Betty Coons Funeral Sermon

n the years I shared with Betty at St. John’s, she was most definitely a “Martha.” You’ve already heard from Bob the long list of all the things she gave and contributed to the church. Busy-ness was most definitely her preferred way of being and caring and giving. I always sensed, on any given Sunday, if there was any excuse to be down in the kitchen, getting ready for coffee or a potluck, rather than sitting through the service (and my sermon), that’s certainly where she’d rather be.

“Service” made sense to Betty. “Doing” made sense to Betty. There was a practicality in it, a sense of order and purpose and capability. Now, she was, admittedly, a bit bossy and tenacious with her opinions on the right way to do things. But let me say this, with a determination equal to hers: She absolutely did want to do right. The only reason we found ourselves butting heads from time to time was that she was there, right in front of my own stubborn head. She was on the vestry, in the kitchen, leading Senior Sneakers. She was there, far more than most: giving, serving, doing what she knew to do to make this church and this world a better place.

Which she did. And the effect lingers on. I was talking to June Lane a couple days ago. June is 99 years old and still living on her own. “I still do the exercises every day that Betty taught me,” she said. Betty’s still making June’s world a better, safer, more reliable place.

Betty was born in upstate New York. Her father died when she was still quite young. With the little bit of money that came from his death, her mother bought a small dairy farm. And – as anyone knows who’s worked a dairy farm – it requires order and discipline and constant labor. The cows and their two-times-a-day milking wait for no one.

And along with her mother and the cows, Betty’s childhood was spent with her sister, Anne. Words cannot express the importance of this relationship in her life. It was an anchor, a joy. They were thick as thieves and understood each other with a depth and complexity unequalled by any other. Companions of the truest sort, they were on the phone together, every day, multiple times a day, each bringing out in each other their best selves, right until the end, when Annie died in 2022. There was a sense that they had always been for each other, a safe place.

Which indeed they needed.

When Betty was still young (I’m not sure of her exact age), her mother remarried, which should have been a good thing for her and her mother and her sister. But it was not a good thing. Because he was not a good man. And, as soon as she possibly could, Betty left home – graduating early at 16 – then enrolling in a three-year nursing program at Kingston Hospital in New York. She graduated around 1957 and married Bard soon thereafter, stepping quickly and satisfactorily into the role of military wife.

Bard loved Betty unconditionally and wanted to give her the world. Which worked out very nicely for her. To have gone from a home with a dead father, to an abusive stepfather, and then to land in a home all her own with a husband like Bard who loved her so, well, it must have been like winning the lottery.

I’m sorry for myself that I only knew Betty in the years that followed Bard’s unexpected death. I suspect that the Betty I knew was, in some ways, a diminishing Betty. She might always have been something of a bossy nurse, but for all those years with Bard, that bossiness had been balanced and softened by the certain and reliable love of another. Would that we all could have such a gift – such a constant grace.

Betty and Bard’s life together was spent moving from naval base to naval base – to all four corners of the continental U. S. A submariner during the Cold War, Bard would be at sea for months at a time, doing God knows what in God knows what waters. Betty certainly didn’t know. It was never discussed. Then or ever. In fact, those movements and exercises and missions remain classified information. And so, for months at a time, Betty was left alone. But never listless.

As each naval base became her home base, she always found nursing work: from obstetrics to geriatrics to everything in between. After all, Betty was, first and foremost, a nurse. Donning her nurse’s whites and cap, she patrolled her wards and improved whatever systems she encountered, leaving every place in better order than when she arrived.

And as far as “arrivals” go, along the way she had two of her own. First in 1959, then two years later in 1961, Betty gave birth to her children, David and Gwen. With Bard so often away and for such long stretches of time, it meant she had to function like a single mom, raising the children alone while also holding down a job. It couldn’t have been easy. And, in fact, it wasn’t. Tenderness and demonstrative affection were not her natural, go-to skillset. What she knew best was how to serve and provide.

So, for many summers, that meant finding work as the camp nurse (at any number of camps) which gave David and Gwen the privilege of whole summers spent at camp (unlike those other poor schmucks who only got a single week). David and Gwen got the whole summer: swimming and playing in the woods and camp songs and junk food from the camp store.

And then, whenever it was time to pack up and move to a new base, arriving in a new region of the country, Betty was eager to discover what new foods they made there. In California it meant tacos and sukiyaki and (strangest of all!) steamed vegetables. And, bless her, Betty was game for it all, and ready to learn how to make these things for herself and her children.

Speaking of vegetables, I don’t know why this stands out in my memory, but it does: Not long before she died, I’d been visiting her for a while and said, “Well, Betty, I’ve got to go. I need to go home and make dinner.” “What are you going to make?” she asked. “Not much,” I said. “It’s just me tonight. Probably, just some raw vegetables and hummus.” “That’s good,” she said. “I always liked raw vegetables.”

There was something very affirming about the interaction – not just her approval of me making a dinner of what was hardly a dinner at all, but offering me her nurse’s approval, her nutritionist’s approval. It was the affirmation of her own life and values and labor: “It’s good to eat healthy food.” It’s silly, I know, but given the history between Betty and me, it felt like a benediction: “You’re okay, Eric. I approve.”

And then, in the days and weeks that followed, Betty and I continued to experience deeper and fuller forgiveness and reconciliation. She shared with me a memory of how I’d hurt her and betrayed her trust. I hardly remembered what she was talking about. It certainly hadn’t registered as anything of significance to me at the time. But it did to her. And I could apologize most sincerely.

And then (I think it was the day before she died), I came into her room at the hospital. She locked her eyes on mine (and I thought I was in for it!) But then… she started to cry, confessing and regretting the stubbornness she’d held on to for so long, and the way it had isolated her from me and from the church. And there was this profound sense that, though she was saying it to me, personally, what she was regretting and confessing was a pattern of behavior that went far beyond our relationship.

It was clear at that moment that what was required was not merely my personal, “It’s okay, Betty,” or even an, “I forgive you, Betty,” but something far more significant. It was that chance for me to speak from my office as a priest, to pronounce on God’s behalf, God’s total and all-encompassing grace. It was to share with her, in the sanctity of that moment, the substance of all our deepest hopes: that God is real; that God’s deep and eternal intent is compassion; that whatever lies beyond in that great unknown, the passageway between here and there is mercy – an absolute, thorough, soul-cleansing forgiveness. And with Betty, in that moment, I believed our gospel – for her, for me, for the world – as much as I ever have. And more.

All is forgiven. And we are okay.