Rosemary — Half My Soul

As we entered the summer, I was a happily married man in my late 70s, looking forward to journeying deeper into old age with Rosemary, my life partner since we were both around 20. Then she was involved in a road accident, lingering for a few days in the Trauma Unit at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville, before departing this world.

Watching her agonized breathing, my love for her was such that I prayed for the Lord Jesus to take her. He immediately reached his hand out and grasped hers and she was on her way into the everlasting arms. I have never had so vital a prayer answered so quickly.

The Priest’s Wife

Rosemary and I met on the steps of St. Luke’s Church, Hampstead, London, in 1966. I was the field education student attached to the parish and she was an undergraduate at the university college next door. We became companions, we fell in love, and 18 months later we were husband and wife. I used to joke with my brother-in-law that he and I married above ourselves. She was a remarkable woman, rich in faith, selfless in service, highly intelligent, and always glorying in the privilege of being a priest’s spouse. My privilege was to be her husband and soulmate.

She was, indeed, half my soul, a line I’ve borrowed from Sabine Baring-Gould, the author of hymns like “Onward Christian Soldiers,” and a parish priest in Devonshire, who had those words etched on the headstone of his late wife, Grace.

She was often asked why she did not get ordained, but she rejoiced in what she considered the sacred office of being a clergy spouse — part of a long tradition in Reformation churches and Orthodoxy. I remember a conversation between Rosemary and Eugene Peterson’s wife, Jan, as they shared their insights into what they thought had become one of the most undervalued roles in churches. Neither objected to women’s ordination, but they firmly believed their place was sharing their spouse’s ministry.

Like all marriages and all ministries, we had our ups and downs, and during more than half a century of ordained life we had just about everything slung at us. Yet for Rosemary this meant praying; it also meant using her honesty and integrity to strengthen my spine when times were hard, and her counsel was almost always good — if I chose to listen to it! Over time that puppy love of our first years together deepened, becoming indispensable to the work to which the Lord led us, drawing us ever closer to him and to one another.

The Mother

Rosemary’s passion was motherhood. We had trouble getting started with our family, and then she experienced two miscarriages, the second of which almost killed her. During that hospital stay, she experienced what she described as dying grace. She was slipping away until the necessary medical procedures and nursing care drew her back, but the wonder of what happened then remained with her forever after. She spoke little about it, but I am certain that as she began slipping away again it was Jesus Christ who similarly came to her, and this time took her proffered hand.

The Homemaker

My darling wife was a homemaker, and the doors of our home were always open to visitors and guests. She made our home, while hardly a model for Better Homes & Gardens, into a place where all sorts of people of every age and background could be welcomed. It was the nest in which our two daughters grew up, and where since the beginning of our marriage there has been a succession dogs and cats sharing our lives — her last gift to me some months ago was our two rescue dogs, Cooper and Eden.

The Exile

When we were engaged, we earnestly committed ourselves to go wherever the Lord would send us. In our minds was some modest ministry in England, but we didn’t put any boundaries around our obedience to God’s call. To end up in the United States was a shock and a surprise. We came for three years, but our whole family is still here; America, it seems, was God’s purpose for us.

This was always a huge sacrifice for the quintessentially English Rosemary, yet during these years she was involved in refugee resettlement, deeply concerned for those who were no longer able to live in their homeland. Over the years there were Laotians, Ethiopians, South Sudanese, Congolese, and most recently Afghan families she loved into the United States. Many were present at her funeral. I have often thought that Rosemary’s attitude was like that of Ruth: “Where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die— there I will be buried” (Ruth 1:16-17). Her ashes are interred in the columbarium at St. George’s, Nashville, right against the wall of the chapel in which I celebrate the Eucharist every Thursday.

The College Professor

It was because she was a priest’s wife that a career beyond the life of ministry or parish was vital. For 20 years she taught French and Latin at Middle Tennessee State University. Also at her funeral were students for whom she was the model of a loving, caring teacher, and have themselves gone into teaching. Retiring from college teaching, she dug deeply into ministry among women at St. George’s. When she died, she was stepping down as president of the Daughters of the King.

A Grief Observed

After her death, when I turned my mind to reading, I returned to A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis. It was at least 40 years since I had first picked it up, unable to grasp its meaning. Now, having shared Lewis’s experience of letting go of the love of his life, I read it again. While I have not railed against God as Lewis did, the opening words told me we were on the same page. “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid.” Yes, a great void had opened, making me like a ship without a rudder. I have been lost and listless. This has been the most painful way to lose weight, hard to organize my mind as well as my work. Rosemary is with the Lord, and I can’t wait to see her again — what a reunion that will be!

Going through her files and her writing, our daughters Olivia and Lindy discovered a little piece she wrote on shaping her life. The governing text for her striving was Philippians 4:8:

Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.