Funeral Homily for Sally McCaughan-The Rev Melanie Lemburg

Funeral Homily for Sally McCaughan

November 20, 2023

 

        It’s no accident that today’s service for Sally McCaughan is filled with the music and the images of Easter.  Sally planned the whole thing; it was all the music and readings that she loved, and she was an Easter-kind of person.

        Big Sally was a big personality, always gracious and the epitome of Southern womanhood; her hair was always done, lipstick applied, earrings adorned, all-put together, with a dab of Chanel number 5 and of course, her statement piece—those glasses.  She was lovely and elegant, so much so that in her young adulthood, she was crowned the Cherry Blossom Princess for Mississippi when she was in college in Washington DC and as a result of that honor, she went to dinner at the White House. 

        She loved her Kendall Jackson wine, mini-Hershey bars which her daughters had to keep her well-supplied with, deviled eggs and tomato sandwiches, oreos and coke for breakfast, caramel cake from Sugarees Bakery in New Albany, MS, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  And she abhorred vegetables. 

        She had a knack for bringing a caramel cake to family holiday gatherings, and the hosts would note that the leftover cake would disappear with Sally as she made her way home.  It made for an especially good breakfast for her for the rest of the week.

        I always felt so at ease, so at home with Sally.  She had a way of delighting in the people she was with, a joyful curiosity about those she encountered.  I felt like every time that I saw her, she was just so glad to see me.  She laughed easily; she took great joy in weddings and especially dancing, and she loved well. 

        She loved Joe, her high school boyfriend and husband for 68 years.  She loved her children and their spouses, her grandchildren and her great-grands.  She loved her communities—her long-time home in Clarksdale and the Mississippi Delta and her adopted home of Savannah, and she loved her churches—St. George’s in Clarksdale and St. Thomas. 

        Her life and her faith were an Easter life.  She was joyful and vivacious in spite of significant suffering and heartbreak.  She had tasted death and sorrow, and it never diminished her zeal for life or her capacity for joy.  She deepened and grew in her faith, and she had a sort of conversion experience in mid-life that spurred that deepening.   She offered her service to God and others for many years in a variety of ways but especially remembered here by her work in the St. Thomas Thrift Store.  (She would do the displays, right? …Of course, they were classy and elegant just like her.)

        We gather today to give thanks for this delightful woman in our lives.  We mourn the loss of her vivacious presence among us.  And we gather to remember the promise of Easter—that death is not the end, but a change; that through Jesus’s death and resurrection, God has shown us, once and for all, that God’s love is stronger than absolutely anything, even death.  We gather to remember that our Lord Jesus has promised that he goes before us, through death and into eternal life in the Kingdom of God, and he prepares a place for us there, a seat at God’s table.  We break bread together here, today, as a foretaste of that heavenly banquet where Sally is already feasting, and in some mysterious way, even now, we participate with her in that and with all those who have gone before us. 

        So today, in thanksgiving for Sally, let us have lean into the feasting of Easter—caramel cake, tomato sandwiches, deviled eggs and lots more desserts (and of course, wine) for lunch, and may we look for ways to delight in each other as Sally taught us.