31 NOVEMBER 2023
A funeral Mass was celebrated for Mildred Birzer at Saint Joseph Catholic Church in Ellinwood by her pastor, Father Terrance Klein. Mildred had been a parishioner for seventy years.
If We Could See Down That Aisle |
Mildred Birzer |
Father Terrance Klein |
31.VIII.2023 St Joseph |
Wisdom 3: 1-9 1st John 3: 1-2 Matthew 11: 25-30
A life’s been well lived when loved ones can’t recall the deceased without breaking into smiles and laughter. Mildred has garnered a lot of both. She lived a good life!
Yes, some of the laughter dealt with her dementia. My favorite anecdote is when Mildred moved to Countryside Living. A few hours later she called up Kathy to bail her out, that she had been arrested. Not long after that, we were working a jigsaw puzzle together. Mildred looked right and left, leaned in, and whispered to me, “the other inmates are trying to poison me. I also glanced about, leaned in, and said, “Let’s not bother Kathy unless you get shanked.”
Mildred could give others the Dickens, but she could do some of that even before the onset of the illness. Yet in reviewing her life, there was so much to savor and to smile about. Steve mentioned several times that his mother made the best fried chicken. He double checked to make sure that I had written that down. “Really, I’m telling you, her fried chicken was to die for,” he said. Of course, think how many times Mildred made fried chicken, and for how many people!
None of us can do justice to a life with the few words we offer in review. Why, we can’t even imagine how much fried chicken, how many loaves of bread Mildred baked! How many fruits and vegetables she canned. How many quilts she made. How many gifts she crocheted.
And we don’t want to reduce the life of a mother to the menial. Mildred was a bright woman. Playing Bridge and watching Jeopardy say as much. Visiting Mildred, you realized how aware she was of what was happening in her family, and in her town and parish. Mildred came with strong opinions, but most smart people do. I also know how deeply she worried about her family, especially when one of them was ill.
I wonder. If any of us could have seen all that would follow, would we have been able to march down that church aisle and pronounce the vows we did for our vocations? Mildred did that so confidently at Saints Peter and Paul on the 22nd of May 1952. Born and raised in southeast Kansas, she had come to Ellinwood to work as a nanny. Mildred met Jerome while purchasing eggs for the family at the Birzer farm.
Within a short time there would be seven Birzers in two bedrooms, under a very small roof on East 2nd. That’s easy enough to recall. Try living it! Finances keep getting tighter for most of us, but few of us can remember, much less imagine, what raising a large family was like when Mildred and Jerome did it. How frugal one had to be.
But that’s where all those rosaries came in. Again, who can count how many of them Mildred prayed? In retirement, she was saying three a day. But that’s how a life in the Lord is made. You fall in love, you take your vows, and then you watch as more days and more demands pass than anyone can count.
As gold in the furnace, he proved them,
And as sacrificial offerings he took them to himself.
But during all that, if we even have time to look up, something is coming to be: our identity before the Lord: the person we will forever be in his presence.
Beloved, we are God’s children now;
what we shall be has not yet been revealed.
We do know that when it is revealed
we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
But with all this talk about life and its demands, don’t forget that we began by acknowledging the joy. Remember all those card games and the bowling. Think of Mildred, for her ninetieth birthday, going to see the Royals play ball. Mildred loved all her birthdays because her family gathered around her for them.
Mildred was someone who could look up, who took stock of who she was and where she was going. She often spoke of her goal of hitting the hundred-year mark. These past few weeks, she more than once said that she had met that goal. Maybe that was Mildred’s way of saying that she realized that she had travelled far enough, that enough small, daily acts of love had been performed. She had become the person she was meant to be. She was ready to go to her Lord. That’s the only date on the calendar that truly counts. Will we be found ready? A couple of weeks ago, in the wake of her second hip surgery, Sister Rita asked Mildred if she was ready. Mildred said “yes.”
Yes, she was ready. Mildred was always ready for whatever the Lord sent her way. Like the rest of us, she could never have seen all that would come her way when she marched down that aisle at Saints Peter and Paul, but Mildred knew who was waiting for her at the end of it. Yes, Jerome but, in a way, all those kids and grandkids. And most of all, her Lord Jesus, the one who created her, redeemed her, and gave her the life she lived so well among us.
Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened,
And I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me
For I am meek and humble of heart;
And you will find rest for yourselves.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.
Last trip down the aisle, Mildred. Your work is done, and in its doing you have become who you were meant to be in the Lord. You’ve more than reached the age of one hundred. You’ve earned your spot in eternity, next to your loved ones and your Lord.
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