Nancie McGehee Funeral Sermon

Nancie Evelyn Alawine was born on June 15, 1938. Her birthday’s in a just few days. She was born in Collinsville, Mississippi, but moved with her family to Mt. Vernon, Washington when she was five years old, and lived there all way through high school.

And (so far as I could tell) that “zest for life” we all knew to be so central to who Nancie was, was true from the beginning. I’m sure she was a lovely girl, but hearing stories about her teenage years make me glad I wasn’t her father:

Sneaking out the window at night, down a ladder, to party with her friends, then sneaking back in the house, timing her steps on the creaking stairs with her mother’s snoring.

Cutting class to drive down to some swanky hotel in Seattle to drink cocktails. (“We played a good game,” she’d remember with pride and a twinkle in her eye.)

Getting dropped off after a double-date, then turning around to go out on a second double-date with some other guys, and getting caught by the first set.

But in the end, she was caught by Fred McGehee. They were married soon after high school and shared fifty-seven years together. Fifty-seven years following Fred’s work around the world, raising children, sharing that wide range of sorrows and joys that spell two lives joined together, until Fred’s death ten years ago. And today, as soon as this service ends, we’ll all walk out of the church together, through those doors, and into the Memorial Garden, carrying Nancie’s ashes, carrying Fred’s ashes, and we’ll bury them together, to rest in peace, and rise in glory.

And you know, for all the massive structures Fred helped construct, and for all the activities Nancie flung herself into with zeal, surely their greatest legacy was what they created together, their children: their firstborn, Cathy; then Doug who died tragically of AIDS when he was 37; then Suzi; and lastly, Jenny. And from them, the next generations – eight grandchildren; fifteen great-grandchildren.

As her friend, Carol, and many would say of Nancie, she was a “Great Mom.”

She was brave and fearless when defending her children – their fierce protector and advocate (even, perhaps, times when they might not exactly have deserved it, like Suzi’s bullying event in the fourth grade).

She was there for them, at every tennis and cheer event.

She was a great listener; they could tell her everything. Jenny would call her a kindred spirit, someone who knew her better than anyone else in the world.

Which isn’t to say she was a perfect mother. Nancie never confided in me any particular regrets. (It wasn’t her nature to dwell on the past.) But she was human, as are we all. And as in all things, we learn to parent by being parents, this never-ending experiment for which none is qualified, learning as we go, through triumphs and failures, learning who each child is, distinctly and beautifully, and what shape it must take to love them, individually. And this was a work she often had to do alone, with Fred’s work calling him to such far-flung places.

But she did it with gusto! and optimism! and confidence!

Nancie was the “Queen Bee,” the “CEO of every household,” “vivacious,” the “driving force,” “the boss of us all” her tennis buddies would say, “who’d never let us say ‘no.’” As Chris Russell would conclude with his simple epitaph, “I never met anyone quite like her.” Joan Wright once drew a caricature of Nancie with arms like an octopus, each doing something – and all at once: talking on the phone, ironing clothes in her always immaculate house, playing tennis, playing cards, cooking a meal.

If there’s one, all-encompassing way to describe Nancie, it was her zest for the tangible goodness of this life. She knew this world to be filled with good things waiting to be discovered, to belong to, to participate in, to enjoy and be enlivened by.

She was always up for an adventure, a vacation to Hawaii or to pack up the household once again to follow Fred’s work around the world: to Iran, Columbia, the Philippines, and at least eight different states. In her younger years, she loved camping and the “Camping Rules,” which meant the women did all the work preparing for the trip and cleaning up afterwards. But once they were there, it was their time to lounge on the beach like royalty, or take the occasional spin around the bay on their singles. And it was the men’s turn to take responsibility for setting up camp, cooking the meals, and taking care of the kids.

Nancie loved food and the making of food: her seafood cocktail and Loy’s salad; the bounty of holiday feasts. “She could open the fridge, grab some left-overs, and come up with a gourmet meal.” And she understood that the true spirit of feasting also included the sharing of recipes and passing on the legacy of family traditions in the kitchen.

For it is the table to which true community always returns.

I remember one such a table, a long banquet table, set in my side-yard, twenty of us, or so, from the church, enjoying a summer meal. I was seated beside Nancie. I remember her telling this long, convoluted story of Fred falling in the shower, and her unable to lift him up, and running to get Cathy, who ran in to help and slipped in the garage and broke her leg, so that – in the end – two ambulances were needed to haul them both away. And as Nancie reached the end of this long, drawn-out tale, she concluded, “And I was naked!” And I remember the table just erupting in laughter, and thinking to myself, “I love my church.”

So many tables. So many meals. So much life shared together.

As will we, later in the service, as we come to this table. In the rich mystery of the Christian tradition, it is here we return – again and again – to the Eucharistic feast, where Christ is both meal and host. He is our bridegroom and we, his bride. And each morsel of bread he gives us, each sip of wine we drink, is just a hint, a foretaste of that heavenly banquet, where all are gathered together by God’s grace at the one table – a table where Nancie is already feasting. And at this communion today, we will be joining her there: joining her and Fred and Doug and David and Christ and all who have gone before us. One Table, one people, one God, the Lord and Father of all.

This communion table is an especially fitting place to seek Nancie’s presence, for she served this table countless times as a member of St. John’s Altar Guild – week after week – ironing the linens, setting the table, lighting the candles, bidding us welcome.

And it’s equally fitting that this table she set so often should so prominently feature such a large chalice of wine. For surely, too, the sharing of wine was one of those “good things” that made this life so enjoyable for Nancie. While we’re coming forward for communion, and sharing our little sips of wine, there will be a slide show playing on the wall before us – this display of Nancie with us at the communion table. And it’s just a little uncanny how many of those pictures show Nancie enjoying a glass of wine!

And in those pictures, she will, of course, be always impeccably dressed (usually with a good deal of bling), her hair set, her make-up done. For that, too, was an essential part of the tangible goodness of this life she loved. She’d been a beautician, after all. And she loved to shop. “I guess I was self-taught,” she used to say.

I remember visiting her, not long before she died. She was already on hospice. I was prepared to find her quite withered. And, sure, she was on oxygen, but her hair was set; she was wearing these trendy little camo pants. At one point in our conversation, she remembered something she needed to buy, so she whipped out her phone to place an order on Amazon.

And throughout the visit, the television was on in the background. She might have been dying, but it was, after all, the US Open Tennis Tournament. And priorities are priorities! Nancie loved Tennis. She didn’t really start playing competitively until she was in her 40s, but it became “her thing” – organizing leagues, going to state (for doubles, I think). She even went as a spectator once to the Australian Open.

Her favorite player was Rafael Nadal. She always had to watch him. It didn’t hurt that he was cute. But the real appeal was his tenacity. Even if he was down several games or sets, he’d never stop fighting, right to the end, win or lose.

So like Nancie – grasping for the goodness of this life, for her whole life, right until the end, grasping for the slightest breath, knowing, in the end, the pulmonary fibrosis would have to win. Which it did. In its way.

But death, it turns out, is not the end. For Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. And this Christ who knew death, has also conquered death. And in rising from the dead, he breathes his life in us again.

It is God who made Nancie and breathed his life in her and made her alive to the goodness of this world. And having laid down her life, and breathed her last, barely-perceptible breath, it is God who breathes his life into her again, enlivening her for the life to come.

It is a breath that forgives. It is a breath that heals. And it is a breath shared also with us, now, to receive God’s Spirit, to share in God’s love, to share in God’s healing of this divided and frightened world. Amen.