EMM 1958-2022

Posted on by albrooke

I’m Al Brooke, from Jacksonville, one of Ellen’s “cousins-in-law.” I’m married to Katherine Davis Brooke, the oldest of the Davis sisters.

—

Ellen Melinda Morgan Lefevre had a hard life.

In the last ten days Katherine and I have caught ourselves over and over saying “poor Ellen,” and really she did suffer much over the years.

Ellen grew up in Kerhonkson, NY, as an only child just across the road from the big Davis family farm and the four children — Katherine, Holly, Margaret, and Peter. While she was in the big family, there was also a sense in which she wasn’t completely in the joyful and chaotic Davis clan.

Her mother was a large personality, and her father, much older than her mom, was an — eccentric — personality. It was, in some ways, a difficult childhood.

Around her high-school graduation in the mid-seventies she was diagnosed with type-1 diabetes, a chronic incurable condition in which her pancreas would not produce sufficient insulin. It was not a death sentence, but it changed the way she would live for the rest of her life.

After college, she moved to Connecticut and lived with Katherine for almost two years. They found a wonderful church and Ellen had a good job with The Hartford insurance company. When Katherine moved to Texas for school, Ellen remained in Hartford.

She remained on her own in Hartford until the mid-nineties. Early in the nineties her father passed away, and then the next year, surprisingly, her much younger mother died of a sudden stroke and fall.

In those years before remote work, there was no option to move back to New York, so in short order Ellen had to ready her parents’ house for rental and had to return to Hartford and her job.

Having moved all of the beloved family heirlooms to Connecticut, Ellen’s apartment suffered a fire which destroyed everything she had kept. Furniture, pictures, everything.

In the late nineties, Ellen moved to Atlanta and married, but her husband left in just a few years. Still, she continued to work in the insurance industry and loved her work and her church.

Without her own family, she still had her cousins and importantly her uncle Phil, who made sure she was included in all of the Davis family events, and took her on several trips as well.

As the years passed, Ellen suffered repeated — and increasingly severe — health issues, and in 2015, she lost her foot to diabetes. A couple of years later she suffered her second amputation, and had to retire from her job, which she had loved.

In 2019 she had to begin dialysis — kidney failure is a major risk for diabetics — a painful burden. She continued dialysis until last month.

So you can see that Ellen “had a hard life,” and you can see why Katherine and I found ourselves thinking “poor Ellen.”

But . . . .

The apostle Paul wrote: “. . . we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. . . . we do not lose heart.” 2 Corinthians 4:7-10, 16a.

That was Ellen, wasn’t it? She did not lose heart, but was amazingly resilient and cheerful, considering what she was experiencing. She lived what she believed. And continuing in the same passage “Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” 2 Corinthians 4: 16b-18.

Ellen believed that, absolutely.

Ellen had joy in this life, particularly in her friends, and family, and church. She spent her days in hospice visiting and talking, praying and singing, with all those who were important to her, including many she had not seen in years.

Ellen saw what she was living through as a “light, momentary affliction” which was preparing her for “an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.”

When her preparation was complete, she left the clay vessel that was her body and stepped through the gate of heaven where she has now been robed in an “eternal weight of [Jesus’] glory.”

This life does not compare. She was not “poor” — she is “rich”!

Would that we may learn Paul’s lesson through Ellen’s life, that we might live faithfully in this transient world in preparation for that which is eternal.

RLW 1947-2017

Posted on by albrooke

Robert Wears was my friend.

I am sorry, I know most of you called him “Bob,” but I met him through his wife Diane, and to me he was always “Robert.” With my wife Katherine, we four were members of a book club for the last 20-plus years. We have met more or less monthly, and read well over 200 books together.

