Shirley Treleaven’s Funeral
The day before Shirley’s funeral, Wyona and I wanted to say our quiet good-byes to her at the funeral home. We slipped over there Thursday afternoon. What we did not know is that Shirley’s mother, two of her sisters and both of her daughters would be there dressing the body that afternoon.
Wyona and I both count it as a privilege that they had us join them and that they let us help them. Shirley’s sisters slipped her dress, sash and apron on her. Loiya put on Shirley’s shoes, white with bits of lace on them. Sheryl watched while Anita placed some pearls around Shirley’s neck.
Embroidered pink roses were on the inside lid of the casket. The room was redolent with the smell of roses and sprays of lilies that sat along the side of the wall. There was sadness in the air for me. I am glad I went. I needed that peaceful moment with Shirley.
The next day, friends who wanted to meet the family before the service, began arriving at the church at 9:30 am. The church foyer had in it a display of snapshots on 2 photograph trees. Groups of people waiting for the service to begin enjoyed them, some even taking them off of the clips to get a better look at them.
Dalton, Ceilidh, Meighan and I explored the church while we were waiting for the family prayer to start. We had some time on our hands. Dalton agreed to be the tour guide of the church for it is the place where he went to cubs a few years ago. He showed us how to operate the stage lights, how to make them go from green to red to orange, how to pull the curtains so that we could see the gym, and he warned us about the dangers of walking on the stage in the dark, for it was filled with hockey nets, planks on the floor and odd chairs. Then he turned the lights off on the stage for us, so we could tell what he was saying was really true. The only room he didn’t know about in the church, he told us, was the chapel, for the cubs weren’t allowed to explore that room.
As we walked the halls, we spoke with the female funeral director whom I had met the day before, asking her how she choose her job and if she knew she would be in that profession when she was younger. And we also wanted to know what her favourite part of her job was. She is the one who had done Shirley’s hair and put on her make-up. She told us her favourite part of her job is what happened the day before, when we dressed Shirley.
We also introduced ourselves to Jerry Palmer who was to give the eulogy. He told them he already he knew their names, they were in his talk.
We met other cousins in the hallway. Zach, who is in kindergarten, followed us around the church for a while. His mother had given him strict instructions about his behaviour, “no running in the halls”. I watched him for a while after he was given those instructions. Zach cannot walk a straight line. He skips, hops, jumps, sidesteps and tries very hard not to run. At the door to the stage, he stopped and read out loud, “plat ... form”. You could have knocked me over with a feather.
The chapel was filled and into the overflow by 6 or 8 rows of chairs. I missed my chance to go sit by Molly and Kelvin who were four rows from the front. I was helping with the grandchildren until the casket was moved into the chapel. Molly was firm in her determination to come to the funeral. Shirley had worked for her, driving a school bus when Molly taught kindergarten. Molly is on antibiotics that have to be administered 3 times a day at the Taber hospital. She had Corinne drive her up to Calgary and then back to Taber in time for her appointment at the hospital.
Jerry Palmer gave the eulogy. He is a relative of Shirley’s, from a larger extended family. He told about their common roots, about what has made them all family and how connections between the extended families have been cemented. He read a letter from Tom Evans, Shirley’s employer, when she worked in Tom’s dental office. Tom was her bishop as well. Tom said that if Shirley was doing a job in either of the capacities that he knew her, that a person could be calm. She would take care of things as they should be taken care of. There were no sleepless nights for others if Shirley was in charge.
Jerry told a well loved family story to the congregation. Shirley was helping pre-school Dalton to learn how to say the blessing on the food. She said to him, “Fold your arms, bow your head. Now say after me, Father in Heaven.”
Dalton said, “Father Treleaven.”
That just about broke up the prayer session.
But Shirley continued, “Thank you for the food.”
Dalton said, “You’re welcome.”
Jerry said that he looked up at the clock, could see he was only 1/8 of the way through the material he had collected and that he felt his time at the pulpit was up. I am one of the people who would have liked to have heard 8/8ths of the tributes that have rolled into the emails to the family about Shirley.
