Funeral Homily for Kathy McCurry-The Rev Melanie Lemburg

 

The Rev Melanie Lemburg

Funeral Homily for Kathy McCurry

November 30, 2023

 

        “Though she be but little, she is fierce.”  As I was thinking about Kathy McCurry, this line from Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream came to mind.  “Though she be but little, she is fierce.”

        I spent some time last week with Cliff and Jamie, and they told me so many wonderful stories about Kathy.  I took detailed notes, and so I want use many of their words to talk about Kathy.

        The first thing Jamie told me is that he gets his tardiness from her; and the second thing he said was that any athletic prowess that her sons exhibited was inherited from her.  She was an incredible water skier, an avid tennis player, and oh, she loved to dance, and she especially love to dance the shag.  Cliff said that even when disco was all the rage, and they took lessons, she would always turn it into a shag dance.  She was so good that she and Tommy Hester would always win the Shag dance contest at the Yacht Club.  Cliff admitted that he couldn’t dance the Shag with her because “she’d never let me lead.” 

Both Cliff and Jamie talked about how Kathy nurtured them, their family, and anyone else who needed taking care of; she was such a supportive wife and mother, and she had a gift for nurturing people to success.  She was a hard-worker, a do-er who was often asked to serve in leadership roles because she was so effective. 

We saw that here at St. Thomas in her work on the Vestry (our leadership board) and on a Search Committee (which is the group that works to find a new priest for the church) along with so many other endeavors.  Probably her deepest joy here at the church was her ministry singing in the choir.  She sang in this choir for over 40 years.  (Do you know how many choir rehearsals that must add up to?) 

She had a wonderful sense of humor along with a bit of a stubborn streak.  Jamie tells the story of getting cross-wise with her one day as a teenager, when he and his friend Carey Zipperer were in the car with Kathy. Kathy got so mad at Jamie that she made him get out of the car on Jameswood Avenue, and drove off and left him there to walk home (with Carey still in the car with her).  She and Carey were laughing by the time they got to the Dutch Island gates, and she turned around and went back to retrieve Jamie, who couldn’t believe she had driven off and left him.  She was always a very forgiving person, especially to Cliff, Jamie, and Lee. 

But out of all those things, Kathy’s absolute, most-favorite job was being “Nana” to her grandkids.  She had a sign in her kitchen that Jamie swears was the absolute truth.  It says, “If Mamma won’t, Nanna will.”  Oh, how she cherished you grandkids. 

Cliff shared that he and Kathy had been dating just a short time when they were in high school, and she was supposed to come over for dinner to meet Cliff’s mom.  The night before that dinner, Cliff found his mom on the floor in the kitchen, collapsed from a cerebral hemorrhage.  He called Kathy on the phone and asked her to come over, essentially telling her “I need you.”  And she came to be with him in that horrible moment.  She was 16.  That’s the kind of person she was; she showed up when you needed her. 

        I’ve been a priest for almost 20 years.  I’ve walked alongside a lot of people as they neared death, and I have never seen a person fight for life and love with such tenacity and endurance as Kathy McCurry.  She worked hard every single day to cling to as much of herself as she could as PSP tried to diminish and disappear her.  Her courage and grit in the face of so much adversity has been a revelation of how love can so often look like sheer determination to keep going. 

        Today we gather to give thanks for Kathy, to celebrate the multitude of moments of joy with her, the good and faithful life that she lived and the way that she loved fiercely.  We also gather to mourn her loss among us, to mourn that disease has the power to steal someone so lively and vibrant from us.  We gather to remember our faith, Kathy’s faith, that death is not the end, but a change.  That our Lord Jesus goes before us to prepare a place for us in his dwelling place in God’s eternal life where there is no more suffering or grieving or diminishing, but only growth from strength to strength in God’s love.  We gather to remember the hope of Easter, the essential hope of our faith:  that through Jesus’s death and resurrection, God has proven, once and for all, that God’s love is stronger than absolutely anything.  Stronger than disease.  Stronger than death. 

        And we gather to remember that we will one day be reunited with Kathy at God’s heavenly banquet, where she will, no doubt, be singing in the heavenly chorus.  Maybe even this song that she picked for us to sing this day, which is her last gift and message to us:

 

Hymn of Promise

In the bulb, there is a flower; in the seed, an apple tree;

In cocoons, a hidden promise; butterflies will soon be free!

In the cold and snow of winter there's a spring that waits to be,

Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.

 

There's a song in every silence, seeking word and melody;

There's a dawn in every darkness, bringing hope to you and me.

From the past will come the future; what it holds, a mystery,

Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.

 

In our end is our beginning; in our time, infinity;

In our doubt, there is believing; in our life, eternity,

In our death, a resurrection; at the last, a victory

Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.

        Sing it for us, Kathy, until we meet again.