Poems, Praise, and Song for Jane at Her Memorial Service and Reception, Feb. 4, 2012

The Gift

Weary and travel worn, we topped the hill
And there below us lay a vast flowering orchard.
The glory of its white perfection brought tears.

~ Jane Emery, from her dream on January 24, 2007

79

Born at the end of World War I, she became, burning
With a gem-like (opal) flame, a Flaming Youth,
Unquenched by the Depression when it came—truth
To tell, she has always been unquenched, turning
And turning from the frightening spears
And arrows of misfortune. Always the opal
Burned through years of peace, and no less brightly
through the years
And years of war. She found that hope will
Never flicker out nor faith fade where true love rules.

Her quiver arrow-full, she stormed the schools,
And opal turned to diamond. And now,
As near as may be to a full four-score,
She flames brightly (who knows how?)
As once she did at forty, thirty, twenty-four.

And somewhere there’s an academic person
Who’ll think it meet to write an academic verse on
Her well-lit life, which he’ll entitle (will the joke be heeded?
Yes, by pedants.): The Light That Has Succeeded.

~ Clark Mixon Emery, August 27, 1996

On Her Journey
On the Occasion of the 80th Birthday of Alice Jane Dailey Novak Emery

An insistent explorer, bright-eyed,
She has cut her passage through many territories—
Buffeted by life’s whim into drowsy Southern towns,
Driven by restless intelligence into edgy Chicago seminars,
Challenged by the rough waters of children, marriages, pain, chance—
Always an alert explorer, sharp-eyed.

Her journey crosses continents, cultures, generations, paradigms,
Demanding that she know what to jettison, what to hold fast.
Blessed with a fine wit,
Charmed with an uncanny memory,
Armed with more gifts than the dazzled natives can ever exhaust,
She moves on,
With her great provision—faith.
An intrepid explorer, clear-eyed.

And at the moments that frighten most voyagers—
The entrance, the transition, the crossing—
She takes heart,
Invigorating all in her party,
Calling attention to the changing sky, the second wind,
The uncharted landscape ahead.

And those beloved surrounding her
Rise to share in the next discovery of
The spirited explorer, bright-eyed.

~ Clare Christine Novak, August 27, 1997

“Here, Here!”: A Eulogy for Alice Jane Dailey Novak Emery

In her last years, my mother would answer the phone like this: “Hello! Hello!” So I say to all of you: Hello! Hello!

I am Jane’s daughter Kay and these are my cousins—Beth, Julie, John, and Stowe—representing for the Novak and Dailey families.

Now, my mother always wanted the class to participate, so as I give this eulogy, there is a part of you. At certain points along the way, I will signal you like this, and we will say all together, “Here, here!” as they do in the British Parliament.

Jane was a great Anglophile, and when I told her about this, she loved it.

And now I give you 8 Things We Can Do in Memory of Jane.

1. Be strong.

When Alice Jane Dailey was born, she was a tiny premature baby and was not expected to live. But from the beginning, Jane’s will to live was strong, and although she might comment if the duck was too dry, she faced the real trials of her life with valor.

So for Jane the gallant, Jane the survivor, we say, “Here, here!”

2. Have dessert.

Jane’s love of hard work was intense, and she went into each day with a list of what she meant to accomplish. But Jane had an equally intense drive to experience and enjoy all that is good and beautiful in life: opera, Paris, crème brûlée, the tree outside her window, a martini. This was a girl who never missed the party, and at the end of her life, she was eating fudge.

So for Jane’s boundless joie de vivre, we say, “Here, here!”

3. Read a book.

When Jane was a little girl, her parents gave her a beautifully bound set of books titled “Journeys through Book Land,” and so her journey through Book Land began. She had a brilliant mind and went on to become an illustrious scholar, author, lecturer, and poet. Teaching was her grand passion, and true to form, she taught a marvelous class while she was in hospice care.

So for Jane’s long and storied Journey through Book Land, we say, “Here, here!”

4. Put on a good show.

Jane was fashionable and chic in every era and at every age. Her vitality and vibrant personality were magnetic.

And let’s face it: Jane was a world-class flirt! She flirted with everyone from British aristos to little babies, and was especially flirtatious with waiters, doctors, paramedics, and firemen.

My uncle Paul Novak nailed it when he said to me, “Kid, your mother is a classy dame.” So, for Jane the classy dame, we say, “Here, here!”

5. Root for the underdog.

Jane was a fiery Democrat who always took the side of the poor, the oppressed, the immigrant seeking a better life. She believed that God calls us to serve others and was still volunteering long past the point when she needed a volunteer herself.

So for Jane’s great compassionate heart, we say, “Here, here!”

6. Love your family.

For better and for worse, in sickness and in health, Jane was married for 70 years of her life, first to my father, Tabor Novak, and then to Clark Emery. Both of her husbands were not only handsome, intelligent, and hilariously funny; they were romantic, excellent cooks, and spoiled her rotten. Great taste in men!

As a mother, J raised a nurse, an attorney, a social worker, and a minister (who is also an editor) who all married good people, and gave her 8 grandchildren and 2 great-grand-children. All of us loved her!

So for J the heart of our family, we say, “Here, here!”

7. Make a friend.

This room is full of Jane’s friends, and her friends were the great treasure of her life. I’m sure you’d agree that she had an uncanny ability to remember everything you ever told her about your life and a gift for cheering us on. She would say that she was blessed by all that you did for her.

So for Jane, whose motto was “Only connect,” we say, “Here, here!”