After the reading of the biography, listed on the programme was an entry: Tributes – Open Sharing. I have seen this done at other funerals, but never at a Mormon funeral, so I checked with a second funeral director. He said yes, it is being done at Mormon funerals. I asked what percentage. He said, maybe 2%. An open mike – so I went to Wyona and told her I was going to say something and she said, “I am going to, as well.”
Wyona beat me to the mike. She told the audience that when Marcia called Wyona to say she was getting married, Wyona had asked Marcia, “What is Art’s mother like?” Marcia had responded to Wyona, “She is everything you are not.” Wyona said that when she saw the funeral sprays, she was reminded again of that statement, thinking of the bouquet that contained both lilies, roses and snapdragons, and thinking of herself as that snapdragon. Many of the children afterwards asked their mothers to show them, which of the flowers was a snapdragon. I liked the line best in Wyona’s talk where she said that each time she leans down to give her grandchildren a kiss or a hug, that kiss will also come to them from Shirley, through her.
Linda Witter, another of Shirley’s friends, spoke next. Knowing that opening sharing was going to happen and she had prepared some beautiful words to say about Shirley.
I came to the funeral unprepared: no pen, no piece of paper. I asked one of the funeral directors for a pen, and any piece of paper. He could deliver the pens, but no paper. Even the back of a tithing receipt would do, I said. He knew how to get into the bishop’s office for paper. Here is what I scribbled down as I sat waiting for my turn for the mike.
“Shirley and I share the greatest of all treasure, common grandchildren. That gift allowed us to see deep into each other’s hearts. Like you, I loved Shirley. She was dutiful, a duty that she combined with such tenderness and care.
Shirley loved her kitchen and I loved her kitchen as well, her hands rolling the pie dough, dipping the chocolates, and serving food to others. And when the food was cleared away and the bridge cards were shuffled, I knew I was going to lose a lot of bridge rubbers to Shirley that evening.
Shirley and I grandmothered at family parties, on holidays, at common kitchen tables, on the beach, in the water and under the stars. She set the bar high.
There is a common practise to plant a tree in people’s memories. Shirley reversed that practise. I won’t need to plant a tree for Shirley already planted one in my yard, a shoot from her lilac tree. The name of that variety of lilac describes Shirley – Sensation. I will think of Shirley when that lilac tree blooms in the spring.
The Relief Society had been in the kitchen from 8:30 am the morning of the funeral, preparing a lunch for 400 people. Some of us went directly to the cemetery and then came back to join those who stayed behind.
The graveside service was beautiful. The grave site is on a knoll. Because Calgary is right on the line that divides the prairies from the foothills and mountains, it is possible to look to the east and see the broad expanse of prairie that moves thousands of miles across Canada. The sky was full of high white clouds. The horizon was flat, a line rimming the Canadian prairies where Shirley had been born.
Tim and Lurene were the lone figures against it, dressed in trotter length and long black coats, the glint of gold from their trombones could be seen as they played duets from the Mormon hymnal. I have always loved Cardinal Newman’s “A Mighty Fortress is Our God”, as well “For the Beauty of the Earth”. There were probably others beside me who could feel the strength of the words of those songs going through our minds, as we listened to the melodies of them, the blended notes of the lines of the music, plaintive in the quiet silence as we waited for the dedication of the grave.
Tim and Lurene had played for Shirley before. Anita reminded me of the Christmas Party we had where Lurene and Tim had played for family members, choosing their performance site the second floor of Anita and Doral’s house, by the wooden railing, letting the music waft down to those of us below. Shirley had talked about how fun that was in the months that were to follow.
At the graveside,Tonia, Charise and Marcia had turquoise and green balloons filled with helium and passed 40 of them out to the children. On the count of three, people let the balloons go. They were breathtakingly beautiful, floating far into the heavens, some seeming to make their way through the holes in the clouds. We watched them as they lost their brilliant colour, soon only specks in the sky, moving upward and far out of our sight.
