"This is the day the Lord has made.
  Let us rejoice and be glad in it."

        -- Ps. 117:24

Life at times seems a series of good-byes, of departures:

We leave the first home we knew, our mother's womb.
We leave the breasts we sucked.
We leave the childhood we knew.
We leave the house we loved.
And all the leavings were both sadness and joy.

And yet, for the Christian, joy is surpassing. We are destined for great things to come if we are willing to believe in them and show our belief one way or other.

And Mary Essie Mae Leak Boone surely showed it in the way she lived.  She took a vow and she kept it. Everyone who has ever made a vow knows how hard it can be. We fault no one, for we know how it is, but are all the more joyful when someone in the grace of God can fulfill it -- for better and for worse, in sickness and in health, richer or poorer, till death do us part. Words easily spoken when you are young and naive. Could she have known? Could she see down the road? And yet, she kept the word and nursed her love through decades of debilitating disease. With ten children. Talk to me of love. Tell me of dedication. I'll tell you more.

The monks have had Boones for neighbors for a long time, north and south. Andy to the north, great friend of Fr. Louis, Thomas Merton. And his brother, David Boone to the south, with whom we had more to deal.

Essie Mae worked years as chef and hostess in our Family Guest House. So she came to know the monks and their families.

And she wore well. She had staying power. She had character.

Nor was that all. In early Fall, a huge semi- would back up to the Boone house loaded with calendars and fruitcake/cheese brochures to be stuffed into envelopes and sealed. The Boone kids learned the joys of humble labor at the hands of a good teacher -- their mother.

The Nolan who has worked for us since his teens told me that he never knew his father as a working man. He was already that far into Parkinson's. Yet that elder Boone knew how to work in his day. He sure did. The sons, not to say the daughters, prove as much. They were good neighbors. They got to know us. And still loved us. Is not that the essence of a good neighbor?

She leaves a treasure to her ten children and her thirty-two grandchildren and ten great grandchildren. Not in wealth, but in the real wealth of virtue. How grateful you should be!

Do give thanks to God. Shed tears at her passing -- who could help it?   But let those tears be graced with thanks to God for a great woman. Maybe that will move God to send us more of them.

Rest in peace, Essie Mae. Yet I wish you more than peace. I pray you eternal rapture in the Bosom of God's Love. Pray do not forget the rest of us on our way.    Amen.