Funeral Homily for Bridget Doreen Morrow.
These are the words (or a version of them), which I spoke at the funeral of my aunt and godmother, Bridget Doreen Morrow (Memory Eternal!). In mortal life, she was a woman of such humility that she would hate the idea of anything of her appearing on the Wide-Eyed Web. But now she is in Eternity, she will know that t'aint so bad to have a record of her goodness, for goodness sake!
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
I’d
like to thank Nicky for granting me the privilege to preside and preach today,
and Elaine and Carol and William for their part in this service. I also thank Jeff
and Liz (funeral directors), Michael (trustee) and Barbara and Simon (family)
for dealing with matters so efficiently, - Bridget’s most solemn wish.
This funeral has been well planned, with Bridget, over the years. Really, I should thank Bridget too – the unseen MC to today. Not in scale, but in planning, this funeral might be said to rival that of Baroness Thatcher. We might think of this as ‘Operation True Blue Habit’.
When, as part of that planning, I asked Bridget what she wanted from the homily, she said I should say: ‘Bridget! Bridget was… an enigma!’ and sit down.
I warned her then, as I warn you now: this is one command I will not obey. Bridget was too complicated a character for her legacy to go without comment. To take an obvious example: she always claimed that she was shy. This is not without truth (she was a Morrow). But the complication is that she was shy… until she was in company, when her curiosity, warmth, humour, and… (how to put it?) her ‘suspicion of discretion’ almost invariably won the day.
The well-planned, wholly deliberate theme of this service is transfiguration,
But also the glorification of the apparently ordinary.
Bridget lived for that glorification, and showed it in her life.
Doreen Winifred Morrow was born on 6 October 1926 to Winifred and Charles William Morrow, in Hornsea, in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Their firstborn. It is doubtful that she has ever been called Doreen Winifred. For most of her life, she had her name in religion, Bridget. And her name in the family was a corruption of Doreen – Nini.
Nini’s interest in nature was innate, and her knowledge could appear that way too. As a young child, she knew the names of trees and flowers and could recognise birdsong. And as innate was her love of music, Gilbert and Sullivan being an early favourite. Doreen trained as a teacher in Ripon, and taught eight- and nine-year-olds in various schools in the East Riding. Her speciality – and we should remember this if we are tempted to agree with her about the shyness thing – was drama.
When she left teaching, the then head teacher said: ‘if you ever want to come back, I’ll shoot someone’, to make that possible.
Probably during her training Doreen made her first visit to Ireland, to Killarney. She always remembered lying on her bed, listening with rapt attention to the folk singing coming up from the public bar below. I can tell you that even in these last days she could be roused to sing along in tribute and with relish.
Doreen was throughout a loyal daughter of the church, and always felt she had more to give. She tested her vocation with the Convent of the Holy Rood in Middlesbrough, and took life vows in the early 60s. Here, then, she became Bridget, completing a cycle of rivalry with her brother (my father), who already had the other archetypal Irish name, Patrick.
Life in the convent was blessed by a godly Mother Superior, Margaret, and Bridget thrived in the making of vestments and other embroidery. However, it also needs to be said that in these days, in the 60s and the 70s, Bridget suffered some severe depression. She was helped by a wise psychiatrist, and her own readiness to turn to poetry. She wrote fiercely, honestly and thoroughly. For a time, it looked that the order might become contemplative, which would have suited Bridget. But in the 1970s church, contemplation was not yet trendy again, and this move was resisted.
As a sister, Bridget combined her annual retreat with her holiday, staying at Marygate House, Holy Island (Lindisfarne). Here began an affair to rival that with Ireland. She was one of the first guests at this now hugely popular pilgrimage site. She was insistent that things were a lot more austere in the early days than they are now. Bridget spoke to me without any pretension of seeing the sunset from the island and remembering: ‘I lost my heart to Holy Island’.
The community moved from Middlesbrough to Sowerby in 1979, but it was not to grow there; they received no new vocations. With all due prayer and reflection, they took the unusual and courageous step of formally closing the order. The sisters were released from their vows.
Before long, Bridget settled into Mitchell House Abbeyfield, and made new friends, including her neighbour the late Earnest Myers, with whom she enjoyed many a crossword (but not to my knowledge a cross word). And throughout this time Bridget was helped by her spiritual friend, Elaine, and her friend-sponsor, Jean.
But I think this is really part of her contemplativeness.
As a true contemplative, she resisted any notion that the Son or Word of God somehow made God easy to understand, or safe. It is not that we – ever – know God well. But God knows us well, and wills by His grace, to be in our company.
You will have your own stories of when Bridget was herself transfigured, caught up in glory. I’d number:
- painting Easter eggs on Holy Island;
- dancing and singing along to a final song in synagogue;
- marvelling at the miles and miles of fuchsia in Clonakilty in the West of Ireland.
- I’d also include these last days, and her preparing herself for death with calmness, curiosity and her matter-of-fact way.
Beware of the tramcars coming down the street.
Beware of the people you don’t want to meet.
But go into the wild woods and gather flowers there.
It is lovely in the wild woods when primroses appear.
If you go into the wild woods when daffodils are out,
You’ll find a lot of other flowers a-growing all about.
The dainty little primrose and the little violet too,
You’ll find them all a-reaching towards the sky so blue.
And this seventy-odd-year-old eight-year-old told me what happened after she recited this original work in class. She was prodded in the back by the girl behind, who said accusingly: ‘I’ve heard that before’. But she hadn’t. It was Bridget’s own transfiguration. Then, at eight years old. Then at seventy-something. And now, as we might say that she shares this memory with us again.
It is all transfiguration. What she said towards the end of her life holds good for the whole of her life: ‘My prayer is really looking. Seeing beauty brings prayer.’
Someone once said there is a difference between a good person and a holy person. In the presence of a good person, the rest of us feel bad about ourselves. In the presence of a holy person, however, the rest of us feel better about ourselves. Holiness is always encouraging, and always generous.
I think I am going to stop just short of claiming Bridget as a holy person. (I say again that she was a Morrow!) But I am going to say that she was always oriented towards that holiness. As people have insisted in these last days: ‘she was real’, ‘she was alive/so alive/fully alive’. And so, for the vast majority of us, on the vast majority of occasions, we left an encounter with Bridget feeling better about ourselves, our world, our life, and its capacity to bear humour, certainly, and glory too… to be transfigured.
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