Funeral Homily for Will Quaile

 Funeral homily_Will Quaile

October 1, 2022

 

        The first time I met Will Quaile, she wouldn’t tell me her name.  I was following the noise of the party around the side of her house—heading toward the river—when I saw a rather curious sight.  It appeared to be a little, old lady sneaking carefully along the side of the house.  I was there for a party with the search committee and vestry as a part of the interview process as St. Thomas was hiring a new rector, so I was on my best behavior.  I stopped and introduced myself to the increasingly more furtive looking little old lady: “Hello, I’m Melanie Lemburg!’  and she responded: “I’m nobody!”  I was completely taken aback, and as the awkward pause stretched out, she smiled with a twinkle in her eye and said, “I’m Will Quaile, and I’m not supposed to know you are here!”

        Will lived a beautiful life that was made up of thousands upon thousands of small acts of faithfulness.  Will had a deep love for her family, and she considered her large family to be her greatest accomplishment (“Although,” she said in conversation with me, “I didn’t know it was going to get THIS Large!”).  She nurtured each one of you in different ways according to what you needed, and what a gift that was—to be able to love people how they need to be loved!  She shared with me that her hope for you, her family, is that you will continue to come together and reunite as a family regularly, even though you live so many different places. 

She also had a deep love and commitment to this church;  she saw this church as her extended family, and Will was such a gift to all of us.  So many people have shared how Will would send little notes, some regularly and some when she thought we needed it.  She had a lovely sense of humor (and she wasn’t afraid to be salty or snarky at times); she was so comfortable in her own skin; she didn’t take herself too seriously, and she had a lightness about her and delight and joy in other people and in creation and the world around her. 

When I asked her how she and George got together, she said that a cousin who rented the cottage helped connect her with George and his best friend after George came back from Korea.  Will said, smiling, “I dated the other guy!” until she called home before Easter and found out that her brother was going to Wassaw with George and his family, and she said to her brother, “Well, damn!  I’ve always wanted to go to Wassaw!  Ask if I can go, too!”  She said the whole family was there, and “that’s when it started” with George.  

Will loved adventures, meeting new people, seeing new places.  But one of her favorite things to do was to go out in a rowboat by herself and go crabbing.  She talked about how wonderful it was to be by herself and how it was one of the things she most missed in her last years, going crabbing, sitting in the marsh and watching the birds come and go.   

Her prayer life was as faithful as the tides, and she leaves behind stacks and stacks of lists of people who she regularly prayed for and bunches of spiritual notebooks.  I will never forget how Will spoke joyfully and matter-of-factly, during a Wednesday healing service in the chapel, about how she had never been afraid to die, how she could remember being a little girl and being curious about what death was like, and looking forward to getting to be with God. 

What a wonderful gift she has been in all of our lives, and oh, how we are already missing her!  Today we gather to give thanks for Will, and we gather to take comfort in the hope of our faith, in the hope of Will’s faith—that death is not the end, but a change; that eternal life is offered freely and generously by our Lord Jesus Christ, who has gone before us through death into the resurrection life; that in Jesus’s death and resurrection, God has proven, once and for all that love is stronger than absolutely anything—even death. 

I have a drawer in my desk where I keep special notes that people from this parish have sent me.  (I don’t keep all notes and cards, just the ones with messages I think I may need to revisit or remember.)  In this drawer were two notes from Will Quaile (and one from Annie—who’s carrying on in her mother and grandmother’s footsteps).  One was a card from Will wishing me a Happy Easter, and the other is a note that she wrote me on this card that says, “Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God.”   Will’s life was a homily of joy, of love, and of faithfulness, to God, who has long been her friend and not a stranger.  How grateful are we to have been witness to such a faith and joy-filled soul, and may we continue to look for joy in each other and in all of creation as she taught us.