Nel’s Funeral Message

November 18, 2015

By Robert Carol Emerson

Someone has said, “It’s not how long you live but how you live that’s important.” Nel did both; he lived a long life, and he lived it well. To live 92 years is an accomplishment, but to live all of those years well is quite extraordinary. We are here today to celebrate Nel’s long life and to ask how did he manage to live those years so well.

It seems that his secret to success was that he held all the various elements of life in proper prospective, the good, the bad, the happy, the sad. In today’s jargon, he had it all together; if things went wrong, he didn’t fall apart; if things went well, he was not overly elated. He kept all the various elements of life in proper prospective. The third chapter of Ecclesiastes pictures the keeping of all things in balance.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-13

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.
What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God has given to the sons of men to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time; I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; also that it is God’s gift to man that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil.

“A time for war, and a time for peace.”

I remember the day when Nel left home to join the Navy. That was more than 70 years ago and I was only 7 years old; so my memory is sketchy, and I only retain that single scene of him leaving. We were living on Airville farm in Gloucester at the time. I was up-stairs looking down at the driveway where Nel’s maroon, convertible, 34 Ford was waiting – that old 34 Ford was quite “the cat’s meow” in that day. Nel got in the car and another brother drove him to Gloucester Courthouse to catch the Greyhound bus to take him to the induction center. Being a 7 year old boy I didn’t comprehend the horrors of war (still don’t) but I sensed the fear and sadness of the family. As I watched the car pull away, I prayed a 7 years-old’s prayer, “God, bring Nel back home.” That’s all I remember.

Nel did come back home, but there was no certainty about that. He became involved in the Pacific theater, and at the close of the war out of desperation, the Japanese started using suicide bombers in which the pilot would intentionally crash his plane into the allied ships. Both Nel and another brother, Chester, were vulnerable to these threats to their lives. There was a real possibility that they would not come back. How different our lives would have been—some of us would not be here—all our lives would have been radically different.

I raise this possibility to show how great it was that he did come back. We are gathered here today to celebrate that long, good life that Nel was given to live. We recognize that all of life is a gift from God and we are here to show how grateful we are for that. We celebrate today, not what is taken away, but what was given.

Nel’s time for war was just a fraction of his life, but his time for peace was a long and good life. Peace is more than the absence of war; it is shalom or serenity within the wholeness of life. To this day, the Jewish people use the word, shalom, as a greeting or a farewell to express a blessing of total wellbeing, wellbeing of the spiritual, the physical, the mental.
Ecclesiastes 3 is about this inner peace from knowing that God is in control amid all the various elements, the good, the bad, the happy times, the sad times. Nel had inner peace; in today’s jargon “He kept it all together,” and he didn’t fall apart if things went wrong.

The Apostle Paul said, “I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound; I have learned, in whatever state I am, to be content.” (Phil. 4: 11) Nel had that “blessed assurance” that allows us to sing, “Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, ‘It is well with my soul.’”

“A time to love, and a time to hate.”

Nel found a time to love at Ralph Robin’s restaurant when he met Ruby West, and she became the love of his life. Whoever coined that phrase could have had Nel and Ruby in mind. Probably, the phrase “love of his life” has been around for a long time, but Nel’s love of Ruby and hers of him certainly defined that phrase.

Nel had many times of love: he loved his wife, family, sons, grandchildren, great grandchildren—they called him “Honey” and he was a real honey to them. He loved God and the church – long before this sanctuary was built or the building next door. He loved his neighbors, and they loved him. He loved his work at Boulevard Cleaners—he must have loved it; he worked there for 60 years. He knew what the writer of Ecclesiastes meant by “it is God’s gift to man that everyone should … take pleasure in all his toil.” He loved his heritage, country, and being a WWII vet, – he had his baseball caps with the veteran logos to show it.

He loved his home and kept it spotless, his lawn and kept it trimmed even when he was using a walker to get around. One night when he told me he had cut his grass that day, I said, “Nel, you’re walking around with a walker, how in the world can you push a lawn mower?” He replied, “I can walk behind that lawn mower as well as I can behind the walker.”

I can understand about the lawn mower, but running the rotor tiller in his garden????? He loved his garden and we talked about it a lot. He’d tell me about something that was growing so well in his garden, and I’d tell him about something that was not growing so well in mine. He’d give me advice about how to get better results. One year I told him that the texture of the soil was not right; it was not exactly clayey; rather, it was more like little granules. He said, “You ploughed the land when it was too wet.” So there must be a time to plough and a time not to plough like there is “a time to sow and a time to reap,” “a time to plant and to pluck up what is planted.” Maybe, that’s the reason he loved that garden so much—because he was in tune with the rhythm between the garden and seasons. And that was emblematic of his being in sync with the circle of life.

He loved his heritage as an Emerson growing up on a farm in Gloucester. When I was researching our family history, Nel would help clarify the relationship between distant cousins and sometimes would relate a story about the persons. I had accumulated various pictures from family albums some of which I could not identify. One day I gathered up a batch of these old photos, and Nel, Nancy, and I sat around his kitchen table for 2 hours or more talking about people in the pictures and how things were back in the day. As we were leaving, Nel said, “You know, I really enjoyed this afternoon looking at those old pictures.”

To sum it all up: he loved life.
“A time to love and a time to hate.” If Nel had a time to hate, I never knew about it.

“A time to weep, and a time to laugh”

“A time to weep, a time to mourn.” It is right and proper, even healthy, that we grieve. It is not a time to ignore nor forget because grief serves a purpose. It is a time that we face and accept a new reality. But we must keep our sorrow in prospective: Nel’s death is our loss, not his. When Jesus was carrying his cross to Golgotha, there was a group of women crying and he said to them, “Weep not for me, but weep for yourselves.” We do not weep for Nel; he’s in a better place, but we weep for ourselves because we will sorely miss him.

Grief is a type of thanksgiving. Sorrow is recognition of value. No one grieves about losing something that is worthless. To appreciate is to see value. So weeping and mourning are expressions that we appreciate and are thankful for that good life that Nel lived.

“A time to laugh.” Nel had a ready smile for everyone and it didn’t take a lot to turn that smile into a laugh. He laughed easily and often and that optimism was contagious.

This picture of Nel, Ruby and another brother, Herbert, was taken in Nel’s den. Ruby’s health had deteriorated to the point that she was confined to the recliner; Nel had had serious heart surgery both before and after this picture was taken; Herbert had been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. They all had life threatening conditions; yet, they were laughing, not just smiling for the camera, rather they were enjoying the moment. I like this picture because it says there is a time to laugh and that time is not dependent upon physical conditions.

“A time to be born, and a time to die”

Ecclesiastes says that there is “a time to die,” and then in the same context says “He has made everything beautiful in its time.” Is it possible that death is beautiful? Nel and Ruby are together again; how beautiful is that!

At the beginning of this service the pastor read from the Book of Psalms: “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.” The key to understanding that verse is the phrase “in the sight of the Lord.” Someone has said, “Prayer is seeing the world as God sees it.” The point of the third chapter of Ecclesiastes is to allow us to see all the various elements of life from God’s prospective.

“He has made” is the key to understand that everything is beautiful. Everything is not beautiful in and of itself; bad things happen; things get ugly. But “God works in all things for good.” Within the ugly things, God “has made” beauty. In the ugliness of crucifixion, God has made resurrection.

Death, even this death, is beautiful because “this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
Death is swallowed up in victory.
O death, where is thy sting?
O grave, where is thy victory?
But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
“Death is swallowed up in victory.” Thanks be to God who has made all things beautiful.

This service will be concluded at the cemetery after we sing, “How Great Thou Art.”