REQUIEM MASS
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS
Alleluia, Alleluia
It is my Father's will, says the Lord,
that whoever believes in the Son shall have eternal life,
and that I shall raise him up on the last day.
Alleluia
Requiescat in Pace
Rosanne Bristow McCartney
29 May 1933 ~ 9 November 2021
A Eulogy for Rosanne
Given by her son William Gerard McCartney
Rosanne was born May 29th, 1933 to 42 year old Harry Bristow and his 24 year old wife, Annie Hurst. The Bristows hailed for four centuries from Lincolnshire and had moved in the late 19th Century to Little Crosby, while the Hursts were a long-standing Lancashire family who lived for many generations mostly around Aughton. Rosanne was the middle child of the marriage, following her sister Margaret who was born thirteen months earlier. Two years later, her brother Anthony was born, and their mother Annie, still only 26, died from septicemia after his delivery.
Anthony was sent to family friends, the Bullens in Maghull and was raised by them; Rosanne and Margaret were raised at The Olde House on Little Crosby Road by their 45-year-old father and two maiden aunts.
At the age of six and the outbreak of WW2, Rosanne was sent to a convent boarding school in Skipton. These were not happy years for Mum, as she noted wryly several times, “I was neither pretty nor rich, so the nuns didn’t like me.” The only vestige of that period was that in later life my mother enjoyed many nun jokes, the more inappropriate the better. But she came through it and came back to Liverpool where she trained at Mount Pleasant as an Infants teacher. Teaching was her profession, but she genuinely enjoyed both working with her children and the collegiality of the other teachers at Ss Peter and Paul’s where she worked most of her life and where she made several lifelong and dear friends.
She was always devoted to her religion and was not only a daily communicant most of her adult life but contributed many years of her life and her money to the cause of Our Lady of Walsingham for whom she had a deep affection. She was also keen to pass on her faith to her children; I vividly recall that as a child she would read me each night the Marian prayer “Sweet and Gentle Lady.” That prayer hangs in our home in Indiana today.
For Rosanne, faith was a key part of a practical life. My mother cared for her father’s second wife Sally in her long struggle with cancer, which included at one point giving her a bedroom in our three-bedroom home on Kaigh Avenue, while doing her full-time teaching job; oh and raising us three children. That was then followed in short order by her daily care of Aunty Betty who lived on Cavendish Road in Waterloo well into her eighties. But Rosanne was not one to complain, ever. Not for her the mealy-mouthed “thoughts and prayers” but rather, like her husband Ron, concrete, useful action. To borrow the motto of St Mary’s College: “She showed her faith by the way she lived.”
She loved music, playing piano and singing along with whatever was playing on the always-on radio. She loved going out to a “dance” or a “do.” She loved having her hair done every Friday. She told me once in later years that every time Ron walked into a room her heart still beat with excitement when she saw him.
She loved jokes and to laugh, a big, noisy, full-throated belly laugh but also the wry, knowing smile with her head slightly tilted; my last memory of my mother from just a few weeks ago, is that smile on her face.
She was always busy with her hands. She loved to darn and iron, and I would say garden, but in fact she seemed to get a lot more satisfaction from weeding things out than from growing them. As her grand-daughter Lucy once called it:
“weedening.” There were several times -- once with a neighbor and then another time at a minor British stately home -- where she spontaneously engaged in some freelance weedening and had to be actually stopped from doing it. Neither the neighbor nor the staff of the stately home seemed particularly grateful for her practical help. Or again, she once savaged a conifer with her shears which had been gamely growing outside our Philadelphia home; a neighbor walking by remarked drily “very Tuscan, Rosanne, very Tuscan.”
While she didn’t really enjoy cooking, she could certainly do it. One of her favorite cooking activities was the making, icing and especially the soaking of the Christmas cake; either whiskey or brandy would do very nicely. One year, Kitti and I arrived with our boys during the Spring, having missed our typical December visit. At Rosanne’s hands they had early learned the magic of an English Christmas; so Mum, to extend that holiday, made a Christmas cake for us. The cake of course was delicious but tasted somehow different than usual; further examination of several liquor containers revealed that Rosanne had liberally doused the cake in Tequila. That was our first Cinco de Mayo Christmas cake.
There were moments of tragedy, the death of her second child Catherine Anne at only seven weeks of age in 1958, several miscarriages late in pregnancy, the death of her father in 1966 hit her hard, but overall, she was a happy person, with an easy laugh. Our dear friend and Philadelphia neighbor, Lawrence Davis, who knew Ron and Rosanne well wrote in sympathy: “she was the best. We found her wit, barbs and “sotto voce” asides immensely entertaining and a welcome breath of fresh air.”
