I almost didn't recognize Rosalie when I first saw the picture that accompanied her obituary. She wasn't wearing a hat. Almost every time I saw Rosalie, she was wearing one of her hats. Rosalie didn't go for the restrained or forgettable. Her hats were big, bold and beautiful, just like her. She graced the pew back against the wall over there almost every Sunday until she really couldn't do so any longer and she went to stay with Sara in Michigan. Her regular presence has been sorely missed. Nobody else seems to wear hats.
I don't know how long that back pew had been Rosalie's pew. It was hers when we first arrived, just as the Federated Church has been hers since she came to town in the 1940s. Though she was born in Pennsylvania, everyone knew she belonged here. She was part of the fabric of this community, a mother and friend to so many that we could take up the whole service by just naming the people whose lives she touched.
Rosalie was born on a farm in 1911 in Wayne County, Pennsylvania. She was an only girl. She had five brothers: Tysdale, Gerald, Robert, Bruce, and Leonard. Apparently, she was a good student because she was planning on going to college when the Great Depression struck and she had to go to work instead. She started off as a seamstress for Katz clothing, but was soon offered a job by Endicott-Johnson shoes. She was a prized employee and they made her responsible for the stitching on the samples they would send out to encourage shoe stores to stock their merchandise. It was a great place for her since they offered free medical care, cheap food and promised not to lay anyone off. Often enough the only full meal she would have would be lunch at the company cafeteria because she was sending almost every penny she made home to help out her family which was struggling just to get by. She ate a lot of oatmeal. But it was also while living in Endicott that she began to rent a room from Mary Petro who the whole family refers to as Aunt Polly. She was the sister that Rosalie hadn't had and it was the beginning of a life-long friendship.
Aunt Polly took credit for Rosalie's relationship with an IBM engineer named Emile Clavez. Rosalie was working as a lathe operator for IBM at the time and Emile was establishing himself as one of those "go-to" kinds of guys who just seem to know how to make things work. But the relationship between the two was having its ups and downs until Aunt Polly intervened. Discovering that Rosalie and Emile had broken up she invited them both over for dinner. If I understand the story properly, Rosalie didn't know that Emile was going to be there. I'm guessing that Emile wasn't expecting Rosalie either, but with Polly's assistance they made up, got married in 1944 and moved to Maine the next year. They paid $5000 for the house on King Hill Road. Their new neighbors were none too happy. They paid too much! It would drive up property values - and property taxes. But the Clavez' more than made up for it with years of friendship and service to this community.
Rosalie gave birth to three wonderful daughters, Sara, Rosalie, and Jannette. They told me two fascinating naming stories. The first was Rosalie, the younger. Apparently Rosalie (the elder) and Emile hadn't decided on a name in advance so while Rosalie (the elder) was still recovering from the anesthesia Emile and Aunt Polly went down to see the baby. They weren't sure which one it was until they got a look at the legs. Emile is reported to have said, "Those are Rosalie's legs." Aunt Polly made sure the name stuck.
Jannette has the distinction of being named after a month or a Roman God, which ever you pick. Rosalie didn't want to name her Janice since there already was a Janice around so she thought she would name her after a relative, only to find out later that the relatives name was the more traditional Jeanette, with an "e". But Rosalie had named her Jannette and she meant it. She didn't approve of nicknames and got quite upset one summer when she learned that the people at Sky Lake didn't even know Jannette's full name.
Perhaps the most traumatic event in Rosalie's life happened in 1950. She came down with polio. They weren't at all sure she would survive. Most people with the type she contracted didn't and those that did almost always were confined to an iron lung for the rest of their lives. Rosalie only needed assistance with breathing one night. But the polio did have an effect. It paralyzed some of the muscles most of us use to control our swallowing so things had a tendency to find their way into her lungs that shouldn't. The most obvious symptom was a persistent cough. The cough was so persistent that Jannette's daughter Grace associated the sound of coughing with her grandmother. Once when Grace was still very young, shortly after Emile died, Rosalie hadn't been able to see her for quite awhile and was worried that Grace wouldn't recognize her but when Grace saw her she imitated the coughing sound. Rosalie was thrilled. It meant that her granddaughter knew who she was! Though Rosalie got much better, polio had many lasting effects including a susceptibility to pneumonia that would stay with her for the rest of her life. Her lungs sounded so unusual that doctors were often worried the first time they listened and she had to tell them that they always sounded like that. I wonder how long she would have lived without polio?
