Funeral Homily for Jane Shuman-The Rev Melanie Lemburg

 Funeral Homily_Jane Shuman

April 4, 2023

 

        Jane Shuman was the quintessential lady.  One of her grandchildren said it best: “She was elegant and graceful, and they don’t make them like that anymore.”  She was a lady and an expert crab picker; a lady and boy, could she row a boat!  She was a lady, and she loved the taste of a good, mild scotch—but only one toddy a night.  She was a lady who thought the shrimp you caught out of the river tasted better than the shrimp you bought from the grocery store. 

        A couple of years ago, Mary was telling me a story about how she had eaten dinner with Jane the night before.  The dinner was horribly late, and the residents of Harmony began to get restless; some of them picked up their cutlery and began to bang it on the tables.  Mary watched in horror as Jane became swept up in the madness of the crowd and began articulating her displeasure with her own cutlery with a glint of impishness in her eyes, and Mary exclaimed: “Mother, that’s not ladylike!”  which of course, immediately recalled Jane to her senses.

        Her family and her students knew Big Jane as someone who did not put up with any foolishness; they knew her as someone you didn’t want to cross.  And apparently having dinner on time was a value that she held throughout her whole life.  Her children and at least one of her grandchildren had experiences when they didn’t respond to Jane’s summons to dinner promptly enough from playing outside and found themselves locked out of the house as everyone else began to eat. 

        Jane loved faithfully and well:  65 years married to Jimmy which was only a portion of their life-long love that started when she was 13 years old.  And even longer than her love for Jimmy was her love for the flamingos—her group of friends from childhood who stayed in contact throughout all the years, celebrating their birthdays together and commemorating those with the exchange of two yard flamingos which then grew into flamingo-themed paraphernalia, contributing greatly to the pink flamingo industry.  That’s a rare kind of faithfulness to be able to maintain friendships across nine decades. 

        And how she loved her family—her children, her grandchildren, and her great-grandchildren!  She mothered them all in ways that were both tender and tough.  She was a faithful member of St. Thomas, using her considerable gifts as an educator to serve as volunteer Superintendent of Sunday School and a long-time Sunday School teacher as well. 

        As a member of her family said, “Big Jane, she was a legend.”   

        So today we gather to give thanks for Jane, for her faithfulness, for how she loved us, for all she taught us—both intellectually and also morally, about how to be better people, people of integrity.  We gather to acknowledge how much we’ll miss this fierce, elegant lady.  And we gather to remember the hope of our faith—that death is not the end, but a change; that through Jesus’s death and resurrection, God has proven that God’s love is stronger than absolutely anything, even death.  We gather to remember that Jesus, who was Jane’s friend and not a stranger, has welcomed her to his heavenly banquet, where no one can ever arrive late, and where we hope to feast once again with her when our time comes as well.