Jean Kerrigan: a master at paradox

For a woman who had strong family and community ties, with Jean Kerrigan there were no strings attached.

Indeed, Jean didn’t have the traditional family, the nuclear cluster of spouse and child; instead she embraced an extended family, projected that sense of family into her workplace and onto the community at large.

Never giving birth or even owning a pet, she was a second mother to many, especially her nieces and nephews. They say that they wouldn’t have had a childhood, if it weren’t for “Aunt Jean,” as their own mother often took second shifts as a nurse to sustain her large family. But Jean and Marie, “Irish twins” with less that a year between them, always faced life together.

Incredibly rigid about her sense of place on Nobody Road, on the border of Tusten and Cochecton, she was quick to share it. Niece Karen and nephew Jeff say that after painting their initials on Aunt’s Jean’s new roof, they were pleased with her reaction of “that’s interesting.” I imagine that Jean got a kick out of seeing those symbols from Route 97 for years and enjoyed the confusion that a passerby might have when trying to figure out what was emblazoned on her roof.

Those passerbys might have known or suspected that it was a symbol of love, joyfully given and received, that Jean freely broadcasted and that others harbored for her.

But just as she was easygoing and gave everyone no-strings-attached affection, she would, as niece Anita phrased it, “put her finger down and straighten me out.” Indeed, at one time or another, Jean probably straightened a whole lot of us out. For Jean didn’t mince words. At the same time, she did not tear people apart for their limitations, even as she was willing to name them.

Which is to say that Jean was able to navigate paradoxes: no family of her own, large family that was hers and hers alone; maintenance of a solitary existence, in highly significant relationships with hundreds of people and dozens of organizations.

And it is not surprising that with her death, we find ourselves in that place of paradox. We are happy that Jean is safe, not tooling around and insisting on physical independence, teetering more and more every day. Simultaneously, we are unsure how we will make our way without this stable presence in our lives.

When you have talked to someone every day for 82 years, what do you do when they are no longer there to listen? To whom do you turn for advice, when the person who is able to see all sides is now unavailable for counsel? How do you maintain easy family relations, lightheartedness, good humor and positive perspective when the impetus for that energy has moved on?

And how do you gather the gossip, know where the good stories lie or what needs to be investigated or patched up when your source is no longer available?

Those paradoxes, the opposing realities that Jean was able to navigate so masterfully, are the very ones that we now have to navigate alone. I can only think that we will find a path through our loss and grief by recalling how patiently and joyously Jean lived her life and the lessons that she, in her non-assuming way, was present to teach us.

More specifically, and getting right to the point, which Jean always appreciated: we will miss her terribly and, in her absence, in our daily lives, faithfully and always, we will simply and continuously remember. We will remember that she always remembered us.

We will recognize and name a final paradox in her amazing and fruitful life: Jean lived as a humble human being and, at the same time, she was an angel at the heart of the Upper Delaware River Valley, an angel at the heart of us all.

As we bid our final farewell and prepare for her Mass and Christian Burial, we accept the gift of her giving spirit and understand that Jean achieved everlasting life, in our love and in our hearts, for all of our remaining days on earth and forever more.

God Bless you Jean, and thanks.

[Jean Kerrigan, September 26, 1926 to July 19, 2009, worked at The River Reporter for 22 years.]

Connected In

The garden is lush. And parts of it are definitely planted too close. The zucchini is too close to the broccoli; and the broccoli is too close to the cucumbers and the tomatoes.

Interestingly, there are not too close for their own well being. They are too close for me getting between them for picking. Which is interesting to ponder. Plants, in a garden, can grow in closer proximity to each other, and that the spacing listed on the seed packet has more to do with harvesting than it does with growing.

When the ground was bare I would have thought I was leaving scads of room. Even as I didn’t follow the directions, I simply thought that my perception would be spot on.

