Eulogy for Charmaine Gorski

Just one more time, Charmaine, in memory, one more time...   Walk boldly as you did long years ago.   Patrolling the dock at Middle Lake in Michigan, your voice rising in laughter.   I can hear you now, with your signature phrase:   “Jokes! Jokes! Jokes!” …and then upending my canoe as I paddled madly, striving in vain to get out of your reach.

Just one more time, Charmaine, in memory, one more time...   Your life was not all you could have hoped and yet, it took its place in the great tumbling kaleidoscope in which all of us live, and love, and forever try to fin our footing.
For life is but the story told
Of hearts we touch and hands we hold,
Of fleeting moments we forget—
Of fleeting moments, gone, and yet
That somehow do not fade away
But burrow in our hearts to stay,
Making a place of lasting worth--
This Garden of Needin’ we call earth.

Just one more time, Charmaine, in memory, one more time...   They all live gently on, those moments.   You welcomed me into your life the moment we met, at the house on Washington Street, as I came up the steps and in through the porch.   That welcome never faltered, even if at times you and I both did.

You were confined for years to a wheelchair and to a bed, and yet you never lost what I used to call your Charmanity.   I said it to rhyme with humanity, and I mean it.
You taught me that friendship and family and loyalty are fover.   You paid attention when I didn’t and you held on when I was letting go, and you wouldn’t let me.   You reminded me that these are the threads that bind us forever into one fabric, that make of our lives something more than alone we could ever achieve.

Just one more time, Charmaine, in memory, one more time...   There was a tree outside your window that reflected the passing of the seasons and connected you to all that lay beyond and out of reach.   You cherished the connections.   You reminded me that grace and goodness are flowers that burst from the soil where we least expect them.
For all of its heartache, the world is still a place of beauty.   The things that God has given us, like the tree outside your window, make it so.   The people that God has given us keep it so…For the beauty you kept in my life, and for not letting go, I thank you.   Go gently, dear Charmaine, dear sister, go gently to your rest.