A Eulogy for Bennie Frank.
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
"I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core."
For the last few years until the night, Mom left us, I would read poetry and the bible to her.
The last 2 years it was always the same 5 readings
Psalm 1, Psalm 4, Psalm 23, Philippians 1: 3-6, and Philippians 4-9.
Philippians 1:3 was the verse that the late Beecher Clapp read to Mom about a year before he preceded her through the veil.
“I thank my God for every remembrance of you.” Mom would say it with me as a prayer for her friendship with Beecher. Today and every day I thank God for the last 22 years I spent with my mother and the memories of her I will have.
Mom’s Christianity was central to her life and was never something she tucked away, she told those she deemed worthy of it but professed the rest by quiet example. She was not perfect, but her life was a testament to clean and simple living.
She had her faults- but they were not what anyone remembered about her. No, what people remember about Mom was that she always had so much to give to others. She gave a lot in her life, 2 schools, 40 years of teaching and educational programs and lastly the preservation of knowledge and memory. She, also, to the very end refused to take sole credit for any of it. She would tell you that Earl or Sue or her daughter or even me had as much to do with it as anything she had done. The truth of it was she had done much of it all already.
Mom loved that what she had started had continued without her/beyond her. This is the promise I made to her, that the Museum of Education would outlive her and hopefully all of us. I really cannot say enough of about the Museum.
What I want to share with all of you today are the words and things that mattered to my mother beyond the Museum.
One of the things that mattered most to Mom was Travel. For most of her adult life, she lived in perpetual motion. She proved then and right up until the end, was that she was going to travel the world until her feet would no longer take her there.
We all know that she journeyed to many destinations. Many of us were dragged often by our ankles through some of the 50 states of this, the United States. Unfortunately, whilst I got to go on many of these adventures mom never got me back to Alaska. I have promised her that I would drive up there one day soon. She went to all the states, most of them more than once. She carried this book, Off the Beaten Path, as if to prove that Robert Frost was always right about such things.
Mom wrote this:
The Road Less Traveled
Ala Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”
I took the road less traveled each time there was a choice
I did the unexpected- I followed my own voices.
I lived my life in a different time frame-
My cart before the horses.
I created my own obstacles- but overcame the challenging course.
My choice of the road less traveled brought a lot of pride to me
I gloried in all I achieved and basked in the glow of others’ praises of me.
But looking back to the roads that diverged in the woods
and wonder what life might have been if I’d taken the other one
If I had pursued the road my schoolmates took right through university
Unburdened by failed romance and self-inflected adversity
A lovely child- born to a 16-year-old- who had to be a demanding priority
I might have found a soulmate that would have endured as my best friend
and added children and grandchildren in the right time frame
if I hadn’t missed the bend-
I might have had a love never altering that would have flourished to the very end
It isn’t that I regret my life or am consumed with bitterness
But the road I chose brought a lot of pain to other – and not just to me
My parent’s disappointment, the loves that ended in shambles- the “things that could not be”
Children brought into a world- reaping the choices that I made-
Uncompensated by my joy and fulfillment- indebted by entanglement that had to be paid.
At 79, the hand has writ and moved on- leaving me content-
With time to ponder on those roads and things that might have been.
Time passed on and she stopped traveling, her last trip would be our journey home to South Africa for the last time. For, Mom, she would be granted a closure that few people would get.
One of her favorite films, which she would watch 3 times the last year she lived, the last of which would be from her bed, was Out of Africa. Africa and the people there, all of them, the good and the bad were her chosen people. Dennis would become the spirit of adventure that would lead her to many incredible places in my homeland.
When we came back she had me read this poem to her.
So We'll Go No More a Roving
BY LORD BYRON (GEORGE GORDON)
So, we'll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.
For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.
Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a roving
By the light of the moon.
At the time, I would not appreciate what all that it meant to her and now later to me. Today, I finally understand what she was trying to tell me: her sword had outworn its sheath and her soul her breast.
She would had me type this poem for her:
I’ll go no more a roving
My Roving days are past
At least I have my memories as long as memories last.
Although there is still some yearning
The wanderlust is not entirely dead
But my steps have grown to feeble
I need to be supported- I cannot surge ahead
Even my spirit has grown weary
Time itself has robbed me of the strength and zeal.
So, no more solo adventures, neither east or west
But there is a lot of contentment with memories and my well feather nest
Knowing that I never missed a chance- I grabbed every one-
the big ones and the small.
To see all of the world that God has made and marvel at it all.
It would be the perfect way to sum it up. Her days of the open road.
Sea Fever
BY JOHN MASEFIELD
I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.
(sic)...
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.
Mom loved all of us, although she often had a hard time showing it to more than one of us at a time. She was always ready to help any one of us albeit one hand on the money and the other upon the rod of admonishment.
One of us was almost always out of favor whilst the other would be showered with praise and love.
She, did, however, never give up on any of us or our loved ones. Some of them DID get more forgiveness than others, sometimes, Mom would be quick to judge and slow to forgive, but even our spouses, girlfriends and boyfriends would often find a surprise ally whilst the rest of us would look on in stunned silence or bitter outrage that Mom was taking their side.
Mom love books, although, to my knowledge and memory there would only be a small handful that she read more than once. Of course, she had been blessed with a photographic memory.
Hamish Macbeth would prove to be one her favorite book series along with Tolkien and his Middle Earth stories. C.S. Lewis and the Chronicles of Narnia would see many returns to her bedside. In the end, her least favorite of the Chronicles would become her chosen read. The Horse and his Boy would capture that journey and companionship that Mom had wanted all her life.
As to the book she read more than any other, it would be the Bible KJV although we would read others, she always returned to it. The Truth would mean much to her until she finally felt that the Truth had changed to much and she stopped going. She had left the Truth before as she struggled with her own doubts. She would look at me and repeat her favorite worker quote from Sherman: “Search the scriptures to find out if this is true.”
Mom was a writer, this house is filled with her writing, much of it unread by most of us. I can promise that it will remain here to be read by anyone who wishes to know the life and thoughts of my Mother. Let me tell you that her reputation as a historian is well founded in her journals. There is 70 years of history in the pages of her journals and diaries. There is an autobiography that may one day be completed, never mind the unfinished books that she was always working on or rather had me working on.
Without music, I cannot continue, without the love of my family and friends I would no longer find the words to speak, without God I would lose the strength for what must come next. Living without Mom, without my best friend and lifetime advisor.
We did not see eye to eye much.
Much like Father William and his son in Elliot’s poem.
We grew stronger for our differences.
Her legacy will remain as her own words upon losing her mother.
“I knew there would be no place to go when it stormed.”
Let her home now be your home, a place to come when the world becomes to much and you need a place to go when the storms come.
Let this be our gathering place for our family from now on.
Mom wanted it to be.
I will close with one last poem and a prayer.
Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Amen.