8. Put God at the center of your life and live in thanksgiving.

When we were children, my mother would say in a strong voice, “This is the day that the Lord hath made. We will rejoice and be glad in it!” It was clear to me that my mother was in conversation with God every day and that her life was illuminated by her faith. I cannot say that Jane has gone to meet her maker because, in fact, they were old friends.

So in thanksgiving for Jane and her long, remarkable life, we say, “Here, here!”

~ Kay Novak Burnett

The Force of Nature

I want to read a poem for Jane. She loved poetry and loved to have it read—especially by Clark. If this memorial turns out to be a kind of poetry reading, that will be fine with Jane. But let me say a word about why I chose this poem.

I have often heard Jane called, affectionately, a force of nature in a marveling attempt to catch her energy and drive and love of life, and I have called her a force of nature myself. But I think that, while embracing that epithet, she would have amended and extended it. The better I got to know Jane over the years, the more forcibly I was struck and moved by the depth of her faith, by her sacramental sense that all forms of life were animated by spirit, and most particularly that the human spirit was animated by Spirit. The Incarnation is the central mystery of Christian faith because it says that God’s becoming human in the person of Jesus is an all-inclusive manifestation that all creation, in its myriad forms of life, is an incarnate manifestation of the inspiriting Creator.

This sonnet by Gerard Manley Hopkins expresses that conviction powerfully. The first part of the sonnet starts with the flash of the kingfisher’s wings and the dragonfly’s wings in the sunlight and goes on, with other natural images, to say that “each mortal thing” is itself, selves itself, manifests its particular inner nature by being and doing, by being itself and doing what it by its nature does. The force of nature. But then the second part of the sonnet goes on to extend and deepen that perception of the force of nature into a perception of the power of grace. Each person manifests—in and through his or her unique being and individual character and particular doing—the indwelling of Spirit, the incarnation of Jesus, so that each person’s face, without losing its individuality, indeed precisely through the manifestation of that individuality, reveals the face of Christ. Here is how Hopkins unfolds that mystery.

So, Jane, this poem is for you and about you, and about all of us.

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.

I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.

~ Albert Gelpi

A Tribute to Jane

As Al has said, Jane had a deep and intense love of life with which she deepened and intensified the lives of all those around her, myself among them. It seems almost paradoxical, then, for me to say that the most important lessons that Jane, that admirable teacher, taught me had everything to do with death.

Death is, one might say, the Platonic essence or form of loss since through it we lose our very dearest treasure, our body. But before that moment, in a life so blessedly long as Jane’s, there come years of earlier losses, little deaths: loss of vision, for instance, and of mobility; an attendant loss of one’s own home and of many possessions when one needs added care; loss of dear friends, of family members, and of a spouse whose being is entwined in one’s own. I saw Jane experience all of these. Her intense love of life made them all the more painful, and she used all her very considerable powers of language in expressing that pain. But even while she did that—as she got “out there” how intolerable she found her situation—she was making interior adaptations, rebuilding from what could be salvaged, and making life new. Her secret ingredient in creating this transformation was gratitude and its result, joy. (That gratitude rightly had as its main focus the loving help and support she received constantly from her devoted children and grandchildren.)

In the last months of her life, as Jane grew aware that her ultimate loss was impending, she mentioned to me several times that she was not afraid of dying, and, while believing in life after death, she was not filled with foreboding about what that state might be. At the same time, she had very little patience with imaginings about “the kingdom of heaven.” She was reading a book about heaven, mostly, I think, for the pleasure it gave her to dismiss ideas that the afterlife consists of—I think I’m close to her words here—“great sex and good martinis.” That, however, could only be a negative pleasure. She took positive hope from a sense of death as entrance into a new kind of participation in the loving energy that created this mundane life she had so fully enjoyed.

Well, the chance to talk can never be long enough—it is always broken off in mid-sentence. And I felt that particularly when, only shortly after Jane’s death, I came across a poem that I had never seen before drawn from Saint Augustine’s Sermon 362:

All shall be Amen and Alleluia.
We shall rest and we shall see,
We shall see and we shall know,
We shall know and we shall love,
We shall love and we shall praise.
Behold our end which is no end.

I tell you, that great amen and alleluia is the stronger for Jane’s participation in it.

~ Barbara Charlesworth Gelpi

A Song for Lucky Jane

We know her as Alice Jane
Dailey Novak Emery,
Brave explorer and life lover,
She was lucky, so said she.

Oh, Lucky Jane,
She was anything but plain.
Raise your voices, sing with me,
Jane was lucky,
So are we.

Today we celebrate her spirit
Joy, thanksgiving, hope, and faith.
Lucky us who got to know her,
Friends and kin of dear ole J.

Oh, Lucky Jane,
Rise above and don’t complain.
All who knew her will agree:
Jane was lucky,
So are we.

Wife and mother, friend and teacher,
Scarves and hats and jewelry,
Balloons and books, a brilliant noodle,
Song and dance and poetry.

Oh, Lucky Jane,
“What’s the plan?” was her refrain.
Now she knows ‘cause she is free,
Jane is lucky,
So are we.

Bet she’s looking down from heaven,
Smiling as we sing this song.
Feel her spirit in our voices,
And you’ll hear her sing along:

Oh, Lucky Jane,
Wish you were here to raise your cane!
Ride the river to the sea,
And know you’re lucky,
So are we.

Now that Jane’s made her ascension,
It’s up to us to ring the bell.
Remember “Love’s paying attention,”
And in the end “All will be well.”
In the end “All will be well.”

(Slowly)
Oh, Lucky Jane,
Her lovin’ smile will long remain.
Raise your voices, sing with me:
Jane was lucky.
Yes, siree!

Jane is lucky,
So are we!

© 2012 Stowe Dailey Shockey