My grandma loved to tell stories. One of her favorite was set back in December, 1949. Her daughter, my mom, was in the hospital having given birth to my brand new baby sister. She remained there with newborn Susan for ten days, as was the custom. Friends of my parents drove me from Kansas City to St. Joseph to stay with my grandparents for the duration. At age 2-1/2, I had been an early talker. Since my parents departed for the hospital, I had not said a word.

Once deposited in St. Joseph, I remained silent for a few days, then toddled over to Grandma and said, in clarion tones, “I want my mother.”

Grandma answered, “I am your mother now.”

I countered, “Well, I want Ruth.”

That is how I felt then, and feel now. I suspect I am not alone. My grandma was as good as they get, but she did not have the unique qualities of Ruth Lucile Williamson Dowling. No one else did and there never would be.

In Asia, when an elder dies, it is equivalent to a library burning down. Today, we gather to acknowledge a great and gracious library that has been lost. However, we who survive Ruth have as our prized possessions: stories passed down through the oral tradition. I know a few, and I believe you sitting here know more. I hope you will share them.

It is said that what is remembered lives, so let us keep a different kind of fire burning—the flame of love for the distinctive, beautiful generous soul we all knew as Ruth.

Ruth was a preacher’s kid—the third daughter of Methodist minister Aaron Williamson and his wife Dencie. Their first daughter, Grace Elizabeth, was born at a hospital in Boston near the seminary where Aaron was studying for his doctorate in philosophy. Six weeks later, Grace Elizabeth died of bacteria transmitted by unsterile forceps. Grandma never forgot, and it was said she intended to never give birth again in another hospital. Grandma’s second daughter, Roberta, was born two and a half years before Ruth. It is said that Ruth was born in 1920 on the kitchen table of the parsonage in Shawnee, Oklahoma. It was a long and arduous birth, as Ruth had very broad shoulders that her midwife had to keep turning and turning.

Ruth never became an athlete, but her broad shoulders foretold her compassion and legendary willingness to listen to many people’s troubles and understand their points of view—perhaps her most remarkable attribute. Evidently, this was also a special characteristic of her younger sister, Mary Lee. She offered those broad shoulders to me to cry once remotely (that is, long distance, on the telephone) shortly before Ruth’s passing and her own death. Many of you know the stunning fact that Ruth’s sister, Mary Lee, died only eleven hours after. Their consecutive deaths on March 1st and 2nd still have us reeling.

But back to the past. Another story my grandpa loved to tell was indicative of Ruth’s early interest in and lack of fear surrounding death and its aftermath. I believe this event took place at my grandpa’s church in a town in Kansas. Ruth’s sister, Mary Lee, was most likely in arms at that time.

The church and the parsonage were across the street from a mortuary and mortician, surely a convenience. Three-year-old Ruth’s best friend was the son of the aforesaid mortician. The two toddlers had free reign of the parlor where the dead folks were laid out and had an intimate understanding of what death looked like.

One fine day a funeral was taking place, Ruth was playing with the mortician’s son. Grandma was singing in the choir and a prayer was being said. Fortunately, Grandma had not kept her eyes closed for the entire duration because she looked down the center aisle of the church and was quite startled.

Ruth and her friend walked ceremoniously down the aisle covered from head to toe in white flour, which they had ascertained was the appropriate attire to wear to celebrate the beloved dead.

Grandma quickly jumped up, escorted the pair out of the sanctuary to find Mr. Vickry, who read them comics from the Sunday paper for the rest of the morning.

Fast forward from this story to a time when I was in my forties. Ruth found the occasion to ask me not to be afraid of her death. She said it was part of nature and the circle of life, death, and rebirth. I believe these early experiences contain seeds of her enlightened, liberating, and very inspiring work. In addition, Ruth’s sense of life’s beauty and fragility lives with us always—an essential aspect of her distinctive legacy.

Grandma had a nickname for Ruth. She called her “my little peacemaker.” In a noisy household of three little girls, Ruth assumed negotiating and mediating disputes between her sisters and ultimately her brother Bill, who was born seven years after Ruth. Throughout her life, Ruth favored the way of peace and the resolution of conflict using non-violent means. And she wore the mantle of the peacemaker to the end. Her penchant for conflict resolution was not her only talent, as we will see.

Ruth told stories to rival those of her mom. She took the task seriously. The stories had a purpose. She talked early and often of the tough economic times associated with the Great Depression. On Christmas, the family had a tradition of the children drawing straws. The one with the longest straw would receive a gift of monetary value, the others would not. Ruth only ever spoke of the year she drew the longest—never the other years. Her eyes glistened as she described the Chinese pajamas, turquoise and pure silk that were hers alone.