Now, as bad as it might sound, there were some positive side effects to her suffering. For one thing, when Rosalie would get overwrought she would start coughing, so everyone was required to be civil at the dinner table which was just as well because Rosalie was a great cook. All the girls remember the Thanksgiving feast which, they swear, she began preparing weeks in advance. First, she had to make the mincemeat for the pie, then she had to bake the bread for the stuffing, then she had bake three pies, two more loaves of bread, and rolls, make a couple different kinds of cranberry sauce, mash the potatoes, make the gravy, cream some onions, put out the pickles. It sounds like enough for an army and I am told that the table was often full. And it wasn't just at Thanksgiving. She baked dozens and dozens of cookies for the Christmas open house and for various of the children's activities. She would bake a batch of gingersnaps for Halloween for her special visitors. She wasn't on the main route so they all were that! I guess she should be forgiven for wanting one night off a week from cooking: Sardines and saltines where the order of the evening on Sunday nights. I'm told that the Moore's actually came up the hill on a regular basis for that. Personally, I bet it was for the company rather than the food!
We could tell stories all day and I hope you will. We could talk about automobile accidents and broken backs. We could talk about shucking corn from dawn right through dusk. We could talk about the dresses and costumes Rosalie sewed and the paintings she loved. We could talk about the 32 years that Grandma McDowell spent with the Clavez' and the challenges of canning and cooking in the same kitchen during harvest time. Rosalie lived a long, full live and graced us all with her presence. It was not always an easy life. Indeed, it was often a struggle. She had to fight for her health and her welfare. But now her fight is over. She has finished the race. She has kept the faith. And we must say farewell.
In a moment we are going to sing one of Rosalie's favorite hymns, "In the Garden." "In the Garden" is really Mary's song, an imaginative interpretation of her thoughts about the time she spent with Jesus in the Garden that first Easter morning. She didn't want to give him up. She longed to walk with him and talk with him, to hear his love for her again and again. She wanted to hold on to him and never let him go. But he knew it had to be otherwise. "Do not hold on to me," he told her. "I have to go home to my God and to your God." And so she did. She let him go. So too, we must let Rosalie go. We have treasured her time with us. God gave her 99 years and she used every minute of them. She loved us deeply and she was deeply loved in return. But the last few years haven't been easy. I don't think I want to say that the polio made her weak. You don't live 99 years by being weak! But it did take its toll. Her breathing was never quite right. She always had to be careful what she ate. For instance, I'm told she loved nuts, but for the past few years she could only eat them with pudding so she could swallow them properly. She was still sharp until near the end. She was dreaming and laughing and sharing her memories. But she was also suffering. We can never really know another person's pain, of course, but we know she wasn't living the kind of life she wanted. It was time to let go, and so now it is time for us to let Rosalie to go to her God and to our God. Who knows, perhaps she will put a good word in for the rest of us.
It won't always be easy. Thanksgiving will be a little harder next month remembering Rosalie's mincemeat pies. Christmas won't be quite the same. February 20 will come around but the birthday girl won't be there. You might find something she sewed for you or come across one her pictures. You might hear someone with that same familiar cough and turn around almost expecting - only to be disappointed. It is hard for us when those we love die. Yet we are gathered here because Rosalie had faith. She knew she would die, but she never expected death to be the end of the story. She expected to join Mary in the presence of Jesus. In the midst of our own mortality it is sometimes hard to get past our own sorrows, our own grief and to share in the joy of that certainty. We want to hold on, but know that we can't, indeed that we shouldn't. We should let Rosalie go, for our own sake, as well as for hers.
Rosalie Clavez was a truly remarkable woman. She overcame obstacles that would have defeated most people, and she did so with grace and compassion. She made the world a better place by simply being in it. We have been blessed to know her and now the best thing we can possibly do is give thanks to God for her presence among us and trust that the Holy One will welcome her as the true child she was. Amen.