom I will henceforth be referring as
“mom.”
But this
service is not for her. If it was up to her, we wouldn’t even be
here. She always insisted she didn’t
want anyone to bother over her; she just wanted to be put in a garbage bag and
left by the side of the road. Well, too
bad. This service is for us.
This is our chance to tell her, “You’re not the boss of me,” and to
spend time with each other and remember her.
And it is for me, to use an
opportunity to “bear witness” to my children and niece and nephews some
thoughts on the message of mom’s life.
Phyllis was
born here in Hutsonville in the waning years of the Great Depression on May 29,
1937, the youngest of Milo and Alma Crouch’s seven children. Three
of her older brothers – Mike, Ernie, and Dick – joined the Navy to fight in
either World War II or Korea, or both.
Her oldest sister Dot became a nurse and spent a lifelong career caring
for our veterans in the VA system. And some people would have you believe WE
live in a harsh and dangerous world.
Give me a break.
By 1950, mom
and her sister Pat were the last kids still at home, and they became lifelong
best friends, just as her granddaughters Jessica and Grace have become. Now, I only learned during this past year,
on a long drive with Mom to see a specialist in Champaign, about some of the
childhood shenanigans that Mom and Pat got up to. I knew that Milo was an auto mechanic. It seems that Pat and Mom used to go
joy-riding in some of the cars that he had repaired that hadn’t been picked up
yet. (If one of those cars belonged to
one of your parents or grandparents … sorry about that.) And
you know what they would do in those cars?
They would drive somewhere and park and sit in the front seat and have
drawing contests to see who could sketch the best flower or horse. And they would enjoy a treat of – hold on
to your seats – slices of Wonder bread.
Kids! What was the matter with
kids those days …
Mom graduated
from Hutsonville High School in 1955 and took off on an adventure to live for a
few months in Amarillo Texas with her big sister Dot. There, she got a job as a telephone
operator, a job that she picked up again when she moved back to Illinois the
next year. Footloose and fancy free,
she bought a convertible. One day, a
young man came into the building where she worked to tell her that the top was
down, and it was starting to rain. That
was Bud Newlin, my father.
The world
has changed a lot since 1957 when they got married. Their first home in Annapolis didn’t have
indoor plumbing. Dad drove a truck for
$1 an hour, and Mom set about being a homemaker and, soon, a mother, managing a
household on a budget and preparing inexpensive meals with the amazing new
processed foods like TV dinners and Chef-Boy-R-Dee, and reading, reading,
reading to me.
As was the
custom in those days, the family followed Dad’s recurring opportunities to move
up in a company which moved him from Hutsonville to Huntingburg IN to Wesport
IN to Indianola IA to Maquoketa IA … and
from truck driver to management. Dad
took Dale Carnegie courses in public speaking, and Mom learned to play golf. Dave and I grew up with trips back to
Hutsonville to see grandparents and cousins being our summer vacations. We were baptized in the Baptist Church, when
my parents had one car. Then they got
two cars and became Methodists, and eventually got three cars and became
Presbyterians. Now I’m an Episcopalian. Sally and I only have two cars, but we make
up for it by having six computers.
Her
Christian faith, as you all know, has always been important to Mom, but along
the way she read about and explored a wide variety of flavors of theology. She was always participating in, or
teaching, Sunday School classes or, more likely, home Bible studies.
After Dave
and I were raised, and the business that Dad had started with his brother moved
back to Hutsonville, Mom began to provide nanny services to other
families. My parents’ marriage ended
in the early 1980s, and Mom moved to Las Vegas and married John Franklin, who
was originally from Palestine, and continued to be a nanny. John died of cancer in 1994; a few years
later, she moved back “home,” and in the last years of my dad’s life she
maintained a friendship and caring relationship with him.
In recent
years she expressed regret for having left that first marriage, and I always
tried to convince her she shouldn’t feel that way. Her relationship with John was different
from her relationship with Dad – a little less “comfortable routine,” a little
more excitement and joy – but I always told her she deserved all of those
things. I wish she hadn’t spent the
last few years having that regret.
Mom was a
voracious reader, and that made her a very good writer, and she passed both of
those passions down to me.
She had a sharp
sense of humor. As recently as three
weeks ago, within five minutes of learning she had cancer, the doctor explained
the option of hospice care, and told her that the likely end-result would be
renal failure, which would be like going to sleep. She said, “Well, good. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep for three
weeks.” The poor doctor had to wait to
make sure that the rest of us were laughing before he could laugh, too.
A sharp
sense of humor combined with a mastery of words could be a two-edged
sword. I imagine most of you in this
room got nicked with the sharper edge of that sword a few times.
But I think
what defined Mom more than anything else was her insatiable desire to know God;
and to study the Bible until every verse
of it made sense to her. And I
think this last desire may have done her as much harm as good.
As I said at
the outset, Mom faced death unafraid, confident – assured – doubtless, that she
would be in heaven in the afterlife.
I like to
imagine that she and Pat are sitting in the front seat of a “borrowed” DeSoto
right now, eating white bread and seeing who can draw the best angel. I like that image, but I have no “blessed
assurance”, no “peace that passeth understanding,” that heaven looks like that,
instead of like some other image of peace that we can’t comprehend. But I'm not afraid.
Mom believed
that heaven was real. I’m not sure
where she ended up on hell— she was at least aware of the idea of
annihilationism, as opposed to eternal torment.
But she believed in heaven, and she believed that the path to heaven was
a narrow one. And this led to some
conflict between us. Not that she was
ANGRY toward me for having some theological views that were different from
hers; but that she was troubled, frightened, and deeply PAINED that my own
faith was different from some of the texts that she read; that she feared
that she would not see me, or Dave, in heaven.
And that
grieves me. I grieve that my mother’s
final years and final days were inflicted
with that fear. I grieve, and resent that, to protect the
mental well-being of this dying but smart and once-inquisitive woman, I felt
that I couldn’t risk upsetting her by challenging the entirely man-made and
utterly fallible theologies of exclusion that she had stumbled on in her quest
for certainty.
I hate the
thought that in her final days and hours, the one thing that kept Mom fighting (in
some degree of pain), was her inability to let go because there was doubt in
her mind if Dave and I would be okay in the long run. For that, I resent all the misguided or
outright malicious people who got rich writing books and making radio and TV
shows about “their” one and only truth.
Now, I also
know that her concern for David and my immortal souls was based on the fact
that she loved us, and indeed, we were her proudest achievements. And I do think, if I do say so myself, that
based on the job she did of raising us, and the children that we are raising,
she deserved to be proud.
So it’s my
intention to continue to follow the same path I’ve been on.
And my
message to you – to my family in particular but to everyone else Mom will
continue to touch, through me, is this …
Be not
afraid.
Face life
with the same lack of fear with which mom faced death.
Seek
knowledge and truth, and seek God, like she did.
Choose to
believe in a God that is big enough to love and accept and welcome anyone God
wants; and follow the commandment to love God, and love your neighbor as
yourself.
And as we
Episcopalians say, go in peace … to love and serve the Lord.
