My grandmother “Nana” died a few weeks ago.  Since I wasn’t able to be at the memorial service for my Nana, my mom asked me if I’d like to write something to be read at her celebration of life. I was honored. Here is my eulogy for a strong woman who persevered through so many losses and trials. I miss you Nana.

The Bible tells us in Ecclesiastes that there is a time for everyone, and a season for every activity under heaven. (3:1). We know from this that even death, weeping, mourning and war have their ordained seasons. These painful seasons were repeated and common throughout my Nana’s eighty-nine years. Her life could easily read like a tragic novel.

She was born in July of 1928 to a large family of meager means in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She was the youngest child and the only girl born to Thomas and Winifred Farr. At just eight years old, Sarah Winifred Jean “Jeannie” tragically lost her mother. A time which she recounted, as recently as this year, as the most painful event in her life. During the wake, she remembered climbing onto the coffin and crying for her mother – wanting her back. As a young girl she vowed to take care of and treasure her four older brothers. Shortly after her mother’s death, her father remarried. My Nana persevered.

As a young teenager, my Nana was living with her family in Belfast during WWII when the German Luftwaffe began a merciless, high-casualty bombing campaign called the Belfast Blitz that lasted two months. Sometimes she would recount stories from this time about blackened window panes, air raid sirens and running fearfully in the dark to safety. During a trip to Belfast in 2000, my great Uncle Tommy showed me the house where the Farrs lived during the war. The small attic window of the room that he shared with my Nana as children was still there. For safety, she and her brothers were divided and sent to live in the country with distant relatives. She later became a volunteer with the Royal Air Force. My Nana persevered.

Nana married John Darby and had three beautiful children – Robert, Eileen and Dennis. When the children were still very young, Nana and John divorced. Not long after, Nana married John Werkheiser, a deployed man in the American military. Nana immigrated to America on the Queen Mary arriving in New York from England in 1956, with her new husband and three children, including a stubborn, young Dennis who refused to take his life jacket off during the entire journey – even during bath time! Nana worked as a housemaid “for rich people” living on Long Island in order to support her family. During this time, she was also working on something for which she was even more proud – her American citizenship. She became a citizen in 1958. My Nana persevered.

The family relocated to Saint Simone, France during their first deployment and my Nana worked hard to learn a new language and culture, and to form a new community. One day she sent her oldest child, Robert, on an errand for yarn – something she had done countless times before. As eleven year olds often are, Robert was distracted by some nice skipping stones sitting on the edge of a canal. He skipped a few stones before the ground beneath him gave way and he fell into the canal. Robert didn’t know how to swim and could not rescue himself. He was pulled out of the canal by a nearby fisherman who had witnessed the event, but could not swim himself. It was too late. As the paramedics tried to revive him, Nana did the only thing she could think of; she grabbed towels and ran to her son. My Nana lost her firstborn in a tragic accident. She persevered.
Less than two years later, Nana and John were expecting a new baby. It was a girl whom they named Teena. Nana told Eileen and Dennis that God was blessing them with this baby in the midst of the loss of Robert. As she was dressing her precious baby girl to come home from the hospital a week after her birth, she noticed the baby had become unresponsive. Still in the midst of unbearable grief, Nana lost a second child to an undetected heart defect. She persevered.

As is common following tragedies such as this, her marriage had become a tough and rocky one. It was a marriage in which love and affection did not come easily and where ways to hurt one another were more easily envisioned than ways to uplift. Although they toughed it out for many years, the marriage would ultimately end in divorce in the early 80s. My Nana persevered.

In 1964, Nana graduated from LPN school. She would continue working in this field for ten years until she would graduate with her RN degree. This would become her passion and her ministry. My Nana persevered.
In the 1970s, Nana was involved in a car accident in which she endured a traumatic brain injury that resulted in a brain tumor. The brain tumor had to be removed, but with the medical technology of the time, this meant severing the facial nerve. The surgery would leave her blind in one eye and with facial paralysis on one side for the rest of her life. My Nana persevered.