Ruth had an abiding love for beauty in nature, particularly the glittering, energetic hummingbirds, but she adored the innate elegance of textiles. Each year she would make dresses for me and my sister and later for my three daughters.

She was very grateful and put extraordinary stock in the expression. Ruth was renowned for this graciousness throughout her life until the day she died. She would remark, “I cannot thank you enough for all you have done for me.”

Another story Ruth told early and often revolved around higher education. She and her siblings were encouraged to study and were offered a challenge. The one with the highest marks would go away to college—in this case to Ohio Wesleyan University. Ruth made the highest marks. However, a depression was on. It was late in the thirties, and there were no funds for tuition. Ruth went to Oklahoma University where she obtained free tuition since her father was the president of the university. She graduated magna cum laude.

Ruth valued education and became a passionate advocate for women’s access to learning in a university setting. She worked tirelessly for over sixty years with the PEO to provide scholarships and loans to young women from all walks of life. Her chosen career was that of an elementary school teacher. She could make lemonade out of lemons.

She taught for over 20 years beginning when I was seven and my sister five. Ruth shared this passion of the classroom with her sister, Mary Lee. Children were a special joy to them both. They delighted in their careers and treasured their summers and their families.

Back in the depression just a little bit longer. Although Ruth obtained free tuition at the university, she worked after classes at a local bookstore, attaining money for textbooks, clothes, and incidentals. She also developed an abiding interest in reading.

Ruth’s passion for books extended well into her eighties. She would exclaim that she would allow herself an hour a day to read once she was done with what she was supposed to do. I was a notorious bookworm as a child, and she rarely interrupted me although I was supposed to be doing chores. I recall climbing into low branches of an apple tree to read, not coming down until I finished the entire book.

Ruth loved poetry as a young woman and had a secret desire to be a poet. In college, she collected and typed an entire loose leaf volume of her favorites. As a teenager, I found it and Ruth allowed me to keep it. I have it still. Many of the folks here know that poetry is my abiding passion. Ruth could kindle such fires and tend them. My favorite thing is to teach creative writing.

Early in the nineteen forties, rumors of war filled the air. On December 7th, 1941, Pearl Harbor was attacked. That night Ruth became engaged to Charlie Dowling. They married on January 30th, 1942. She wore a gown of seven yards of ivory taffeta, made by her sister, Mary Lee, who later wore the same gown. The war was on, and Charlie worked as one the country’s first air traffic controllers briefly, soon thereafter he began his tenure as a cadet in the Army Air Force.

Ruth loved weddings, wedding gifts, and all things romantic as much as she loathed war and all things warlike. She understood this war had a just cause while knowing what war meant. Deeply and vehemently, she grasped the terrible truth that many of the “boys” would die.

For three years. Ruth followed Charlie up and down the west coast, working in peach canneries, living in rooms in towns adjoining the army bases. Charlie was valedictorian of the class, becoming an instructor as well as a pilot flying supply missions. He never saw the action as many of his friends did.

Ruth spoke many times of how she and Charlie would sit with the widows after they had received “the news.” Particularly devastating were the days following the desolation at Anzio Beach in Italy. Many of their buddies fell in that unfortunate invasion.

Ruth never forgot those deaths nor did she forget why those “boys” died. In her eighties, she watched an old World War II movie at our house in Bonny Doon, California with great emotion. It was not a fiction. This happened in wars. Five years ago, when Geoff and I visited the cemetery at Anzio Beach, Ruth gave us her heartfelt blessings.

So the war passed, and I was born in April of 1947. It was a good year for babies. Ruth’s sisters, my aunts, Bert and Mary Lee also gave birth to my cousins Ed and Diane in 1947, who are here today. The rations were lifted.

The story is told that a good friend came to visit our one-room apartment. I was standing up in my crib. I was not yet two years old. The radio had been on.

I announced, “There’s bacon at Katz.” It was a grocery in Kansas City.

That sentence officially delineated the end of that period for Ruth. Growing up, as often as not, I would awake to the smell of brewing coffee (another rationed item) and crackling bacon. Ruth did not forget the past and its lessons. She carried them with her and presented these memories as gifts to us—tokens of her appreciation to the evanescence of life and its pleasures.

The transition from the forties to the fifties was marked with the birth of my sister, Susan, and the move out of the efficiency apartment into Ruth’s first home. That decade was filled with moves from Missouri to Oklahoma to Indiana to Oklahoma and back to Indiana before leaving the midwest for northern Virginia. We were not alone in this trend.