So the totality of her life cannot be clouded by the lingering death she so gracefully endured. There are many people to be thanked who helped our family in the last years of Rosanne’s life: lifelong friends Bernie and Mary Cullen; our neighbors Theo and Alex who are particularly caring to my father, the staff of Warren Park who even through these trying times have always been a model of friendliness and warmth. Sister Leigh-Anne at Aintree University hospital and the Chaplain Fr Cooper were angels of tenderness and caring professionalism, attending to Rosanne in her last hours.
There was a story that Rosanne told several times to her closest confidants about how she would meet people, even when she was an adult, in Crosby Village who had known her mother Annie, whom she of course had no recollection of. Out of kindness these old friends would share an anecdote, but to Rosanne it was puzzling: “How can it be” she would say, “that they know my mother and I don’t.” But we were so very fortunate because we did know Rosanne; we knew her as caring daughter to her father, affectionate sister to her brother and sister, loving and loyal life companion to Ron, devoted mother to her three children, and most recently as joyful grandmother and great-grandmother.
Rosanne lived a full life that was blessed and magical, a life full of laughter, energy and love. She was our
mother most amiable, mother admirable, mother of good counsel; she was our
tower of ivory, house of gold, and morning star; she was
our sweet and gentle lady; she is our mystical rose.
Spring Break 2010
A reading from the letter of St Paul to the Colossians (3: 12 – 17)
You are God’s chosen race, his saints; he loves you,
and you should be clothed in sincere compassion,
in kindness and humility, gentleness and patience.
Bear with one another; forgive each other as soon as a quarrel begins.
The Lord has forgiven you; now you must do the same.
Over all these clothes, to keep them together and complete them,
put on love.
And may the peace of Christ reign in your hearts,
because it is for this that you were called together as parts of one body.
Always be thankful.
Let the message of Christ, in all its richness, find a home with you.
Teach each other, and advise each other, in all wisdom.
With gratitude in your hearts sing psalms and hymns
and inspired songs to God; and never say or do anything except in the name of the Lord Jesus,
giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Gospel Reading ~ Matthew 19: 13 - 15
People brought little children to him, for him to lay his hands on them and say a prayer. The disciples turned them away, but Jesus said, "Let the little children alone, and do not stop them coming to me; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs." Then he laid his hands on them and went on this way.
Prayers of the Faithful
Let us pray for all those who looked after Rosanne's caring and medical needs during these last years, that their devotion will always be rewarded. Lord, hear us. Lord, graciously hear us.
We join our prayers to those of
Our Blessed mother, as we say together:
Hail Mary, full of grace.
The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners
now and at the hour of death. Amen.
**********
Communion Hymn ~
Be Still, My Soul
Be still my soul the Lord is on thy side
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain
Leave to thy God to order and provide
In every change He faithful will remain
Be still my soul thy best, thy heavenly friend
Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end
Be still, my soul; your God will undertake
to guide the future as he has the past;
your hope, your confidence, let nothing shake;
all now mysterious shall be bright at last.
Be still, my soul; the waves and winds still know
his voice who ruled them while he lived below.
Be still, my soul; when dearest friends depart
and all is darkened in the vale of tears,
then you will better know his love, his heart,
who comes to soothe your sorrows and your fears.
Be still, my soul; your Jesus can repay
from his own fullness all he takes away.
Be still, my soul; the hour is hast'ning on
when we shall be forever with the Lord,
when disappointment, grief, and fear are gone,
sorrow forgot, love's purest joys restored.
Be still my soul; when change and tears are past,
all safe and blessed we shall meet at last.
**********
Gone From My Sight ~
Henry Van Dyke
A ship sails and I stand watching until she fades on the horizon,
and someone at my side says, "She is gone."
Gone where?
Gone from my sight, that is all.
She is just as large as when I saw her.
The diminished size and total loss of sight
is in me, not in her.
And just at the moment when someone at my side says
"She is gone,"
there are others who are watching her coming,
and other voices take up a glad shout,
"There she comes!"
And that is dying.
**********
Prayers of Commendation and Farewell
May the choirs of angels come to greet you,
May they speed you to paradise.
May the Lord enfold you in his mercy,
May you find eternal life.
To see her is to love her,
And love her forever.
For nature made her what she is,
And never made another!
~ Robert Burns ~
My Favorite: Rosanne & Josef, Fall 2006
Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, December 28th
Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ "Fare Thee Well Awhile"
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com
Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com
