Today, I attended the funeral of Jeanne Fox Eason, a beautiful woman who lived an extraordinary life by anyone’s definition. Mrs. Eason was 93-years-old when she joined her beloved husband, Warren, in Heaven last month, and the stories told this morning read like a magnificent novel set in the 1940’s.

What Dreams Are Made Of

Close your eyes for a moment and imagine: Corpus Christi, Texas, WWII. A lovely young Navy WAVE Link Instructor is teaching instrument navigation to student pilots. It’s there that she meets a handsome young naval pilot who will become her husband of 63 years.

Mrs. Eason was one of the ladies who lived with my mom at Eason House. In fact, the house was inspired by and named for Dr. and Mrs. Eason, and their memory will live on in that very special place forever more.

A Special Poem

The following poem was read during the memorial service, and I found it very moving. Just as a gift cannot be “ungiven,” nor can the memories of our loved ones be unraveled, for they are so deeply interwoven into the fabric of our own hearts…

All Souls, by May Sarton
Did someone say that there would be an end,
an end, Oh, an end to love and mourning?
What has been once so interwoven cannot be raveled,
not the gift ungiven.
Now the dead move through all of us still glowing.
Mother and child, lover and lover mated,
are wound and bound together and enflowing.
What has been plaited cannot be unplaited–
only the strands grow richer with each loss
and memory makes kings and queens of us.
Dark into light, light into darkness, spin.
When all the birds have flow to some real haven,
we who find shelter in the warmth within,
listen and feel new-cherished, new-forgiven,
as the lost human voices speak through us and blend our complex love,
our mourning without end.