Exploded families were something of a hallmark of the fifties— something new for the United States. However, Ruth stayed close with her family of origin, no matter how geographically distant they became. If one of her sisters had need for support of any kind, Ruth was there. She wrote letters and made phone calls, taking Susan and me on trains and busses for visits. And the distances were immense and became more so with Aunt Bert’s family in New York, Aunt Mary Lee in Minnesota and Texas, and Uncle Bill’s family in Oklahoma City and Texas.

Every summer we would pile into the car and go to Oklahoma City, where my grandparents lived, for a family reunion with aunts, uncles, and cousins—the vacation of choice. Ruth had a strong opinion that time was of the essence and that one day there would be no more time with the grandparents. We didn’t care to argue with her. Nothing was more fun than lying barefoot with our cousins in the dried grass of our grandparents backyard licking the paddle of the homemade vanilla ice cream maker with the cousins.

Ruth treasured the time with the cousins as well. She hoped for more children but somehow they did not materialize. The offspring of her siblings were a source of great entertainment. Ruth never tired of telling any family news she could get hold of.

The vacation lasted a full two weeks. My father (Charlie) found it challenging to slow down that long. It was one of Ruth’s requirements. I remember the year that Ruth and Charlie began seriously to observe the antics of a family of cardinals. Ruth joined the Audubon Society, learned all the names of the birds, keeping careful records of sightings well into her eighties. I have her annotated Birds of America on my bedside table.

Ruth taught more about death the year her father passed away. She woke my sister and me, told us there would be another star in the sky, our grandfather. We walked slowly in a state of shock into the Ford during a late March blizzard while Charlie drove relentlessly through the two days to Oklahoma. As children, we played in the midst of our grandfather’s wake, but did not attend the viewing or the burial. I spent a lot of time studying the stars wondering which one was my grandpa.

After that, every summer we would have our grandmas, now both widows, stay for a few weeks. Sewing projects would be the focus of the visits. Our school clothes were made—always matching ones—and attire for the dolls as well. Ruth became quite the woman of the needle.

Ultimately, she made gorgeous crazy quilts out of old dresses for our daughters. She fashioned needlepoint pillows and tapestries. The colors and textures made her happy as did her increasing skills although she never felt as talented as she was. Her granddaughter, Sabina, has a business called reincarnated clothing. She creates new garments out of old things that no one wants. Ruth ignited fires that have been impossible to extinguish.

Late in the fifties, Ruth moved with our family out of the midwest to Northern Virginia, then to Great Britain. She was remarkably cheerful about all our moves—probably training from her years as a preacher’s kid. While we whined and moaned, she would proclaim that moves “build character.”

Ruth loved our two years in London and took great pleasure in the live theatre. She would give me a British crown, the equivalent of a dollar and pack me off on the underground (subway). I saw “My Fair Lady” at least a half dozen times. Ruth’s passion endured and her granddaughter Amanda Ruth (Mandy), who is here today, studied in London and has just opened as the lead in a forties drama in a local theatre north of San Francisco. Ruth could kindle such blazes and be resplendent in their glory.

Returning to the Washington D.C. area in the early sixties, Ruth enjoyed a home for a long stretch (nearly ten years), She was a driving and gentle force in an open classroom experiment in Fairfax county. She saw us through high school and launched us in to college. She developed deep, abiding friendships.

When I was miserable over not having been accepted into the college of my choice, she consoled me saying “This too shall pass.” Somehow this advice has been something of a mantra as I ride through the roller coaster of fortune. Ruth could convey in a simple phrase how short and precious life is and how crucial to feel our feelings and move on.

At the turn of the decade, Ruth switched continents, spending the first five years in Brussels. The time there shifted her focus from home and career to travel and more travel. Books, needlework projects, birding, and collage kept her warm. She delighted in showing her family and friends around the area— introducing them to the pleasures of brass rubbing and wines. She loved art and art history and took up collage and painting at that time. The love of travels lives on. Her eldest granddaughter, Larissa, cannot be with us today because of a journey to Beijing, China to work on international internet issues.

In the early 1970’s, the deaths of Ruth’s brother and mother were counterbalanced by the joy of her first granddaughter, Rose. Ruth’s heart was bigger than the ocean separating her from those she loved at these momentous transitions. She kept in touch by writing and taught me pivotal lessons in long-distance spiritual intimacy.

Decades turned faster with Charlie’s retirement and my father and Ruth moved to Tucson, Arizona. On eighty acres adjoining Saguaro National Monument, they designed, built, and artistically decorated their sunset house—a passive solar home.

