a hard life and a good life

EULOGY FOR OPAL JEANETTE GRESHAM

SATURDAY, APRIL 30th, 2011

My name is Joshua Gunn, I am the youngest of Jeanette’s three grandchildren. As my cousins Kelly and Kathy will tell you, we grandkids were especially close to granny. And it’s not like she would have let us be distant, because she insisted on this closeness in her typical, unyielding way. Some of you will smile when I say that Jeanette could be a stubborn woman. But she was also stubborn in her loving; she loved us with a relentless consistency.

I wanted to say a few things about my grandmother---a few things about your sister, your mother, your aunt, your friend---I wanted to say a few things about Jeanette so that we can let her body go, so that her body can finally meet mercy in rest.

Jeanette lived a hard life. She lived a good life.

Jeanette was the fifth of six children born to Nathaniel Sephas Freeman and Ila Maude Campbell on December 3, 1920. She was raised in---and lived most of her life in---Centerville, Georgia, just a stretch down 124 from here. Before Jeanette came there were her sisters Illa Mae, Easter Lois, Lucy Belle, and Susie Marie, and after her, of course, was born the trickster of the family, Nathanial Morris.

Uncle Morris: did you know for most of my life I thought you were my uncle Marce, spelled M-A-R-C-E? That’s Granny’s way of saying Morris!

Your sister lived a hard life. She lived a good life.

Along with her brother and sisters, Jeanette picked cotton as a youngster in the hot Georgia sun. The family was poor and worked hard for everything they had. They farmed their own food. I remember Granny telling me, on many occasions when I was much younger and precocious, I remember Granny telling me that on her most memorable Christmas she got an orange and some pencils, and that she was thankful. I thought she was making that up so that I wouldn’t keep begging her for toys. I know now, however, the lesson of gratitude she was trying to teach me with her story.

Jeanette said that, as kids, they had no idea about the great depression of the 30s. For them, nothing changed: they were not wont of food because they grew it. They still got their pencils and fruit every year from Santa Claus.

At eighteen she moved to the big city took a job at a factory, where she became a seamstress. She worked tirelessly for decades ever since, usually in hot factories sewing clothes. She worked long beyond retirement age, and even worked part time after her retirement. It may seem strange, but Jeanette loved to work and was happy to have work. She was proud to work. She was proud to be a woman working, even during a time in our country when it was not fashionable to be an independent woman.

Your aunt lived a hard life. She lived a good life.

On September 2nd, 1939 Jeanette married Robert Gresham. With war looming, they got right to work and had Hilda Ann in 1940. Shortly thereafter, Bob was off to the European theatre to help beat back the forces of fascism. Upon his return, Jeanette carried and gave birth to my mother, Nina Jane, in 1946.

Your mother lived a hard life. She lived a good life.

Everyone here will carry with them their own cherished memories of Jeannette, and I will admit most of what I know about Granny happened after 1973. So I’ll let those of y’all who were around in the fifties, sixties, and seventies tell that part of her story.

Here’s what I will remember about Jeanette:

She liked peanut butter and diet coke and chocolate and black coffee. She liked the pianist Floyd Cramer and her favorite Christmas Song was “O’ Holy Night,” especially if it was played by Liberache.

She adored the ceramic art that my cousin Kathy made for her. She relished the sweets Kelly made for her.

She was prideful about her “wheels”; she kept her cars in good shape, and associated her sense of independence with the open road, even if it was just three miles and back from Rockbridge Baptist Church.

She talked to her daughters almost every day on the telephone.

She liked soap operas. She liked them a lot. I remember when she looked after me we watched those damn soaps—and nothing, I tell you NOTHING, is more boring to a seven year old than the slow and plodding pace of General Hospital. The only reason I watched them with her is because, well, I was with her. I enjoyed her enjoyment.

Granny made the most amazing buttermilk biscuits. Over the course of many years I have tried to replicate her recipe. I cannot. I wish could. I’ve come pretty close, though, and I’ll tell you the secret ingredient: it’s not love, although I know that’s what I’m supposed to say. It’s not love, people, it’s CRISCO. Lots and lots of CRISCO. Slopping handfuls of CRISCO!

I’ll remember sitting on the carport with Granny as she told stories and talked to visitors sitting in those uncomfortable metal chairs.

I remember that if Granny ever got tickled about something, she’d laugh until she infected everyone else with laughter so that no one could breathe.

