Yesterday I got to thinking about my aunt Geneva. Her full name was Thelma Geneva Bowden Benson. And she was one of the most colorful people I have ever known. When she loved, it was with everything she had. When you got on her bad side, well let's just say you didn't really want to get on that side. :)
She passed away almost two years ago, closing the book on all of my aunts and uncles. She lives on in her sons, and especially in Rick, my always favorite cousin, who if he ever reads that I wrote that might place me on HIS bad side. :)
The following is the working draft I used when I had the honor of preaching Aunt Geneva's funeral -by her request. It's not a transcript, since I don't use notes, but it will give you the essence of what I said.
It’s 1924. Calvin Coolidge is in the white house, and he decides to use a newer invention to talk to the people of America – a radio address. In New York, a company named IBM is incorporated. In Washington, D.C. a young man named J Edgar Hoover takes the reins at the FBI. Lucky Lindy makes it across the Atlantic.
And in Macon, another baby is born to Henry and Bertie Bowden. Thelma Geneva. Born into a family that would see its share of both heartache and joys. During Geneva’s life, she would see plenty of both.
Life in a mill village wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t hard either. And really the only way I can say that it wasn’t hard was because it was a shared life. Politicians can talk all they want to about family values, but back then, they just lived them. Everybody helped everyone else because that’s just what you did. So families like the Bowden’s and Foster’s and Tucker’s and later the Wilson’s grew up in a time of rapid change with fierce determination to get through it together.
Living literally on the wrong side of the tracks didn’t mean a thing. It was just where you lived when you worked at Mr Willingham’s Cotton Mill. Geneva, like her mother and father had done and her brothers and sisters did, worked there too. Long hot days filled with boring, monotonous and sometimes dangerous work if you didn’t pay attention, paid the bills – most of the time.
Geneva saw a lot in her life. The death of her father who was struck by a car outside the mill in Forsyth by a cat driven by the daughter of a state senator. No harm no foul – he got up, shaken and bruised, and went home. He died three days later. Geneva saw another sister, Hattie die tragically when she caught on fire stoking the wood stove and rushed outside in flames. They got the flames out, but she died. Her brother Cecil died when a train hit the car he was riding across the tracks down the street. The train carried the car almost home – with his body in it.
The little church in the mill village was a place the family would go to find some comfort and peace. They sat as you do today, and looked at their loved one’s bodies. They saw what we see today, that death comes for us all. And at the close of the service, they got up and went on living, just as we will do today.
Geneva saw the second World War, with the heartaches of people she knew who didn’t come back, and seeing family go without knowing whether they would. She married Ben Benson who came back with some of the horror of war still clinging to him. They started a family, had two boys and tried to make a living, but life for the mills here was running out.
Those two boys grew up in the house on Roff Ave. Oh the memories of that house with its sacred space – the living room holy of holies that no one must enter – the bomb shelter under the house – the front porch you could sit on and watch the trains go by, smell the creosote, and hear the sounds of life. Houses jammed impossibly together - and families jammed together too.
It was the time of Lanier High School - the Poets. The Macon Peaches baseball team. Loretta Lynn, Patsy Cline, Ernest Tubbs. Aunt Geneva might have changed some as she grew older, but the things she saw back then and loved, she loved to the end of her days.
What was it like to live her life? The burdens she carried were many, friends. You know that. Her health wasn’t the best – really ever. She had TB once, had to go to the sanitarium for a cure. She worried about her boys, like every mother did, when the polio epidemic roared through. She wondered how she’d hold a family together, with Ben who would suffer from his problems with alcohol not being there sometimes when she needed him to be. How did she do it? She didn’t, alone. It was faith, and it was family, and you needed both back then just to survive.
I wonder sometimes how a person who saw what Geneva saw, and experienced what she went through holds on to either faith or family. I mean I have to believe that word some Christians run from – Why? Crossed her mind. Let’s fess up folks, it crosses our minds. We’ve buried a lot of people together now, haven’t we? Some of you more than me. But I can remember Henry’s thrill at getting that Shriner hat, and the crushing blow it was to you (much more than me, I was just a kid) to find him that morning laying there asleep and never again to wake up.
