We’ve had some interesting deaths this week. Becca and I were passing a flag at half mast the other day, and she inquired as to who it was for. My first reaction was James Brown, then I remembered Gerald Ford passed this week, too. I’m assuming it wasn’t for Saddam Hussein.
But someone else passed away this week whose importance eclipses them all. Oh, you wouldn’t have known her. Not many in the world did. She never made the major papers around the world or even the country. Except for death or marriage notices, she probably rarely made the local rags.
They knew her well in town, though. She touched countless lives on a level that popular figures never really can. She remembered your birthday even though you last talked years ago. Almost every day on her calendar had a name on it, either a family member or an old or new friend. She kept old birthday cards and recycled them. She believed it was the thought that counts. And it did.
She displayed her Christmas cards during the winter months as if she were a celebrity, beaming with pride. Even as her memory faded in her later years, she would point out picutres and notes and letters from her own children, grandchildren or great grandchildren … although she rarely remembered who they were.
She was born over ninety seven years ago, in an age before a world war had occured, a time so innocent that they never thought it would. Her parents had to sneak away to meet on a bridge at night and eloped with a half asleep Catholic priest in another state. They weren’t Catholic.
She endured an intelligent man for a father who ruined most of his career opportunities with his drinking. She went to college in an age where women who did such things were rare. She worked as a secretary. She believed her prettiest feature was her long dark hair. She met a man who was going to build her a car and then marry her, but he died in the coal mines. She rejected the man of her dreams because he went drinking one night and married a man twice her age who swept her off her feet with poetry, roses and dancing. And he didn’t drink.
His name was Fred Mooney, and he drug her around the Southeast for a while where they had a couple kids. They ultimately returned to West Virginia to work in the coal industry. She endured the Great Depression and the world at war … again. By the early fifties she had eight children, my father being the youngest of them. She marked time by who she was pregnant with or who had just been born.
They lived in a coal mining town in the mountains of West Virginia when her husband attempted to end her life by placing a bomb underneath her bed. She survived, as she always did, but the two youngest boys, my father one of them, had been in the room at the time. Fred Mooney, when hearing of this, killed himself out of despair since he assumed all three were gone.
All three survived, although she was badly injured. Her family came to support her during this horrible time. Eventually her secretarial skills helped her get a job at the local church, where she worked as the secretary for decades, raising several children on her own. She never even considered getting remarried. Who would want that package deal?
She survived the death of her eldest son, Gene, who people say my dad favors. Which probably means I do, too.
Some ten or fifteen years later she heard an old flame had lost his wife, the same old flame she had rejected because of his late night drinking, and still lived in a farm house at the edge of town. She remembered his birthday and sent him a card. He called her up and asked her out. They dated for a short while before he asked her to marry him. His name was Harry Holbert.
She said, “But I have a big family.”
He said, “I have a big house.”
She said, “But I talk a lot.”
He said, “I like to listen.”
So, since she couldn’t convince him not to get married, they got hitched and she moved into his big Norman Rockwell farm house together where I clearly remember looking up at this huge man (I was little once) and said, “What do I call you?”
He said, “Call me Grandpa. I’m your Grandpa.” And that was the only way I could ever remember him. He was as much a part of the family as anyone else, and he loved it. He loved us who needed his love more than he could probably have imagined. More than we knew, I’m sure.
I was taller than Harry when he passed away, though. Even at fourteen, I was taller than most people.
So she endured another marriage to another man and lived in a little house near his old farm. That little house was where she made me popcorn one night, since I was the only one staying there in the extra bedroom at the time, and she told me stories until three o’clock in the morning. We bonded that night. She always remembered that night fondly. As do I. She told me secrets the family never really talked about very much. I felt honored.
At my wedding she told my wife in hushed tones that I was her favorite. Not close to being true, but she could make you believe stuff like that.
She lost things as she got older. Her ability to drive, to go to her church, to visit people, to read books, to hear conversation, to remember things. She went full speed as long as she could, though.
But one of the most amazing things about this woman is that I always remember her giving things away. She would convince herself that she didn’t need something and try to give it to you. Someone must need it. She spent more than sixty or seventy years doing with less and could never break the habit. What a blessing.
She had three names in her life. The one she was born with and the two she assumed upon marriage. Rowan, Mooney, and Holbert. She had the Mooney moniker the longest, although it is fitting she kept Holbert through the end of her life. She loved him the most, I suspect. Few called her Virginia. Many called her Ginny or Mom. Her most popular name was Grandma by far. She watched as three generations followed her.
Virginia had a stroke on Christmas day and slipped the rest of the way into Heaven on New Years Day. Appropriate since she was given a new body that would never fade or break. If they make jokes in Heaven, they might have mentioned how long they had kept it for her. And she would have laughed. She loved to laugh. Many who see so much sadness and come out better generally do.
And those who are connected to her by name or have her blood running in our veins, we will honor her this Saturday. It may be a time of mourning, but thank God for a funeral where we can celebrate a full, long life. But as much as we may do this weekend, we cannot touch the reception she has recieved in Glory. She had trials beyond what most of us can comprehend and came out the other side giving and laughing and thankful for her life. That is a life of grace. God loves those the most. He honors those in ways we can’t understand, but one day we will.
So if you get to Heaven one day, and I pray you do, and you see a beautiful plump young woman with long, full dark hair sitting up at the front beside Jesus talking His ear off, you’ll know who it is. If you get there before I do, tell her I love her. But she probably already knows it.
Peace.