My grandmother, Patsy Nan Horn ("Meama" to me), passed away this past week, and her funeral was held on Saturday, November 1st, 2014, in Wilson, OK. I was honored to officiate. Here is Meama's eulogy:
While I was in Iraq in 2003, Patsy Horn— “Meama”—and I were pen pals. We wrote each other quite a bit. I’ve not read those letters in ten years.
Yesterday, I read every one. In them, she wrote of her fondest memories, the things that impacted her most, her philosophies, her favorite things, her least favorite things. I laughed and cried and smiled at her words. She was an exceptional writer.
After having read them, I searched for the word that would serve as the thread for this eulogy? What word encompassed Patsy Horn? What word would do justice to her life, her story, her journey, her complexity?
Well, no one word would do. But the one that fit the bill best…was love. Love. Perhaps a little cliché’ for Meama’s taste, but I think she’ll forgive me.
A quote from one of her letters: “God has blessed me with a life I’d never have been able to dream up. I’d offer it to the moviemakers, but they’d not believe it either. There is for me no bitterness, persistent unhappiness or dissatisfaction. How can I not be filled with joy? I figure God has turned all the negatives in my life to positives, and what I can’t do I leave to Him. There is simply no room for unhappiness to take up residence in a heart and soul that levitate inside me so that I feel unbound by earth—a little breathless, often euphoric, always in love with the universe.”
Her love extended the arts. At one point in her letters she said, “A room full of Rembrandts at the National Gallery in London can create such a consuming chemical reaction in my person that I have to step outside for a little while just to breathe.”
The times between the Depression and World War II carried a certain magic for her: “…just friends and family—safe in a sane world where people had little to share except themselves. It was the best of worlds. The warmth of it lives in me still. I’ve found no substitute, nothing near. It is the impeccable memory like nothing else in my life.”
She loved Christmas. The Christmas I knew unfolded in the house in Wilson. Pralines and divinity. Stockings filled with junk. Family that filled that old house until it would burst at the seams. A beautiful Christmas tree filled with decorations to perfection, underneath it a mountain of presents. She would beam in the presence of her children and grandchildren. She would sit in a corner, in her quiet, introvert way, and listen and smile, filled with motherly and grandmotherly pride.
She loved animals. Her first letter to me in Iraq was about an ant bed in Mindy’s driveway that had been destroyed. She wrote for pages about their activity and how she admired their effort, and about her desire to protect them. She said, “I truly felt bad about the ants, though. Animal, vegetable or mineral, I love it.” Strange cats, unruly dogs, a horned toad that lived in her back yard and “listens avidly when I talk to him,” the squirrel who regularly came within a foot of her, the spider that greeted her as she entered the house, and Susie the red-eared slider in Mindy’s pond that would stop swimming when Meama would talk to her.
She loved traveling. Particularly, traveling to Yellowstone for nine years worth of summers and winters was, “one reason why I consider my life to have been so very rich.” She made new friends of her many roommates. She found the park a “fantasy land where the unexpected was ordinary, the surreal believable…one could fill up on images and impressions along with an exotic reality.” But she traveled elsewhere, to London and to Italy and many other places. She wrote of these things with passion and wonder.
And of course, she loved books. She handed down to all of us a passion for reading and for writing. Mark Twain. Earnest Hemingway. Shakespeare. Frost. A Hundred Years of Solitude. Huck Finn. Letters From the Earth. On writing she told me, “Only use the power words sparingly. Remember Hemingway. Word choice is an art.” I still have an old beat up copy of Letters From the Earth that she bought for seventy-five cents decades ago, and sent to me while I was in Iraq.
She loved her family. She adored her children. That was obvious. Family was a huge part of her life. For us grandchildren, we knew that if we had nothing else in this world, there was a little old lady in Wilson, OK, that thought we could do absolutely no wrong. The grandchildren knew that at least in one person’s beautiful, pale blue eyes, we were (in her words) “perfect beyond measure.”
And finally, she loved God, saying in one letter, “As for me, my faith is alive and thriving. One of my friends claims to be an atheist. Can you just think how she ever manages without God to count on when she comes up against the impossible?”
And I’ll part with her advice to me on living in the moment, and living with values:
“Live your times with all senses receptive. Keep your memories. They are warming, though perhaps a bit damp. Give yourself up to the moment—no calculating, no analyzing—and let it all become part of you…revel in the moment.
“Stay moral, honest, safe, humble, fruitful, thoughtful, gracious, caring, sensible and adventurous.”
A word of scripture:
From 2 Corinthians: “Therefore we are not discouraged; rather, although our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to what is seen but to what is unseen; for what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal. For we know that if our earthly dwelling, a tent, should be destroyed, we have a building from God, a dwelling not made with hands, eternal in heaven.”
And from the Book of Micah: “You know, O man, what is good; and what the Lord requires of you. Only this: That you act justly, love tenderly, and walk humbly with your God.”
Please stand, and bow your heads with me in a closing prayer:
“Our heavenly Father, thank you for Patsy Horn. Thank you for the love that she brought to this world. Thank you for her warm smile, for her attentive ear, for her adoration of us all, and for sending the best you have to offer through her into each of our lives.
“If it works this way, Lord, we ask that you give her a room with a view of a tulip garden and of Yellowstone National Park; we ask that you give her a window to this world so that she may watch—with eagerness and tenderness—us children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren; and we ask that you make Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway available to her for a cup of coffee and good conversation. We ask that you keep junk food and good books handy.