By the time I really got to know my Nana as a young girl in the early 80s, I had no real understanding of all that she had been through in her life. I wouldn’t understand until very recently even a fraction of the pain that helped form who she was. The memories I have of time spent with Nana involve lots of laughter, creativity and imagination. Nana taught me how to eat French fries like a true Northern Irish girl – drenched in malt vinegar and through a ripped paper bag turned upside down. We spent hours on her front porch swing or on my great grandmother’s fold-out couch in my parent’s house pretending we were on an airplane or a stagecoach. We dreamed up all the places we would go and my Nana, with a little help from me, would tell the most creative stories of the adventures we had when we arrived at all those destinations. I owe much of my wanderlust to her. She helped me demolish my parents’ living room building massive forts with couch cushions and all the blankets we could find. Once we built a twelve-story doll house using all the shoeboxes we could find not only from her house but from all of her neighbors’ houses as well. We decorated it with cut out pictures of models, furniture and appliances from the Sears catalog. She also taught me how NOT to train a dog. Her dog “Lovey” had to be the meanest, most ferocious twelve-inch-tall beast that ever lived. Nana demonstrated that absolutely everything could be fixed with a little bit of surgical tape and bandage scissors.

Trips to England and Northern Ireland or “home,” as she called it, every other summer meant giant suitcases filled with “Sindy” dolls, Cadbury candies and stuffed Roland Rats for me when she returned. She taught me that although I might be American, I was full-blooded Northern Irish underneath and I understood that I should never forget that. Whenever Nana would talk with her beloved brothers Tommy, Billy and Jordy in Belfast or in England long distance on her rotary phone, I knew it would be a little while before her Irish brogue would wear off and I could understand her again. Like her ancestors before, she was fiercely clannish. The only real unforgivable sin you could commit against Nana was to hurt someone in her clan. “God fergive” the poor soul who made any of her “wee” children or grandchildren cry.

I’m not sure how or why, but it became a tradition when I was four that every time we left her house, I would scream “Bye Fatty!” from the car and she responded with “Bye Skinny!” from her house. We would repeat it as we drove away until we couldn’t hear each other any more. This always mortified my Dad, but it was something my five-year old Andrew fully embraced during our recent visit this spring. She loved her Lord, her family and others around her. She might be angry with you, but she would give you the shirt off her back or her last bite of food without hesitation if she thought you needed it. She was a prayer warrior. I know she has been praying diligently for eight years for us to leave the Middle East. I wish I could tell her that her prayers have been answered and we are leaving in September. Nana taught me how to make yarn pom-pons, yarn dolls and then later taught me how to knit. She made sure all of her grandchildren were welcomed into the world with gorgeous hand knit sweaters, hats, booties and blankets. When I was in college and she was diagnosed with Macular Degeneration, she knew it was a matter of time before she lost the vision in her remaining eye and became completely blind. She fiercely set to work on creating beautiful hand-knit layettes for her future great-grandchildren because she knew she’d be unable when they arrived. Four precious, Northern Irish great grandchildren have followed since – Harper, her “wee Irish Harp,” Andrew, her “wee Irish Laddie,” Darby, her “we Irish shamrock” and Henry, her “wee Irish Prince.” They have all been blessed by the love and by the handiwork of great grandmother “Nana” or “Nene” as she became known by the next generation.

So yes, there is a time and a season for everything. From my human, earthly perspective it might seem that Nana got an unfair portion of the seasons of mourning, of war and of death. But we don’t live through these seasons without hope.

1 Peter 5:10 – The God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.
2 Corinthians 4:8-9  – We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.
Romans 5:2-4 – And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; character, hope.

My Nana’s days of perseverance have come to an end. Her season of suffering is over. Her hope has been realized. She has fully entered a season of life, health, laughing, love and peace in fellowship with her Savior. I believe she caught glimpses of this coming season in the midst of her loss and pain, during times spent with those she loved the most – her brothers, her children, her grandchildren, her great grandchildren, her friends and her beloved church family.

Weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning. Psalm 30:5