(Delivered at Grace UMC on March 26, 2022— Mom passed away Nov 17th of last year, but because of the weather and the age of many of her friends and relatives we postponed the Memorial until then, but held the graveside service in November).
First, I want to thank you all for coming and being here to honor our mother on this day. It is a measure of her influence and legacy that we have so many members of both the West and the Witherington side of the family here, as well as so many friends of long standing from High Point and Charlotte and elsewhere. Laura and Ann and I thank you so much for your kindness and support at this transition point in our lives. It means a lot to us and we feel blessed by your presence.
How does one sum up a life well lived for over 95 years? Well of course it’s really impossible to do that in a few words, but I will try to be succinct, since as the Bard said ‘brevity is the soul of wit’. Joyce Witherington’s life revolved around her faith, her family including her wider church family, her friends, and her vocation—which was to teach and to play the piano in various contexts, especially the church.
Our mother’s faith was not a mere vague thing, but involved bedrock convictions, but like many of her generation she was not vocal about this, unless challenged. Her parents were very much the same way, and they too grew up here in Wilmington. The Christian faith and church were every week commitments. Shoot they were even more committed to the Lord and his church than they were to the Tar Heels, and that’s really saying something!
When I was little I would often spend time here at 1319 Princess St. with Pop and Granny West while Pop was still the fire chief in the city fire department. Yes, I know this was ancient history— B.C. before computer, before cell phone, and before air conditioning in that hot house. I remember vividly one hot summer night when the fire alarm bell went off in the middle of the night summoning my grandfather to go put out a fire. That bell was so loud it could have awakened the dead, and there was no getting back to sleep for me, so I waited on the staircase for Pop to come home, and it was some hours before he did. He came into the house smelling of smoke, and I asked him what happened and he told a story of a harrowing rescue of a small child from a burning apartment complex. I summoned up my courage and said “Pop, why do you do things like that, risking your own life? Why are you such a straight arrow?” I will never forget his answer— ‘hell is too hot, and heaven is too sweet to mess around in this life. You’ve got to live your life with one eye on eternity’.
I tell that story because without question that sort of faith in the reality of the afterlife was instilled in Pop’s daughter, Joyce Morton West Witherington. While she loved and celebrated all the good things in this life, her faith was very much as described in Heb. 11.1-2— ‘faith is the assurance of things hoped for, and a conviction of things not yet seen’. She trusted the Lord, and now she is in that place where there is no disease, decay, or death, no suffering, sin or sorrow— in the living presence of the Lord— Hallelujah.
Mom’s commitment to her family and her larger church family and friends was equally unequivocal, and unshakeable. She grew up to practice the best sort of Southern hospitality and kindness, and her sense of loyalty was lifelong. Almost to her dying day she was talking regularly to her relatives on the phone, to her old college friends and roommates in Florida or Charlotte, or elsewhere. She was a relative and a friend you could always count on. And again, this was all part of her Christian commitment worked out as loving one’s neighbor as one’s self. She loved her times with her brother J.A. West and his wife Evelyn of Shelby and his daughters and also with the various Witherington relatives in Statesville and elsewhere.
As for her vocation, Mom who took her degree in piano at Woman’s College in Greensboro, now known as UNC-G went on to teach piano for endless years in the home, but also in private schools like Country Day School in Charlotte, and in colleges like Salem College in Winston Salem, or at Queens in Charlotte, all the time regularly playing most weeks in Sunday school classes, and sometimes in church as a substitute for the regular pianist. My mother absolutely loved music, as do Laura and I today. She loved classical music, church music, jazz, and even eventually classic rock and roll as long as the lyrics were not objectionable and there were no curse words in it.
Towards the end of her life, Mom didn’t much play the piano as even her finger memory had left her. One of my happiest last memories during the last week before she had to go to the memory care facility last August was me sitting at the piano at home playing for her, her old favorite ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’. When I began to sing ‘mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord’, she chimed right in and sang along ‘Glory glory hallelujah. His truth is marching on’. There was still some music memory.
It has been said that you become what you admire. If that is true, it is not a surprise that I became a Methodist minister and seminary professor, and Laura is still singing in the choir right here in this church. Our lives have centered on our faith and our church life just like Mom’s was. Mom once said of me that my first two words were John Wesley. I kind of doubt that. It is also not an accident that music has been so essential to us. When he was very ill, John Donne the great English poet and preacher wrote a poem entitled ‘To God, My God in my Sickness’. He said the following— ‘as I am about to be made God’s music, I think here below how to tune mine instrument’ so as to be in tune when I get there. Are we all seeing life as an opportunity to tune up for eternity? One final note.
St. Paul when he is reflecting on both Christ’s resurrection and the resurrection of those who believe in him in 1 Cor. 15, says this— ‘we should not grieve like those who have no hope’. Yes indeed, the measure and depth of one’s grief reflects the depth of the love that was involved in that relationship before a loved one passed on— as C.S. Lewis says. But we grieve knowing that God’s yes to life is louder than death’s no, and he promises an afterlife in his presence for the faithful— ‘to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord’ as Paul puts it. Or as our burial ritual says— ashes to ashes, dust to dust in sure and certain hope of the resurrection. And all God’s people said–AMEN
Obituary
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