Nancy's Love in this Life and the Next

June 7, 2025 - Thanksgiving for the Life of Nancy Grib

My friends, I speak to you today in the name of one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. Please be seated.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you to everyone for being here today, and especially thanks to all of you for those shared remembrances. I know how much it means to John, to the family, to hear that others share in their love and memories of Nancy. It is always difficult to do this life alone, but it is especially difficult to mourn alone, and in part, that’s why we’re gathered here today, to do it all together.

Now, I don’t know if I knew Nancy well enough that she would have called me her priest – I met her just last summer – but she was certainly one of my parishioners, and one of my first. I arrived here at Epiphany last June, first ordained a year ago tomorrow on June 8th, 2024, and Nancy called me last July, during my first month in South Haven, asking if I might bring her communion and help her plan her own funeral. We had never met, and she asked me to help plan her funeral.

Now that’s an intimidating request for a young-ish priest, but it is part of the job. So, nervously I walked over to her and John’s house on Indiana. She had also let me know in the phone call that they attended here before the pandemic but no longer did, that she had raised her kids in the Episcopal Church and had well-worn Books of Common Prayer we could use, and that her brother had been an Episcopal priest for 62 years. I had been the rector here for about a month, so I was nervous about everything about our first interaction, about if she would judge me worthy enough to sit with her in what she already knew were going to be her last days.

Well, as you might have guessed, I didn’t need to worry. Nancy and John both welcomed me into their home that day with freshly baked cookies and kindness and a comfortable chair and two hours of conversation, full of laughter and love. We talked about how they met, about their histories with church, about her career in nursing and hospice (which is how she said she knew this funeral was coming). We talked about her brother Leslie, about all the people they knew here in South Haven, about their families, and about spirituality, ecclesiology, and theology. We read a brief communion service out of the Book of Common Prayer at their kitchen table, and we all cried together. Nancy told me that she knew she did not have much time left, and she wanted everything and everyone to be ready for it.

One of the first things she told me, after making sure I was sitting down with a cookie in hand, was that she talked to Mary every day. We have several Mary’s here in our parish at the Church of the Epiphany, including two Mary’s on our vestry, so I asked her which Mary she meant. “Well, the Virgin Mary,” she replied. Nancy was a deeply spiritual person, telling another story that afternoon about how on a walk here in town the Spirit prompted her to visit a house, and the Spirit would not let go of her until she did, so she knocked on the door and there met Pam Chappell, who would become a dear and lifelong friend.

You all have your stories of Nancy that you’ll remember on this day – some of you shared them publicly, some of you will hold them close – stories of the way she made you feel loved and cared for, maybe with cookies and stories, maybe through her robust and dynamic spiritual life, maybe as mom, aunt, or grandma. Her story is one of deep connection with God, a connection that deeply changed the way she lived, that changed the way she loved others, as a deep relationship with God always does.

The most touching example of that love that I have had the privilege to hear in the last few months of conversation with John is that of Nancy’s love for her brother Leslie. Leslie passed away in 2003 in his early 50’s, 22 years ago last March, but 30 years before that, Nancy took him in as her guardian. See, Leslie had Downs Syndrome, and the two of them were constant companions. Before his death, Nancy promised that they would never be apart, and I think I can tell this part of the story, but she kept some of his ashes in a nondescript container in her home for the next 22 years. She will be buried at Lake View Cemetery later today in a double urn, one big enough for Nancy to continue to keep her promise to Leslie to never be apart, to love and care for him beyond even her own death, where both of their ashes will be side by side.

Leslie’s funeral service, held in 2003 back at Filbrandt’s where we had the visitation last night, it served as a helpful aid for us as we planned Nancy’s service; our readings from Isaiah and Revelation and the Gospel of John were the same today as they were in 2003, and Psalm 139 that we read together was one of Nancy’s favorites. These readings tell of a God who will wipe away the tears from our faces, one who is making a feast of rich food for all peoples... they tell of a God who knows us deeply, whose Spirit is everywhere, caring for us, leading us... they tell of a time when death will be no more, where mourning and crying and pain will be no more, where all things are being made new, where those who hear and believe in the Word and in God’s love have eternal life, not coming under judgment, but passing from death into life.

Though it may not seem that way today in the midst of our grieving Nancy’s death, we know here in the church, and Nancy knew deeply, that death has indeed already been defeated. This is not some pithy phrase or platitude we throw around during Easter, but it can be hard to understand, to grapple with in moments like these today. Yes, Nancy has died, just as we all will. But we know and believe that there is something beyond this simple life, not just after our death, but even for us now, that there is something bigger and deeper and mysterious going on, “such knowledge” of which, as the psalmist wrote, “is too wonderful for us, too high that we cannot understand it.” Death itself has ultimately been defeated in the resurrected Jesus Christ, and we are invited, day after day, to live into the abundant love that He showed us in his life, in his death on the cross. In so doing, we become the body of Christ, the resurrection made real and tangible to the world around us. Our hope lies in this, in Jesus Christ, in his life, death, and resurrection, and in the promises of God of eternal life, of a new heaven and a new earth, and of being reunited with our loved ones again, reunited in unexplainable, eternal love.

As a Christian, as a deeply spiritual person, Nancy lived into the abundant love of God, she became part of the body of Christ for so many in this room today, and in her own life and now in her death she invited and invites you to do the same, to love, and to do so abundantly and without barrier or restraint.

In a few minutes, we’ll sing a song known across many traditions by its refrain, “This is my story, This is my song.” Blessed Assurance does not get much play in Episcopal churches, but it is one of my favorites, so I was happy to see John and the family choose it. I think the third verse can connect deeply for us this morning. And, though the words of this verse may connect with us in our own journeys of life and faith, after a life spent in deep spiritual connection with her God, Nancy can sing the words of the third verse today more than ever before:

“Perfect submission, all is at rest; I in my Savior am happy and blest, watching and waiting, looking above, filled with his mercy, lost in his love.”

In her memory, may we all sing those words and experience that rest, happiness, mercy, and love today and forevermore. Amen.