There, Ruth spent arguably the happiest twenty years of her life— having time to slow down and be one with nature, to watch owls, roadrunners, and other species of birds, to get to know the coyote, javelina, bobcats, and rattlesnakes. Always a rock hound, Ruth became familiar with dazzling colored desert stones and created gorgeous entrances and walls. She transformed broken terracotta pots into meandering pathways. She added vines of bougainvillea and pots of savory basil to the landscape and welcomed two more granddaughters and hosted spectacular egg hunts. She opened her home to countless visitors.

The turn into the decade of the nineties was punctuated by travel to Asia. Ruth would remind us she and Charlie needed to go as many places as possible because each one might be their last.

And travel did become more difficult as Charlie began to suffer from a rare autoimmune disorder savaging his lungs and his vital energy for seven years. Ruth was the consummate caregiver. No one could have been more loyal. She never left his side to the end. However, even in her grief, she relished the family reunion that ensued around Charlie’s Arlington National Cemetery burial.

Some years later, Ruth experienced a decline. Her care was arranged and supervised with meticulous care and deep devotion.

As the century and the millennium turned and Ruth passed her eightieth year, she volunteered for a local hospice and read widely in books on death and dying she had not found time to peruse when she was taking care of Charlie.

Ruth did joyfully attend the wedding of her granddaughter, Larissa in 2000—a year before the birth of her first great grandchild, Rose. Sadly, she suffered a heart attack a year later— almost two years after Charlie died.

After the heart attack, Ruth left, with immense sadness for a retirement in Tucson where she enjoyed visits from her daughters, family, and friends as well as the book club, PEO, yoga, Spanish, and exercise classes. She traveled to Hawaii, Europe, and Costa Rica and came with me to see her sister, Mary Lee, for her eightieth birthday. She mourned the loss of her sister, Bert. She gladly received visits from three of her great grandchildren, tossing a balloon with Mack, watching Caven chase lizards, and playing dolls with Rose.

When Mary Lee suffered from breast cancer, Ruth began a late-life habit of calling her every night. This devotion continued close to the end. When she became unable to call her sister, Mary Lee took up the mantle and called Ruth every night to wish her “sweet dreams and nightie night.”

She fell and broke her wrist, something known as a sentinel event. She was in a number of rehab and assisted living situations. A year and a half later she broke her hip. She spent two years in a skilled facility called La Rosa. Although she was rarely jubilant, she was renowned for her graciousness, humility, and gratitude. Her quiet pleasures were the calls from her daughters and Mary Lee. Throughout her life, Ruth had been a wonderful cook. She did not like institutional food, which had to be pureed, yet she was polite. She was never able to walk again after the hip fracture although she tried her best in physical therapy. Incredibly, no one heard her complain.

In her last year, through numerous hospitalizations, Ruth was ever stoic—a life pattern. It became increasingly hard for her to talk or smile.

In a visit early in December last year, I sat with her five or six hours just to keep her company. She said virtually nothing the first four days. Maybe “hello.”

Then, as I was staring out the window, I heard her voice. “You know about the trip, don’t you,” she asked.

I said, “No, I’m not sure what you mean? Are you going somewhere?”

She answered as she had been wont to do when she couldn’t manifest an answer, “Well, I couldn’t say.”

“Is anyone going with you?” I asked.

“I couldn’t say,” she replied. “Is Dad going with you?” I asked.

“He’s not available,” she countered. “But it would be nice if someone could come,” she asked.

“Are you going on a ship?” I asked.

“Oh no,” she replied.

“Are you going to go on an airplane, then?” I asked.

“No!” she answered. “Are you going to go by car then?” I suggested.

“Certainly not!” She was adamant.

That was that—the last conversation of any length I ever had with her.

After the talk, I might get, “I love you, too, honey or “I love you all,” but nothing approaching this depth. This important gift was quintessentially Ruth. She had told me about the impending passage and let me know her plans—reminding me of how precious life is and how fleeting.

A few days before her death, Ruth experiencing a “rally.” Geoff heard and he rushed down the hall to call me to say she was talking. I arrived, Ruth proclaimed, “I’m getting ready to go.” Ruth was the soul of consideration.

Ruth met her end with calm and clear resolve—organized and composed. She led a long and good life. Her end was not easy, but she had a clean conscience and was truly philosophical. She had close family who loved her. What I have shared is only a tiny fraction of the library that burned down when Ruth crossed over.

“I want Ruth,” and I imagine you do, too. We are bereft, but we are not without a legacy. We need to help each other to evoke Ruth’s ineffable presence. The stories are our rightful legacy. What is remembered lives.