I did not know him in his professional life, I was not a member of his family, we shared no school ties, we did not go to the same church. I interacted with him medically only once, and in that moment, as he visited me in the hospital before my abdominal surgery, he gave me permission and I threw up on him. Continue reading RLW 1947-2017

PHD 1925-2016

Posted on by albrooke

G R A V E S I D E     S E R V I C E

Philip Herman Davis
October 13, 1925 — October 14, 2016
2:00 pm, October 22, 2016
Pine Bush Cemetery, Kerhonkson, New York

I think Grandpa would like it if we started with Scripture, and here the Scripture states the problem we face, from the difficult and troubling book of Ecclesiastes.

The writer of Ecclesiastes is called Qoheleth, “The Preacher.” The Preacher says:

A good name is better than a good ointment,
And the day of one’s death is better than the day of one’s birth.

It is better to go to a house of mourning
Than to go to a house of feasting,
Because that is the end of every man,
And the living takes it to heart.

Ecclesiastes 7:1-2.  It is better to go to a funeral than a wedding reception!

We stand here with the body of a man with a good name, who was held in good repute in his community, yet who lived in deep humility.  To have a good name when you die is a wonderful blessing — it leads to this group standing and considering Philip Herman Davis’s life and legacy, and speaking about him in the memorial service at 4:00.

And Grandpa would have wanted us to take to heart the reality of his death.

But this is not the last word.  

Grandpa would want us to take to heart the reality of our own deaths.

Someday some will stand at a grave for you, and consider your name and your life.  Perhaps it will be a large family like this one.  Maybe it will just be one or two acquaintances.  But your body will probably be in a container to be placed in the ground, with a word from a son-in-law or someone who knew you.

But that will not be the last word.

The end of Ecclesiastes states:

The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil.

Ecclesiastes 12:13-14.  And that is frightening, or should be, for each of us have done countless things for which we would prefer not to be judged.  We would far rather have some of the choices we have made and things we have done and words we have said be dropped from consideration, or treated as mere rehearsal or simply overlooked.  We want to cry out, “Please, measure us by our best choices.”

But Ecclesiastes says “God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil.”

And yet still, that is not the last word.

Jesus, when he had come to show us what God is truly like, showed both compassion and judgment, and taught and acted out a life of righteousness in joy and sorrow,
pleasure and pain, triumph and tragedy, but at the end of his short life he prayed this prayer:

Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

Luke 23:34.  And by this he did not mean that his executioners did not understand what they were doing, but that they were ignorant, and misled and deceived and Jesus asked his Father to let the punishment fall on him instead of them.

Paul said it like this:

For while we were still weak, at the right time [Jesus] died for [] ungodly [people like us].  For [hardly anyone would] die for a righteous person . . .  but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, [Jesus] died for us. . . . [We] have now been justified by [Jesus’] blood, [and certainly] saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.

Romans 5:6-10.  “Weak,” “ungodly,” “enemies.”  That’s who we are, and honestly, that’s who Philip Herman Davis was.

He would not have denied it.

But 36 years ago, in June 1980, he was reconciled to God by what Jesus did when Jesus died.  Jesus saved Grandpa from God’s judgment on his life.  Thereafter, God would judge Grandpa’s life on the basis of Jesus’ righteousness, not on the basis of Grandpa’s own righteousness.

At the end of his life — but just (mercifully) in the last couple of months of his life — Grandpa felt his body failing him.  He might have felt like Paul did, knowing he was near the end, when he wrote his protégé, Timothy:

I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing.

2 Timothy 4:6-8.

And from where I stand, I completely believe that Grandpa

fought the good fight, . . .

finished the course, . . .

kept the faith . . . .

And so I believe that when Grandpa stepped across the threshold from this life, and
as he slipped out of this body that we are burying today, and when he left this earth on (as we reckon it) October 14, 2016, he heard these words:

Well done, good and faithful servant.
You have been faithful over a little;
I will set you over much.
Enter into the joy of your master.

Matthew 25:21.

And that is the last word.

May we each consider these things and live so as to hear those very words when we ourselves meet the Judge of every man and woman.