I can remember little Henry’s wreck on that scooter, of Rick’s wreck heading back to Ft Campbell, of times when many of the people in this room faced heartache, pain, and loss. So let’s just admit that “why” is where we live.
It’s been a long time since Henry passed away now, and we’ve buried mama, and Lodie, and Buddy, and you can think of others. Geneva and Ben finally moved from Roff Ave., to Thomaston and swapped one mill for another. We all grew up and they grew older (we didn’t of course). Geneva swapped outings to Ida Caisson’s gardens, and the man made beaches, for outings at the bluff, where she’d enjoy her tent and her bed, and her family.
If you think back with me, it wasn’t all heartache, was it? There was joy in the journey too. She had a laugh that was as distinctive as she was, and a twinkle in her eyes, usually when she was about to skewer you with her sharp tongue, that was filled with joy. Now she might have gotten too much joy at times at our expense, but you have to remember she did have golden days along with the rain.
Some of you were telling me last night and this morning about the things that brought her joy. I had forgotten about the Easter egg hunting and trick or treating, but through the fog of memory I can remember coming over here with Bruce to go treating at the rich people’s houses on Hillcrest. Better candy there, if mother and aunt Geneva didn’t eat it. And once we moved out to Raley Road – even before on Roff avenue, I can remember the hunt for the “golden egg”. You probably remember even more.
For me, I remember the bonds that existed between you all. My daddy was kind of a guy who didn’t like big gatherings or much fuss, but the Bowdens never met a holiday they didn’t celebrate and throw a get together for. So I grew up in the heaven that was pecan pies and caramel cakes with 15 layers, the world’s greatest cornbread, sweet tea, and turnips you could actually eat that never came out of a can.
There’d be a radio on, and Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Ernest Tubbs, Jim Reeves or someone would be singing. But I just remember growing up around people in this family who loved one another fiercely, from the heart. I have heard my mother on many occasions tell my daddy “don’t talk about my people.” And I’m really fortunate to have been born among you. And I'm talking as one of you today.
The latter years for Aunt Geneva were maybe the relief she had needed for years. I mean if you are designing a place for her, I know I’d make sure it had a TV hooked to cable, a current TV Guide, and plenty of snacks. Jelly rolls, chocolate cake, crunch and munch – even just ice. Something to keep her busy while she watched Jerry Springer, Judge Judy, or her soaps. I guess you could add pets to that from demon possessed dogs to insane birds. Talking about that this morning, I think we have determined that all the animals were normal when they went in the house… but...
Oh, and you’d have to make sure, if you are designing a place for Aunt Geneva, that you laid in some tomato cans, or later Styrofoam cups, and plenty of Devoe snuff.
She was one of a kind. And we loved her, and we are going to miss her. She really lived a full life, and saw this society change. She saw a family shake off the depression, deal with deaths, fight and win a few wars, marry and have kids, and their kids have kids. And earlier this week, suddenly really, she went to sleep and she was gone.
It’s the way many of us would like to go. But you know sleep is just temporary. There’s a lot of times that the Bible describes death as “sleep”. In Mark, Jesus is asked to go to the home of a little girl. Her father is frantic, the mourners are already wailing outside. But when Jesus gets there, he says something that must have seemed kind of strange. He said “why are you crying, the child is not dead, she has just fallen asleep.” Then he went up to her bedside and asked her to get up and she did.
When Geneva fell asleep this week, when she woke up, it was to the sound of that same voice. She had seen a lot of things in her life, and had come to the time of her departure from it. She had “fought the good fight, kept the faith” and when she woke up, she saw Jesus.
The Bible tells us in John's gospel that Jesus has been preparing a place for those who love Him for thousands of years. Geneva is there today. Along with a lot of other people we love – and some surprisingly, we didn’t care too much for while they were here. But because God loves the unlovely – that would be you and me folks, he made a way for us to be with Him. Maybe for Aunt Geneva, she first understood that in Willingham Church, or Rebecca Baptist. Or maybe it was a private thing she and God worked out between the “why’s and the joys”. But I believe she accepted His offer.
If the standard was that you had to be good all the time, then Aunt Geneva would not have made it. But it isn’t. Only God is good, and we are given His grace through Jesus.
Aunt Geneva is in heaven with Him. Yes, we miss her. But if we follow Jesus as she did, we will see her again.
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