Rejoice in the Lord always!

15th April 2011   ·   0 Comments

By Fr. Jerome LeDoux

Contributing Writer

As the moon was moving into its last quarter on March 25, Frank Norvel received a call from his stepmother in San Antonio. “Yes, I’ve been sick for a long time,” Leona said, “but now that I’m getting better, I’m going to take me a long trip!” That chat meandered on for some 45 minutes while Leona seized and held on to the center stage.

“I couldn’t get her off the line!” Frank protested several times.  “She kept talking on and on about everything. There was no stopping her.”

It seems that Leona sensed something that Frank was unable to divine. Perhaps driven by premonition and intuition, she kept talking, holding Frank on the line as if she would have no further occasions or opportunities to hold a conversation with him or to say to him anything more about life’s issues both vital and trivial.

In an abrupt turn of events, Frank had hardly hung up when the phone rang again. It was a call from the hospital saying that Leona had coded blue and seemed to be on her way out. Indeed, within minutes the doctors and nurses confirmed that she had expired.

“She died on the same date as my mother did,” Frank observed with deep emotion.

There was no question about whether I would journey to San Antonio for the funeral. Moved by Mike and Marie Barks who planned to attend the funeral, I was able to cobble together a schedule that would allow me to attend as well. As it turned out, Mike would do the chauffeur honors while Marie and I would be the fellow travelers.

As we tooled down I-35W South on a particularly beautiful spring afternoon, we spoke about nearly everything under the sun, although our conversation did not wander far away from Leona’s and Frank’s dramatic final 45 minutes on the phone.

Further, our road talk did not deviate much from the previous Sunday’s conversation of Jesus with the Samaritan woman at the well where Jesus asked for a drink of water in order to enkindle her desire for the living water that would slake her thirst forever. Yes, instead, that living water would become a well springing forth to eternal life.

Nor did we overlook the account of the dazzling Transfiguration of Jesus before Peter, James and John the Sunday before that. Those power stories plus Rejoicing Sunday keyed into our mission of prayer, compassion, empathy and support of a church member.

Without specifically referencing those accounts, the general tenor of our conversation kept returning to them, even amid the spices of life stories and occasional jokes. Truth to tell, we were a merry threesome, despite the heaviness of our mission and purpose.

In fact, the still-haunting theme of “The storm is passing over” was still there, whether in Japan, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Somalia or right here in San Antonio. The storm is passing over individuals like us, troubled countries and even whole continents.

It was on Marie’s mind the day before Leona died, when we hosted the Young, Gifted and Black (YGB) Grinnell College choir here at our church. “They sang your song,” she noted as our OMM choir sang “The Storm Is Passing Over” and two other hymns.

A bit farther down the highway, that same storm was echoed again as Marie asked, “How is Sandra? Sandra Gordon, that is?”

“She has been under great heaviness, but she is communicating better,” I remarked. Then, to make sure both she and Mike remembered the details, I continued,  “Losing her daughter Tyra at 36 years of age was terribly traumatic. Losing one’s daughter is about as tough as it gets in life, especially when one’s child is only in the early summer of life.”

Frank and his family members were visibly cheered to see reinforcements come in from out of town. Kith and kin among the Norvels were going out of their way to support one another, while we served as backups around the house and later in church.

The Rev. Robert Jemerson, Leona Norvel’s pastor, was in charge of her homegoing services in the Second Baptist Church. As we were about to enter the church, he pounded me on the shoulder from behind, saying “LeDoux!” in a strong, firm voice. “Your brother (Col. Louis Verlin LeDoux) and I were chaplains together in the U.S. Air Force!”

His memories about my elder priest brother were clearly pleasant, although he assured me that he gave my brother a hard time by constantly dragging for him. His mention of my brother from the pulpit helped to put the homegoing ceremony in a lighter setting.

“The storm is passing over” had become a thing of the past as Pastor Jemerson put emphasis on Leona’s entrance into the Land of No More as we read in Revelation 21:4, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or mourning, wailing or pain, for the old order has passed away.”

Definitely beloved by her family, neighbors, faith family and friends, Leona was given a resoundingly beautiful sendoff. It made her family and everyone else feel good to hear how well she had served everyone else and how much she was esteemed by all in return. At 84 years and holding forever, Leona inspires us to carry on as Christian soldiers.

At the funeral repast, we got to know one another a bit, including our introduction to the close-knit, amazingly strong neighborhood friends who were always there for each other. They were heavily into family, faith, work, sports and good cooking.

On our way back to Fort Worth, I was honored to be interviewed by Mrs. Kathryn Crawford, a sociology major in African-American Studies.  As the first stage of the Pony Express, Mike and Marie dropped me off at Mimi’s Restaurant in Round Rock where I could be grilled about St.  Augustine Church and related matters in New Orleans.

After a couple of hours, Frank and Kay Norvel, the second stage of the Pony Express, scooped me up and the three of us continued on to Forth Worth. That gave us time to reminisce a bit with Frank about his precious years with Leona whom he had served well, never hesitating to make the estimated four-hour drive to San Antonio to help her.