The weekend of October 4,2008, family and friends of Laurnell Bremner had a ceremony
in her honor at the Mills and Mills Memorial Gardens in Tumwater WA after a headstone
purchased by her children was placed over her burial site. Afterward there was a party
in her honor on Steamboat Island Road. Pictures and descriptions of that event are
here.
What follows is a transcript of her original memorial service.
February 15, 1966
Held at the Unitarian Fellowship in Olympia, WA
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BETSEY McGUIRE: Several of us today will try and share with you
some of our feelings, our relationships, our love for Laurnell
Bremner.
I was the first person to begin to know Laurnell Bremner
when she first came to Olympia. I had had some gentle, meaningful,
and symbolic introductions to her through a few comments that Jim
had made about her; a few more meaningful ones when a lovely, colored
plastic train arrived for my three year old son and a delicious
Barbie Doll arrived for my six year old daughter, and a Menninger
wives cook book arrived for me. This was her and their way of
saying "thank you" after Jim had been a guest in my home. This was
her way of saying to me, "My husband, my children, and being a wife
are important." I knew I'd like her.
But I well remember that cheerful, laughing, responsive,
young woman as she and Jim, three children, one baby and one dog
drove up in front of their new home on Governor Stevens Stress,
ready and eager to start their new adventure. I well remember Annie
who thought it might be more of an adventure to come to see my house
for the rest of the day, and even over night. I remember their
shopping that first few days for beds, and for summer loung furniture
which they used in their living room, and beginning to make Olympia
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their home. I remember she made lists-- lists of all kinds all over
the place-- lists of things she should do, or make, or sew or cook.
Probably her first group she became acquainted with in
Olympia was the Unitarian Fellowship. Since that time she had
certainly branched out into all areas of the community. I well
remember for months after the October windstorm, when she had al-
ready encircled many of us around her, her offering many of the
Unitarian families who lived in the country and had been without
light and heat for some days-- she offered us those comforts and
a bath, spaghetti dinner with wine, all by candlelight. In the
middle of the dinner she turned on the lights, and laughing, said
"I guess candlelight is no treat for any of you tonight": We ate
the rest of the dinner in bright, electric light. Laurnell often
reminded me of a bright, electric light, people turned her on so
easily and she shone brightly in a room.
Each of us here today has many memories of Laurnell--
of fun, of woman talk over many cups of coffee, of thoughtful,
complex, philosophical discussions, of disagreements, of a young
woman bubbling with ideas and filled with energy to execute many
of them. She reached out to many of us and gave something to each
of us. In this ways, Laurnell has not gone. Part of what she has
given us has added a new dimension to our being. To Jim and her
four children, she has give a large dimension which will never
be gone.
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We are all lonesome for her in varying depths. I, for
one, feel more of a being for having had her warmth and friendship
for almost four years. In know that she lived each of her too few
days closer to the utmost than most of us ever will. I think it's
Probably been many years since Laurnell has been concerned with
whether there was life after death. I think her concern was: Is
there life after birth and am I making good use of it. And her life
was certainly a very full one.
I shall miss her dreadfully, the Unitarian Fellowship
will miss her dreadfully, and I have watched her grow for four
years and shall miss watching and sometimes helping her grow more.
PHIL VANDEMANN: I'm going to address myself to the children since
they're the ones that I knew best-- Lynn, Steve, who are here, and
the others. A death like this is a natural disaster, like an earth-
quake, or a flood, or a bolt of lightning. It's completely unexpected.
There's nothing you can do to prevent it, and about all you can do
is defy it. It's a frightening thing and it can happen to any of
us. A similar situation happened to me a number of years ago. There's
no point in being afraid. What we have to do is be brave, and to
face the future. This type of a situation is going to happen to all
of us, and we're not going to sit back and whimper and worry about
it. I think Laurnell wouldn't have, and she wouldn't have wanted us
to. We're going to go ahead and have our family service Sunday;
we're going to light the candles just the same as we always have.
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We'll probably light a sadness candle first, but then we'll light
the happiness candle because there's always something to be happy
about. We don't want to forget that Spring is coming and we must
keep that in mind.
DAVE PATILLO: I suppose at this point it would go without saying
that it takes something special to be a woman. Not the least of
these would be beauty, courage, spirit, strength and love. Not
just the beauty of face and form, but an aura of beauty that goes
where she goes. Not only courage in the usual sense, but a quiet
courage, expressed with a tentative smile when a smile is most
impossible. Humor that dances and sings and soars beyond any frame-
work; an abstract humor that measures every situation for a suit
of absurdity and perhaps a gown of gaiety at the same time. Spirit
of verbe, and joy l'vie, not unlike running horses, or calves in a
field of grass. A strength of conviction, and, most of all, sheer
physical strength-- strength to carry children and all the things that
a woman is obliged to carry every day. This is strength beyond muscle
and sinew, it is strength of woman. It is love, not only with the
ability to give and the capacity to take, but, perhaps, an essence
of love that glows, radiating a warmth of love that is felt by every-
thing and everyone within its sphere of influence. This is a woman
and this is Laurnell.
One day last summer Laurnell, Jim and the kids were out in
the boat. It was a very rough day and the wind was blowing. Laurnell
was posted in the stern of the boat and I know for a fact that she
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was very scared and very wet and very cold. But she was beautiful,
she was laughing, and very much alive with the joy of living. She
was loving and being loved. Well, this presence is gone, but every-
thing else remains.
HERB LEGG: Today I want to say some things of Laurnell Bremner.
Laurnell was the wife of Jim Bremner, the mother of Steven, Lynn,
Anne, and Douglas Bremner, and a friend of those who are gathered
here.