I spent the morning reading a historic sermon by William Ellery Channing, an early 19th century Unitarian minister. Taking his cue from Ephesians v.1: “Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children,” he maintains that “true religion consists in proposing, as our great end, a growing likeness to the Supreme Being.” That likeness to God, he preached in 1828 to the gathering at the ordination of the Rev. F.A. Farley in Providence RI, belongs to man’s higher or spiritual nature and has as its foundation the original and essential capacities of the mind.

He maintains that it is only in proportion of this likeness that we can enjoy either God or the universe. “God becomes a real being to us, in proportion as his own nature is unfolded within us.” He goes further to say that the “unbounded spiritual energy which we call God, is conceived by us only through consciousness, through the knowledge of ourselves… God is another name for human intelligence raised above all error and imperfection, and extended to all possible truths.”

Undoubtedly, there are those who might think that this discourse is highly egotistical. Who is this early Unitarian preacher who dared to put human thought, emotion and accomplishment on the same level of God and the complexity of the universe.

Who, indeed? Still, for me there is a measure of truth in the idea that the connection between the Divine in the world and the human being has everything to do with the human being. It has to do with the practices and the devotion that we have to living our lives.

If we functioned in oblivion, which many of us do most of the time, there would be no inspiration and perhaps no revelation. With no time for reflection, how would we acquire insight?

Channing concludes: “There is a spreading conviction that man was made for a higher purpose than to be a beast of burden, or a creation of sense. The divinity is stirring within the human breast, and demanding a culture and a liberty worthy of the child of God."

My garden plants are perfectly spaced for their own growth. They reflect a certain integrity that has nothing and everything to do with me. In my garden, I co-create fertile ground for the abundance and sustenance of my family and my love. It reminds me of the growing nature in all of us and our connection to a living spirit on earth. It gives me the opportunity to remember that it is through my action, my thought and my mind, that I am connected in to a power and an opportunity to sustain joy.

Do you think it would go better if I just followed the directions on the seed packet?

Stormy weather

There is about three seconds between the lightening and the noise that accompanies it. The thunder is long, rumbling through air. The rain is as strong as my shower and I can remember an adventurous time when I was younger that I would go outside in weather such as this and wash my hair.

With each thunder outburst, spaced about five minutes apart, at least, Dodger, my elderly dog of 13, comes for reassurance. He is bothered by this stormy weather as if he knows that it’s not just indicative of a passing storm.

I think we all know that it is not a passing storm, but as of yet have not reached out for one another.

Weak light

It dawns a sunny day. Yesterday was clear as well.

As Stephen brings me my morning coffee, he tells me there is a 50 percent chance of rain and I understand that watering the garden will not be necessary.

It’s been a rainy summer with the last three days of no precipitation an anomaly. The garden grows, although I think that the plants, especially the tomatoes and the peppers, look a bit spindly as if they are stretching toward some sort of light that is not there now.

I wonder about a weak light that causes us to stretch ourselves toward it. Usually, that stretching, that reaching, promotes growth, provides inspiration. Although, perhaps not this day.

This day, this age when we have become acutely aware that the potential of great change comes in understanding that our ways and our living has stressed the earth, it yields a counter presence that insists that all things be as they always were.

Take our reliance on fossil fuels for example.

At a time when we understand that we must turn to alternative energy, our area, the pristine place of fresh drinking water, is being primed for natural gas extraction that will not only squander that precious resource, but upset the hydrological balance by taking billions of gallons of water out of circulation, poisoning it as well.

Some people say there’s plenty of water to go around; certainly it falls from the skies this summer. But I can’t help but think that what falls from the heavens is relatively clean and does not cause the skin to burn.

I receive news that the Northern Wayne Property Owners have signed a letter of intent to lease thousands of pristine farmlands to a particular gas company. It has been a long negotiated process and I am sure that those owners feel like they have protected themselves, their land and their livelihood. It is cause for celebration for those large property owners who struggle financially. I cannot help but remember the phrase “they know not what they do.”

And at best, it seems like a weak light that will cause us all to grow spindly.