Funeral Homily for Phyllis Posey-The Rev Melanie Lemburg
The Very Rev. Melanie Lemburg
Funeral Homily_Phyllis
Posey
June 30, 2025
Phyllis Posey was a nurse all the time,
on or off the clock. She could get
anything done. She appreciated
efficiency. She was frugal, so much so
that she would never throw anything away, even after it was expired. And she
was brutally practical. Her gifts always
had a purpose: socks, flashlights, blankets.
She was endearingly persnickety.
Her husband Frank would refer to her as “a little, sawed-off Yankee
woman” because she was such a spitfire.
And she embraced this designation with humor; when she’d call her friend
Beth Wall she’d start the call saying, “This is your Yankee friend.”
Beth shared with me how one time her
husband was having chest pain, and he refused to go to the hospital, so she
called Phyllis. Phyllis said, “Let me
talk to him. I’ll either save a life or
lose a friend.” (You can hear her saying it, can’t you?!) When it was all said and done, Beth’s husband
went to the hospital thanks to Phyllis.
She was brilliant. She and Frank would play Scrabble, and he’d
always have a dictionary on hand because he didn’t believe her words were
actual words. But they were. And she had a slow, smart sense of
humor. She’d make a joke with that sly
sense of humor, and then she’d give you a look to see if you got the joke with
her mysterious, “Cheshire Cat” smile. She
was never on time. Her friends would go
pick her up, and she’d say, “I’ll almost ready” and she wouldn’t even be
dressed yet!
She was determined and tenacious. One of her super-powers was that she could
get any stain out of laundry. Don’t you
know, those stains never stood a chance!
She loved the beach and all things
pertaining to the water— sea shells, boat rides, crabbing….cocktails on the
dock. For many years, she and Frank
would go to Marco Island every February.
She loved her cats. She loved
being a nurse. And she loved her family:
her children, her grandchildren, her great-grandchildren. She was so proud of y’all, and what a gift it
is for you to all be here together today and in the ways that y’all honor her
through your service here in her funeral!
She loved this church and her friends here. She dedicated so many faithful years of
prayer and service here, and she put the fear of God into myself and a number
of the rectors of St. Thomas as she served as the long-time chair of the altar
guild! Now, I can’t speak for the other
rectors, but I knew better than to cross Phyllis. She just had that air about
her, of brooking no nonsense, even from her priest. And yet, she was always gracious and a calm,
steady presence to me in that important role.
She had a quiet faithfulness about her here at St. Thomas and this was
evidenced especially in her life of service and prayer as a member of the Order
of the Daughters of the King here.
She was quite a woman! Oh, how we will miss her. Today we gather to give thanks for Phillis
and for all the ways that she influenced and shaped and cared for us. We offer thanks for the uncounted numbers of
people and animals helped by her in her healing ministry as a nurse, and we are
grateful for her faithfulness and service to God through this church. And we also mourn the loss of this remarkable
woman from our midst. We gather today to
remember that through Jesus’s death and resurrection, God has proven once and
for all that God’s love is stronger than absolutely everything; even
death. And we remember that death is not
the end, but a change; that Jesus goes before us through death into the
resurrection life where Phyllis and all of us are invited and encouraged to follow. And we give thanks that the reconciling work
begun in this life will continue into the next, because nothing is ever truly
lost in the Kingdom of God.
So today, even as we mourn the loss of
Phyllis in this life among us, we give thanks for all the (endearingly
persnickety) ways she loved us, and we trust in the hope of our faith, in
Phyllis’ faith, that we will all be reunited once again in God’s eternal
life.
Comments
Post a Comment