MARJORIE SWANSON FARRAR

March 11, 1922 – Nov. 27, 2016

Mom had the quality of stability. She not only did things for a long time, she was content to be where she was and to do what she did. She was married to Dad for 51 years, until his death parted them. She lived in the same small town for 65 years, was a member of her church for just as long. She was a member of P.E.O. for 75 years. She lived to be 94.

Knowing how to stay put wasn’t particularly remarkable in her generation, the World War II generation, but it’s becoming so rare today it’s countercultural. Cities seem to offer so much more than small towns. Today’s economy makes it hard to keep one job and put down roots. But it’s difficult to have a spiritual center without having a geographical one. Mom knew the idea that things would be better someplace else is usually an illusion. Might as well just settle down and love the ones you’re with.

Mom and Dad decided to plant themselves and bloom where they were planted. By making commitments to each other, and to their church and to their adopted hometown of Mt. Vernon, they were able to nurture places and people over the long haul. And those people and places nurtured them. They had a lot of friends. They supported local institutions through charitable contributions. They seemed to find God’s presence in the ordinary. They lived a grounded life because they were grounded in a place.

It wasn’t always easy. Dad, a businessman schooled in the art of the deal, was particularly restless in church, which didn’t want to change when he wanted it to, and which wanted to change when he didn’t want change. But Mom always made clear it was her church and she’s sticking to it. She did not deal with difficulties by pulling up stakes and heading for new territory. She didn’t go to church and teach Sunday school all those years just for herself, but because someone might be there who needed her. She thought the way to be the body of Christ together was to commit to working things out, which takes time.

That’s something a lot of us think we don’t have. Over the last two years when Mom was in Lewis Memorial nursing home in Springfield, my wife or I would visit her every day. I’d take her coffee and tell her what everybody is doing and after awhile try to glance at my watch without her seeing me do it. Eventually I’d say, “Mom, I have to get back to the office,” and inevitably she would say, “Why?” Sometimes I had a good answer, sometimes not, but I got that she was saying what I needed to hear: “Slow down, stay a little longer.” –Fletcher Farrar