Before the grave was lowered into the ground, those who wanted could take flowers from the casket spray, take one home to press it, or put it on top of the casket. Meighan is only five, but she learned how to gently place a flower there, after her first one fell through the cracks. Anita told me that it would not be possible to count the number of flowers on the casket that were put there by Meighan.
By the same token, during the funeral, Audra could see tears spilling from more than one cheek, and she began to deliver Kleenex out of boxes and into the hands of those who needed them, which turned into a full time job for her. Both little girls were hard at work.
I lost control of my own composure when the casket was rolled out of the chapel. When I saw the casket move by I stepped out into the isle to watch it. And then the mourners walked by and I couldn’t keep my sobbing under control. You know, the kind where your chest heaves and your shoulders involuntarily shake. My lips are tight but still some of the wild crying that is going on inside of me gets out in the form of taking in short breaths of air. Hard to believe that the good grandmother left and that the Johnson/Treleaven grandchildren are now left with only the two bad grandmothers.
Ron had invited all of the family members of the Treleavens and Heggies to join him back at the church at 6 pm for a family dinner. Wyona offered her help to him. There was an abundance of food for a main course for all. Three buffet tables were filled with a variety of meat, and potato, bean, seven-grain and Caesar salads, cheeses, fruits and desserts. Only Wyona would think to make sure the feta cheese stuffed red peppers and the dill pickles were there.
The Heggies are amazing people -- a family of helpers, the larger extended Mormon family operating quietly together to take care of what needs to be done, people stepping in at every turn. When there is a job to be done, they slip into the kitchen and help to get food on the tables. And when the food is to be packaged up at the end of the meals, they are there to do the work as well. They put away tables and chairs when it is time to clean up. And in between those times, they know how to gather around a table and enjoy again the stories of their collective past.
The women provided the desserts – bringing in huge trays of slices – cherry filled shortbread, brownies, ju-jube filled blonde brownies, caramel-iced Rice Krispie squares and gooey, chocolaty puffed wheat squares for children. I could tell they know how to do this – not just because they have pans from their kitchens the right size to fill the tables of a banquet, but because when one of them begins to slice the squares they do it deftly, making generous sized portions and quickly getting them out of the pans and onto plates for beautiful presentation. I would say one of them can outwork 3 of the rest of us.
Ron stayed afterward to help with the clean up. The only glitch was that he had a can of orange pop in his hand that he had set down for a minute. In our clean-up the pop went missing. When he came back for it. “Who tossed out my drink,” he asked? I didn’t know who. It could have been any one of us.
A few minutes later Wyona spotted Gabe, sipping pop from a can of orange drink, which she didn’t believe he had opened on his own. At least the drink had been put to good use.
When Ron’s guests were gone, Art took on the job of vacuuming the carpets in the halls. One of Shirley’s sisters swept the kitchen floor. Dishes were divided up to go back to the homes that had provided them.
A funeral does not give time for all of us to voice what it is that we loved about Shirley. I did not have time to frame one of the qualities I adored in Shirley. In fact, I still am not to the core of it. But in the course of knowing her, I saw on occasion, times when she counted on others and they let her down. Her reaction to these events is what I watched closely. Whatever it is about those hard times that Ron, might have heard, I didn’t see articulated to any who are on the circle of Shirley’s and my collective friends. I always wondered how she did that and wondered if I would be able to rise above what my reactions might have been.
I was talking this morning with Ceilidh. She said she already misses grandmother -- that the best thing about her was that after dinner, if you wanted something sugary Grandma Treleaven would always give it to you. And she would offer you many choices and then ask you how much of each choice you wanted. Ceilidh said she really loved that part about Grandmother Treleaven. Doral just had to interject, “Yes, in opposition to your grandmother who is left who only offers oranges.”
Wyona has told me a number of times since Shirley died, that at the last gathering at the Treleaven house, there was food to be ordered in for supper. Some of the family wanted to have Chinese food. Others, like Zach and Gab were more interested in cheese pizza. Shirley said, “It is grandma’s house and we will order both.”
Shirley set the bar a little high.