“Lord, help us to see the world with wonder and warmth the way Meama did. Help us remember that there is always something left to love. Bless us all.
“We ask these things in your name, God. Amen.”
While I was in Iraq in 2003, Patsy Horn— “Meama”—and I were pen pals. We wrote each other quite a bit. I’ve not read those letters in ten years.
Yesterday, I read every one. In them, she wrote of her fondest memories, the things that impacted her most, her philosophies, her favorite things, her least favorite things. I laughed and cried and smiled at her words. She was an exceptional writer.
After having read them, I searched for the word that would serve as the thread for this eulogy? What word encompassed Patsy Horn? What word would do justice to her life, her story, her journey, her complexity?
Well, no one word would do. But the one that fit the bill best…was love. Love. Perhaps a little cliché’ for Meama’s taste, but I think she’ll forgive me.
A quote from one of her letters: “God has blessed me with a life I’d never have been able to dream up. I’d offer it to the moviemakers, but they’d not believe it either. There is for me no bitterness, persistent unhappiness or dissatisfaction. How can I not be filled with joy? I figure God has turned all the negatives in my life to positives, and what I can’t do I leave to Him. There is simply no room for unhappiness to take up residence in a heart and soul that levitate inside me so that I feel unbound by earth—a little breathless, often euphoric, always in love with the universe.”
Her love extended the arts. At one point in her letters she said, “A room full of Rembrandts at the National Gallery in London can create such a consuming chemical reaction in my person that I have to step outside for a little while just to breathe.”
The times between the Depression and World War II carried a certain magic for her: “…just friends and family—safe in a sane world where people had little to share except themselves. It was the best of worlds. The warmth of it lives in me still. I’ve found no substitute, nothing near. It is the impeccable memory like nothing else in my life.”
She loved Christmas. The Christmas I knew unfolded in the house in Wilson. Pralines and divinity. Stockings filled with junk. Family that filled that old house until it would burst at the seams. A beautiful Christmas tree filled with decorations to perfection, underneath it a mountain of presents. She would beam in the presence of her children and grandchildren. She would sit in a corner, in her quiet, introvert way, and listen and smile, filled with motherly and grandmotherly pride.
She loved animals. Her first letter to me in Iraq was about an ant bed in Mindy’s driveway that had been destroyed. She wrote for pages about their activity and how she admired their effort, and about her desire to protect them. She said, “I truly felt bad about the ants, though. Animal, vegetable or mineral, I love it.” Strange cats, unruly dogs, a horned toad that lived in her back yard and “listens avidly when I talk to him,” the squirrel who regularly came within a foot of her, the spider that greeted her as she entered the house, and Susie the red-eared slider in Mindy’s pond that would stop swimming when Meama would talk to her.
She loved traveling. Particularly, traveling to Yellowstone for nine years worth of summers and winters was, “one reason why I consider my life to have been so very rich.” She made new friends of her many roommates. She found the park a “fantasy land where the unexpected was ordinary, the surreal believable…one could fill up on images and impressions along with an exotic reality.” But she traveled elsewhere, to London and to Italy and many other places. She wrote of these things with passion and wonder.
And of course, she loved books. She handed down to all of us a passion for reading and for writing. Mark Twain. Earnest Hemingway. Shakespeare. Frost. A Hundred Years of Solitude. Huck Finn. Letters From the Earth. On writing she told me, “Only use the power words sparingly. Remember Hemingway. Word choice is an art.” I still have an old beat up copy of Letters From the Earth that she bought for seventy-five cents decades ago, and sent to me while I was in Iraq.
She loved her family. She adored her children. That was obvious. Family was a huge part of her life. For us grandchildren, we knew that if we had nothing else in this world, there was a little old lady in Wilson, OK, that thought we could do absolutely no wrong. The grandchildren knew that at least in one person’s beautiful, pale blue eyes, we were (in her words) “perfect beyond measure.”
And finally, she loved God, saying in one letter, “As for me, my faith is alive and thriving. One of my friends claims to be an atheist. Can you just think how she ever manages without God to count on when she comes up against the impossible?”
And I’ll part with her advice to me on living in the moment, and living with values:
“Live your times with all senses receptive. Keep your memories. They are warming, though perhaps a bit damp. Give yourself up to the moment—no calculating, no analyzing—and let it all become part of you…revel in the moment.
“Stay moral, honest, safe, humble, fruitful, thoughtful, gracious, caring, sensible and adventurous.”
A word of scripture:
From 2 Corinthians: “Therefore we are not discouraged; rather, although our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to what is seen but to what is unseen; for what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal. For we know that if our earthly dwelling, a tent, should be destroyed, we have a building from God, a dwelling not made with hands, eternal in heaven.”
And from the Book of Micah: “You know, O man, what is good; and what the Lord requires of you. Only this: That you act justly, love tenderly, and walk humbly with your God.”
Please stand, and bow your heads with me in a closing prayer:
“Our heavenly Father, thank you for Patsy Horn. Thank you for the love that she brought to this world. Thank you for her warm smile, for her attentive ear, for her adoration of us all, and for sending the best you have to offer through her into each of our lives.
“If it works this way, Lord, we ask that you give her a room with a view of a tulip garden and of Yellowstone National Park; we ask that you give her a window to this world so that she may watch—with eagerness and tenderness—us children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren; and we ask that you make Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway available to her for a cup of coffee and good conversation. We ask that you keep junk food and good books handy.
“Lord, help us to see the world with wonder and warmth the way Meama did. Help us remember that there is always something left to love. Bless us all.
“We ask these things in your name, God. Amen.”
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