Eulogy

There's a lot I want to write about Jen's funeral on Monday. I'll just start with the words of the reflection that I gave (with a few names change to protect identities!). It's a long post.

In Memory of Jenni

I first met Jenni in 1990, although I used to joke that I met her cough before I met her – after joining a Baptist church in the Canberra suburb of Dickson, during a couple of evening services that winter I could hear someone with a racking cough that would often end in them leaving the room. That was Jen, and so I knew her for not quite half of her forty years. She was my best friend for the last fifteen years. I’ve arranged my reflections around a few words that apply to Jen’s life.

Passion : Jen was not a person of half-measures. As a child she was reluctant to start reading, but as an adult she could sometimes read twenty books a week. You could usually tell by the state of her fingernails, since she’d chew them while she read. She didn’t have any career focus, but unconventionally she really wanted to get married and have children, and she poured her love and energy into myself and the boys. Don’t make the mistake of thinking she was a traditionalist: one of our boys made a random observation about women not being doctors, and was treated to a thorough lecture that began by observing that their aunt was a doctor, and that women could in fact work in any occupation at all.

There were correspondingly some things that she passionately disliked, such as mathematics (ironic, since I’m a mathematician), although she was not bad at mental arithmetic. Dinner table conversation about mathematics with the boys was strictly limited for Jen’s sake. I’m reminded of this cartoon from Gary Larsen (entitled Mathphobic’s nightmare, where an angel before the pearly gates says “Okay now, listen up. Nobody gets in here without answering the following question. A train leaves Philadelphia at 1:00 pm. It’s travelling at 65 miles per hour. Another train leaves Denver at 4:00pm. Say, you need some paper?). For many years Jen had a recurring dream that she’d failed year twelve maths (even though she just passed).

Her passions always extended to politics – on the night of major elections she would park herself in front of the ABC and watch the entire telecast to the bitter end. On at least one occasion we had to explain to our boys that John Howard was not really a bad man, in fact he was probably quite a pleasant in person, and that our objections were to his bad policies in a few areas.

Unpretentiousness:

Jen was never a snobbish person, nor one to take much notice of distinctions between “high” culture and “popular” culture. Browsing and using the cookbooks of Stephanie Alexander or perhaps Elizabeth David was one of her recreations, but she was just as happy eating pizza or fish and chips. Similarly, Jen studied English at University, but she also had a widely varying diet of thrillers and murder mysteries. I caused some contention in our first house by organising the bookshelves with a “literature” section and then a “fiction” section, implying that for example the historical fiction of Georgette Heyer or the fantasy writing of Anne McCaffrey did not rank alongside the novels of Henry James. In our current house, there is but one section for all these books, and it is alphabetical by author. In the musical sphere, although we both had a common love for the music of Bach, she was equally comfortable with the songs of Paul Kelly or Sarah McLaughlin.

Justice: I’m told that as a child, Jen’s sense of righteous indignation at injustice didn’t win her many friends at school, and as an adult she moderated this trait. Nevertheless it emerged into a fierce concern for people who were in need and whose rights were neglected, whether they were in poverty in the third world or in detention centres in Australia. You will have noticed the envelopes for TEAR Australia, a charity that does great development work overseas, an organisation that we’ve supported throughout our married life. This desire for fair treatment also emerged in her love of animals. I remember one Saturday morning in Canberra, when Jen and Primus had graciously let me sleep in and gone out to buy the paper. On the way home a small abandoned kitten rushed out, and they took it with them. Jen woke me up to explain that I had a choice: we could keep this very cute kitten and look after it, or we could send it to the pound where it would face certain death. Of course I chose life, and we still have Sophie today (along with Jessica, another stray cat that Jen rescued in our first year of marriage).

The voluntary work she did at Secundus's school last year in helping children read was driven by the realisation that there were children in his class who couldn’t reliably recognise three letter words. It seemed unfair to her that a child could be unable to read through some combination of circumstances, so she threw herself into the task of being a voluntary assistant. Working with children brought out her best because it engaged her passion. It hinted at a fulfilment of her long-denied destiny to be a teacher – both her parents, her sister and her brother-in-law are all teachers! Sadly we will never see what might have eventuated.

Loyalty: Jen had a fierce sense of commitment to those near her, and a willingness to give time and energy to their needs. For example, she encouraged me in my recent healthy obsession with long-distance running, though she herself couldn’t then run further than up the street. Last year I joined a team of four which was attempting a 100km run for the Oxfam fundraiser. Jen volunteered to be on the support crew, mainly (I suspect) to check that I was going to be all right and to scrape me off the ground at the end. Thanks to her assistance we all finished more or less in one piece.

During the darkest phases of her three major illnesses – chronic fatigue syndrome in the last twenty years, arthritis in the last five years and now breast cancer – she received profound loyalty and love from a few extraordinary people. In this last ten months this has principally come from her parents, her sister and brother-in-law, and the two families who are our closest friends. If there is any glimmer of good for us to be found in Jen’s death, it begins in the depth of love that we have received.

Faith: Jen’s trust in God is one of the deepest features of her life, even in the hard times she’s endured. It was never an unreflective faith, but rather one which allowed for clear thinking and tough questions as well as passion and commitment. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the rhetoric of “fighting cancer”. It was clear to Jen from the start that she just had to take treatment according to the best advice we could get, and that ”fighting” against metastatic breast cancer is a losing game. The real struggle was against losing herself, against abandoning what she valued and believed in, and in that she held out to the end. As a Christian she knew that survival was not the real focus of hope, and that dying was not the worst thing that could happen. She wasn’t afraid of death, but she was desperately sad about leaving behind those she loved, especially our two boys; heart-broken that she wouldn’t see them grow into adults and fulfil their great potential. It is for us who remain to see them through.

The following piece of music from the band “Sons of Korah” is an adaptation of Paul’s words to Timothy in the passage that was read out (2 Tim 4:6-8). Both Jen and I have listened to it in tears a number of times in the last ten months, for it echoes our sadness, our struggles and our ultimate hope.

It's all over now

My son, my life is all poured out,
Like water, water, water on the ground
I am leaving, I'm going to a better place
It's over now.

My son, in the grace of God be strong
For you must go on, like a soldier
I am leaving, I'm going to a better place

It's all over now
And I made it through somehow
The war is over, the race is run,
I've kept the faith
It's over now.

My son, the race was long and hard
and I stumbled, I stumbled all the way
But by his mercy I stand

And now there is for me a crown
A crown of righteousness
which He will give me on that day
On that glorious day
When I see his face.