Jeni Pearson's Memorial

Today I drove from Eugene to McMinnville, OR to attend the service memorializing the seventy-seven year life of Jeni Pearson.

I was born on Dec. 27, 1953. Jeni gave birth to my friend since birth Roger on Dec. 25, 1953. Jeni Pearson knew me, in a sense, as long as anyone, since the day I was born.

Growing up, especially once we reached Little League baseball age, Roger and I spent countless hours and days together. This continued on into the 1980's until Roger's marriage and my second marriage and both of our increased responsibilities made the casual hanging out we used to do much more difficult.

In all the time I spent with Roger, the constant source of support and good cheer was his mother, Jeni.

I wrote this already, and I was reminded of it today during the memorial: Jeni Pearson came as close as anyone I have ever known to embodying the Kingdom of God in her cheerful, kind, generous, giving soul. She was beyond admirable in her capacity to give and serve others. Jeni saw to it that each and every person she came in contact with left any time spent with her feeling like the finest person in the world. That was her gift. She affirmed and encouraged and saw the best in people.

The last round of golf I played with Jeni was in August, 1979 at Avondale. I fought all day with a terrible duck hook that rattle of ponderosa pines and had me rattling shots out of the trees all day long. At the end of that round, although my scorecard hardly showed it, Jeni had me feeling like Arnold Palmer.

Today's service took place at Macy and Son Mortuary in McMinnville. Recorded music was piped into the memorial service room as we gathered. During the service, recordings of Jeni's husband, Con, playing the piano, my brother-in-law's brother, Kevin, singing a tribute to Jeni, and a woman singing and playing the flute were all piped in. This music punctuated an ongoing tribute the pastor paid to Jeni throughout the service, a tribute that drew heavily and appropriately upon Scripture, at Jeni's request, as a way of paying tribute to her devotion to God and Jesus Christ.

Jeni practiced Protestant Christianity of the pared down style. When I was young, Jeni worshipped as a Lutheran, a more liturgical denomination. But, at some point, Jeni and Con began attending services at less liturgical and sometimes non-denominational churches.

The pastor leading today's service is the minister of Layfaette Community Church. My guess is that the church zeroes in on the Word of God, without ornamentation, without ritual or rite. I don't know that, but it's what I surmise, without prejudice.

I say this because of how very different Jeni's service was from Jonah's. Today, the pastor asked us to celebrate Jeni having taken residence in her new home, her home in the room of God with its many, many mansions. Jeni's suffering had ended. The pastor asked us to be free of sorrow, to take joy in Jeni's deliverance, and be at peace with her lovely life and glorious entrance into enternity.

Jonah's service was built on ceremony. The sounds were sounds of mourning and wailing. At Jeni's service, the tone was restrained, the emotional expressions quiet, reserved. At Jonah's service, the rites of the Indian Shaker church invited all of us to enter into the wailing and grief of losing Jonah and at many times during the evening, Jonah's mother, Louise, wailed her grief without constraint.

I rarely ask anyone reading my writing to read my words in the way I intend them. I usually let my words do their own work.

Not tonight. Tonight I am asking you to read my words as respectful for how Jonah's tribe sent Jonah on his trail to to join the Great Creator, as respectful for the open expression of emotion and the sense of mystery created by the chanting, the standing throughout the ceremony, candles, turning in circles, procession, the words of worship I could not understand, the raising of hands, the singing of songs I did not know.

I am asking you to read my words about Jeni's service as equally respectful of restraint, of direct spoken words from the Scripture, of the downplaying of mystery and emphasis on certainty, of music played in a style I am deeply familiar with, in a funeral home room where we all remained seated, in an atmosphere hushed.