Ted Schmidt, Scarborough, ON

John Dickie plays Tears tears and more tears a Lee Dorsey written by Alan Toussaint in 1969.

How appropriate to open this eulogy with music, the sound tracks of our lives, the healing balm of our journey, the apex of our elation.

Music was our instant companion from morn to night. Every night we went to dreamland with Stan Getz, Oscar Peterson, Ray Bryant and Joan’s favourite Keith Jarrett’s Blame it on my Youth.

Margaret Atwood reminds us that ‘the facts of this world seen clearly are seen through tears why tell me then there’s something wrong with my eyes’. Tears are appropriate and there have been many. Thank you for them. They lubricate our hearts, they double our joy and divide our grief.

Virgil in the Aeneid has his hero look out on the siege of Troy and the deaths of so many friends wrote ‘Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt’: the world is a world of tears, and the burdens of mortality touch the heart.

Rainer Maria Rilke wrote the greatest quote that Joan and I love: ‘love is not two people looking in on each other but two people looking out in the same direction’.

We both looked out on a world that needed care and justice. We lived in the same neighbourhood where we taught and we were often lovingly embraced by former students. I would stand back and smile at young men and women whom Joan never forgot, go wild over her…recently it was in a dentist office and a coffee shop where she could not pay for coffee. It never ended.

A Teacher Effects Eternity

We both had great desires for our students. ‘We wanted them as our hero’ Dan Berrigan stated, ‘to catch fire and burn, get more out of life then an upward ride on the golden escalator to nowhere’. The culture could be both grace-filled and toxic. Learn the difference.

Joan knew the gold from the dross. many times she would repeat our dear friend Fr. Gerry Tannam’s mantra ‘what about beauty! the surest proofs for the living God’.

Richard McBrien was so right. The central principle of Catholicism is the principle of Sacramentality. The Catholic vision sees God in and through all things, in other people, communities, movements, events, places, objects, the world at large, the whole cosmos. The visible, the tangible, the finite, the historical, all of these are actual or potential carriers of the divine presence. Indeed it is only in and through these material realities, that we can even encounter the invisible God.

What About Beauty? Look Around

The last months of her life we would walk there our well trod Birchcliff neighbourhood overlooking the lake, her leaning into me and I would remind her of things and she would laugh. I guess I plied her with laughter and great music over the years and she reciprocated with ‘your shower in the basement needs a cleaning’ or ‘you put the wrong garbage can out.’

As she got weaker on our last walks through the neighbourhood I said to her, “you gotta admit we created three great daughters.” Yes, yes.

I don’t have to say much about her. You knew her. The real thing, the better half as one friend reminded me. Ever gracious, ever kind and welcoming, a beautiful disciple, a Therese de Liseux woman the French Carmelite nun who died in 1897, a mistress of the little way, the touch, the smile, the ordinary daily encounters expressed in a spirit of love; in the small gestures she was a master painter, a beacon of holiness, making everybody feel at home. Her daily Yin complemented my Yang activity in the social sphere.

We would read the gospel every night and she had penetrating insights. I had the scholarship, she sensed the deep meaning. Many nights the synoptic sayings recorded in Matthew, Mark and Luke seemed brand new to us. Though I had taught teachers scripture for 25 years, the Jesus wisdom would often explode in her comments. We both loved this recent reading; from Luke: So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’”17:10

We never took awards and kudos very seriously because we knew everybody had gifts we needed and appreciated. Joan loved Gwendolyn Brooks: “We are each other’s business; we are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.” We also knew in the words of Barbara Kingsolver.” ‘We are our injuries as much as we are our successes.’

I finish by relaying our gratitude which we would often express, how grateful we were for such children, grandkids, great friends, too many to thank here but the outpouring of love has been overwhelming…phone calls, food, emails, knocks on the door, coffees with my local Craic members (that’s Irish for good conversation) the gift of tears and broken hearts and halting expressions of compassion all received with profound gratitude.

The Master Commanded Us

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth, where moth and rust consume, and where thieves break in and steal: but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes, and where thieves do not break in and steal: for where your treasure is, your heart will be also. Matt 6:19

My beautiful wife did not store up for herself earthen treasures, she invested her treasure in other people and in all sentient life like our local canines Smudge, Sable and Spencer.

Benjamin Disraeli commented that most people go to the grave with their music inside. Not our Joanie. She sang it daily in her lovely way. She incarnated St. Francis: Pray always and if you have to use words.

More music from our friend Canada’s ‘greatest troubadour, Jon Brooks who was coming to sing Joanie home but ran into a COVID situation. Please sing the refrain

‘Cause everybody knows if it’s not love you can’t take it when you go.’

No, we can’t take that old letter from our first lover. No, we can’t take anything unto that some great other.

Every lone sock and every diamond we can’t prove it ‘Cause everybody knows if it’s not love we can’t take it when we go We can’t take it when we go, when we go, wherever we go.

If it’s not love, we can’t take it when we go To that place where moth nor rust cannot touch us past this dust If it’s not love, we can’t take it when we go.

Thank you, thank you de profundis, thank you, megwetch. Merci boucoup, tante grazie all our work continues the great cause endures the hope never fades and the Galilean’s dream, Joanie’s dream shall never die.