I remember Granny taking a switch to my behind.

I remember the long ritual of saying goodbye to Granny. I would pile in the car with my mom, and we’d wave goodbye and mom would crank the car. And then Granny would say something, and so mom would roll down her window. And then my mom and Granny would talk some more and say goodbye. Then, as soon as mom put the car in reverse, Granny would ask a question. Mom would stop and there would be more talking. The almost-going-then-not-going goodbye ritual could take upward of twenty minutes! But you knew it was over when Jeanette said her familiar, parting shot: “You be good, now.”

Your friend lived a hard life. She lived a good life.

I have to say this is the first eulogy I have ever given and, it’s likely Terry is reading this for me because I couldn’t keep it together.

I wish with all my heart that this will be my last eulogy, but, as we all know, that is not likely. And ultimately, this truth is what makes all of our lives hard.

Yesterday I learned there would not be a preacher or a homily at the service today, in part, because Jeannette’s cherished preachers have also passed on, but mostly to keep things short, as she would have wanted. Even so, as y’all know, it must be said that Jeannette was a deeply religious person who believed Jesus Christ was her lord and savior. In honor of Jeanette’s profound and life-long faith, I thought it would be important to close my remarks with a meditation on deity.

No matter what your religious beliefs are, I think most of us can agree that our faiths comfort us for three reasons. First, our religions teach us that to live---to be human---is to suffer. To reckon with suffering is to know what it is to live. Second, our religions teach us that there is joy in suffering, that there are moments of happiness which we need to recognize. Religion teaches us to recognize joy. And finally, religions teach us that we are not alone in our joy and suffering. We have each other, and our having each other is the most important thing about this hard life. This is to say, recognizing our togetherness is love. Love unites us here.

We should be reminded of the song of the degrees of David---psalm 133 from the Hebrew Bible:

Behold, how good and how delightful it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! It is as the precious oil upon the head, which descends upon the beard, the beard of Aaron, which descends upon the hem of his garments! It is as the dew of Hermon, which descends upon the mountains of Zion!

There is, strangely, a gift in death. The gift of death is a reminder of how good it is for us to dwell together today in unity over our love for Jeanette, and over our love for each other.

I said our religions give us affirmation that to live is to suffer, our religions teach us where to look for joy, and finally, that our religions remind us that we have each other, that we are not alone. We might summarize all of these teachings into one spiritual imperative: our different faiths teach us to recognize the gift of death.

As some of you know, I make my living as a scholar. My nose is often in books, and this week I have been reading the Christian Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas for school. We came across a passage on Wednesday that seemed prescient, and I want to share that with you:

My death comes from an instant upon which I can in no way exercise my power. . . . Death is a mystery that approaches me as a mystery; its secrecy determines it—it approaches without being able to be assumed. . . . The last part of the route will be crossed without me; the time of death flows upstream . . . .

By “upstream,” of course, Levinas means the place of deity, the bosom of God.

I know Levinas’s remarks are not clear, and I think, when speaking of death, the author means to be a bit murky on purpose. Death is anything but clear, and that’s why, of course, we are all here---to try and see more clearly what Jeanette’s passing means for us.

What this philosopher is saying is that no one can witness her own death. No one can invite it or control it. We can expect death, we can plan for it, that much is certain. But we cannot die by our own efforts. “My death comes from an instant upon which I can in no way exercise my power.”

This means that a death must be witnessed, by we the living, that those with breathing lungs and open eyes and open ears and pumping hearts have to see her dying for her. This kind of witnessing is what it means to love, to watch someone pass on to a place of peace.

My grandmother did not witness her own death. That is our job. And in our witnessing, in our mourning, we love her beyond her death. In our promise to witness her dying, as well as the passing of others who go before us, we can make good on the eternal promise of love, we make certain that there is love without end, and we ensure that there is love beyond death.

My grandmother lived a hard life. She lived a good life. Her hard, good life on this planet has now come to a quiet close.

Opal Jeanette Gresham is now---as she always has been---with God.

She is now, as she has always been, with us.

We give her body to the earth. But you can know with certainty that her life continues in a different way because what we are doing right now. We too often think of deity as somewhere up there, in the sky, or in some other place. But I want us also to recognize that our witnessing and our mourning is also a part of deity. That is to say, God is our love right now, in this moment, in this place. Jeanette is here because God is here, because we are here. Because God is love.