Professionally Speaking

Joan

Joan Fox was buried on December 20, 2006.

She was my mother-in-law, someone it had been my privilege to know for nearly 20 years. She was buried in the village graveyard in Mungret, Ireland. She’d lived her whole life within 20 miles of her birthplace. Yet she’d traveled the world: Hawaii, Russia, California and her beloved Florida. She’d married Charlie when she was only 22 and he was 34. His job with TWA at Shannon allowed them the free travel. Her daughter Sandra benefited, visiting the Bay Area, where we met.

Over 300 came to Joan’s funeral that week before Christmas. Farming families who had known her since she was a child. Friends from the airlines. The wide circle of people in the West of Ireland who she’d touched.

At the funeral Mass she was described as a lady. When Sandra was at boarding school some of the other girls thought she was film star when she came to visit.

The death notice in the Irish Times read:

FOX (nee O’Brien) (12, Thornbrook, Corbally, Limerick and formerly of Conigar, Mungret) – December 17, 2006, after a short illness borne with great courage and dignity, at Milford Hospice, Joan, beloved wife of Charles and dearly loved mother of Sandra and Richard, sister of the late Mary (Herlihy) and Derry (Moloney); deeply regretted by her son-in-law Ian, daughter-in-law Deirdre, her beloved grandchildren Evan, Emily, Jamie and Neil, brothers Michael, Gerard and John, sister Geraldine (Costelloe), extended family, relatives and friends. Rest in peace. Removal from Milford Hospice to St Nicholas Church, Westbury, Corbally, tomorrow (Tuesday) evening at 7.30 o’clock Requiem Mass on Wednesday at 12 Noon. Funeral afterwards to Mungret Cemetery.

At the end of the Mass I read a short essay by Adi Da Samraj:

What Is More Than Wonderful Is Not Threatened

Fear of death is fear of surrender to Infinity.
Learn to surrender, to exist at Infinity while alive, and fear of death dissolves.

Fear of death is fear of the Unknown.
Realize the Eternal Unknowability of the Totality of Existence, and fear of death is transcended in the Feeling Beyond Wonder.

If Happiness (or Freedom) depends on the Answer to the Question, then there can be no Happiness (or Freedom).
The Question cannot be satisfactorily or finally Answered.
For one who Abides at Infinity–Happy and Free, at ease with his or her Ultimate (or Divine) Ignorance–the Question and the Answer are equally unnecessary.

What began will come to an end.
What is More than Wonderful is not threatened.
The Process of the Totality of Existence is Transcendental, Inherently Spiritual, and Self-Evidently Divine–and it is Eternal.
Only a fraction of the Whole can pass away in any moment, since only a fraction of the Whole appears in any moment.
Therefore, the True Divine Heart Itself is Always Already Full of Love and More-than-Wonder.

“I” is the body-mind, the fraction of the Whole that is now appearing and will soon disappear.
“I” must be surrendered to the True Divine Heart, to the Whole–Which Is Infinity, and Love, and More (and More) than even Wonder knows.

Easy Death, page 97.

Joan

Categories

Archives

Search

Blogroll

Miscellany

Pages