May 9, 2015
Funeral for Dorothy Mae Savacool
Funeral for Dorothy Mae Savacool
May the words of my mouth and the
meditations of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight O Lord, our rock and our
redeemer!! AMEN!!
Let us pray! Heavenly Father, today we mourn the death of
Your child Dorothy. At her baptism You through
Water and Word promised her entrance into eternal life. Today You have made good on that
promise. Enable each of us today to hear
Your Word and be comforted by the salve of the Gospel. For Your Word shares the message of salvation
and eternal life for all of mankind, but today for Dorothy and one day for each
of us who gather here to say goodbye.
AMEN.
Imagine if you will the canvas of
life that if hung on a wall, would include every event, every encounter and
every episode of our lives. Until today
the canvas of Dorothy’s life was incomplete.
Like all the puzzles that Dorothy loved to put together, the picture
wasn’t perfect, the job wasn’t done and the painting of her life wasn’t fully complete. But today, the final piece of the puzzle is
ready.
Today we gather to see the
pictures and hear the stories of Dorothy’s meticulous nature, her tenacious
appetite for winning and her stubbornness even in the face of logic. But that was Dorothy. Whether it was working on the porcelain dolls
and insuring every step in the process was completed properly and
perfectly. From pouring the molds,
firing the piece in the kiln, glazing them and re-firing the piece and making
sure they were perfect. To even their
placement in her shop and apartment and the deeply engrained warning and even
unspoken fear everyone understood simply stated “do not touch”. Dorothy loved working with her hands and took
great pride in creating works of beauty we have before us today.
Or her tenacious appetite for
winning, whether it was her beloved Bronco’s and every player including Rick
Upchurch, AKA “Upchuck”. To her ability
to pick up the spare in bowling even if it was a 7-10 split. Or changing the game that was being played,
whether Pinochle, Pitch and even Poker, because Dorothy didn’t like to lose. Dorothy was unique.
But Dorothy’s stubbornness and unique
nature was a gift from God that was formed in her mother’s womb and experienced
by each of us. There were days that we
shook our head at her nature. Whether it
was when we continuously changed the toilet roll, after she had, and finally even
super glued it. But it was very clear,
like a painting, what you saw was what you got.
Even when you would get the ‘silent treatment’, for an argument over
cards. Yet in the silence, we have today
in our loss of Dorothy we can find solace.
Our solace can come not from who
Dorothy was that we experienced, but Whose Dorothy was, God’s redeemed child of
God. The solace we can find comes none
other than from God. We can find solace,
simply because of one image that I believe Dorothy as a good catholic
emulated. It is none other than the one
image that daily I believe she did without fail, because of her belief in God
and His promises to her of eternal life and salvation through Jesus Christ that
she was baptized into by Water and Word.
When I was in seminary, we would
have retreats at an Old Catholic monastery that overlooked Niagara Falls. On one visit I bought something my family
still has today in our bathroom. Simply
it is a glow in the dark set of hands.
It is an ordinary set of hands, but has for us today a divine and
comforting explanation. The hands are
representative of the need and necessity we have of praying daily for the
people we love. And I firmly believe Dorothy
prayed daily. When she would hold her
rosary and pray the Our Father, she would lift up in her prayers to her Lord
and Savior the family God had given her in the firm belief that God’s gift of
family was His gift to her.
Even though it took years for her
to understand and even accept God’s gift of family. As well the true understanding that people
loved her and cared for and about her.
God through teaching Dorothy to pray the Our Father and the Rosary was
melting her heart through the prayers and preparing her for today. For what God was preparing was the
fulfillment of the promise He made to her in her baptism, entrance into eternal
life. For it is God Who through His Son
Jesus Christ forgave Dorothy of her sin, even her desire to have things like a
poinsettia. But God also today completes
the canvas of her life with the final piece.
The final piece of the puzzle is
now affixed in its perfect and proper place.
The dolls that she crafted with her own hands and cared for and loved
find new homes with her grandchildren and are placed in places of honor,
respect and possibly ‘no touch zones’.
And now the woman with the “Betty Boop” tattoo rests comfortably in her
Lord and Saviors arms, praying with Him the prayer that He taught all of us. And all of this only occurs, because of God’s
love for Dorothy and for each of us, through God’s Son, Jesus Christ.
You see the final piece that is
affixed today into the tapestry of Dororthy’s life is a display, not of what
might have or did hurt us, but of what God did for Dorothy on the Cross of
Calvary. It is the display of
forgiveness found in and for all of us by Jesus Christ. And today we celebrate this forgiveness, even
for stubborn, long to hold a grudge, Dorothy, because she was baptized into
Jesus Christ, life, His death on Calvary and His resurrection. May we be comforted not only by the
forgiveness all of us find in Jesus Christ, but especially in the final piece
of Dorothy’s puzzle, the prayer He taught His disciples and that Dorothy now
prays with Him in His arms remembering all of us gathered here to say
goodbye. AMEN.
Let’s join in that prayer that
Jesus taught us.
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