It is fitting that we now recall these things because
we want to remember many things about her for our own peace of
mind. I hope she knew that I, and others of us here, felt these
things of her. I believe that she knew we so felt, and that it
pleased her to be among people whom she knew and cared for her.
Please recall these things with me.
I recall how alive she was. She was alive-- she was
vital-- she had a certain uniqueness which in various forms is
granted to only a very few people at a time. Her off-beat laughter,
her feeling for people, her seriousness about things that mattered--
these, we shall remember.
I recall the way in which she and Jim were important
to one another and of her pride in his work. To my mind, she was
as a wife should be-- in the time-honored phrase-- she was a helpmate.
I recall her as a mother most of all-- as a young woman
who had four elegant children. She was concerned for them and
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wanted that they have a full and free opportunity to grow and to
become themselves. She did all she could to make this possible.
I am glad that all of her children are of an age that they will
be able to remember her. They would have received much more from
her; but they have already received much, and have been fortunate
to have her as their mother.
I recall the words of the poet who said, "Something
precious in passing has touched me."
I recall a friend of hers, who yesterday said to me,
"I feel as if a conversation with Laurnell had been interrupted,
and now we will never be able to complete our talk."
This is how many of us feel today.
I am saddened today, but I am also glad. I am glad
for those of us who have had an opportunity, however brief that
it was, to know her-- to learn from her-- to share this child-- this
person who was briefly among us, and, who, in the time we knew her,
became of the fabric of our lives.
I recall two of her favorite authors, the theologians,
Paul Tillich and Martin Suber. In summarizing her life, I refer
to them: With Tillich, I say that she had the courage to be.
With Suber, I say that she was THOU to many of us.
In closing, I want to say to her family, on behalf of
myself and of the others who cared for her:
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"Laurnell was our friend, and our concern for you goes
deep today."
DR GIOVANNI COSTIGAN: My wife and I knew Laurnell Bremner for
about three years. But her bright image stamped itself so very
effectively upon our minds that we feel we had known her a very long
time. And that, I think must be the feeling of all of you today.
To be asked to pay a last affectionate tribute to someone we have
lived is at once a sad and precious privilege and an undertaking
full of difficulty. Such a responsibility is discharged by attemp-
ting to speak with honesty and sincerity, avoiding conventional
sentiments which are so often pressed into duty on such an occasion
as this. Sincerity and honesty were qualities Laurnell Bremner
admired, and which she herself possessed. It would be an offense
to her dear memory to utter a word today that would be false of
insincere, so I should like to invoke her intensely realized memory
in the minds of everyone that knew her, and to address these few
remarks not only to those who have come to pay her final tribute, but
also to herself, as if she were here and actually listening to the
words that are being spoken.
First, I should like to speak in general terms about
the challenge of death itself-- the challenge in this case so casual,
so abrupt, so cruel, and so inexplicable. And then I should like
to speak with more particularity about Laurnell herself.
It is strange how such a tragedy as this unites the
living, making us feel more intensely than ever the deep mystery of
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living. For grief, like love, unites and those of us who are here
today are united in a single sentiment of love and grief. Only
in love and only in death do we realize the absolute uniqueness
of every single human being, like her uniqueness, so lately beautiful
among us, whose loss we mourn today.
Most of our lives are spent among the shallows of exis-
tence; but occasionally and without warning, like lightning from
a cloudless sky, some unforeseen cruel blow falls crashingly upon
us, destroying the neat world of our daily contrivance and thrusting
us adrift on the turbulent and menacing ocean of reality. Such an
event as this compels each one of the survivors to probe his own
thoughts about the mystery of existence, and to ponder as best he
may the insoluble enigma of life and death.
As on the day of Dallas, such an event as this, though
void of violence, leaves us shocked and stunned, incredulous and un-
prepared. It constitutes a harsh reminder of the grim, elemental
reality that underlies all civilization, however much we may try
to disguise or conceal its harshness from ourselves.
"In the midst of life, we are in death." These ancient
words have echoed down for centuries, and for us at this moment, as
for countless others in the past, they take on a poignant and in-
escapable meaning. The stoic sentiment of a Roman poet, refashioned
in English by a modern artist, expresses very well this sense, at
once so old, yet very new, of the timelessness of grief and loss. I
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like to think that Laurnell herself, who loved things that were
both true and beautiful, would have taken pleasure in a moving
sonnet by Aubrey Beardsley, reliving a grief expressed two thousand
years ago by the Latin poet Catullus,
By ways remote and distant, water sped to thy sad
graveside, brother, as I come
That I might pay the last gifts to the dead and
vainly parlay with thine ashes, dumb
Since she, who now bestows and now denies, have tamed
thee, hapless brother, from thine eyes."
No matter how often death might have struck before, when he
strikes close to us at someone that we love, he strikes us for the
first time, as if he had never made his presence known in history
before. And whatever wisdom we may have fancied to have gained
through past experience, avails us nothing now. In this moment, we
are naked and defenseless against the immediacy of sorrow. In the
death of anyone near to us, we feel an immemorial grief renewed,
that grief which thousands of years ago struck the heart of primitive
man as poignantly as it assails our hearts this afternoon. To evade
the challenge of this anguished moment would be cowardly and unworthy
to the memory of her who has gone.
No man in his right mind deliberately seeks out sorrow.
But when by chance it comes upon us, we must meet it, bear it resolu-
tely. Only in this way do we deepen our awareness of existence.
Only in this way does life disclose its deepest meaning. Only in
this way do we balance, do we banish triviality and shallowness.
Only in this way does our emotional life experience significant
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growth. As it was written long ago in the book of Ecclesiastes
"For in much wisdom is much grief," and "He that increases knowledge
increaseth sorrow," we are suddenly thus made aware that there is
poignant truth contained in words that normally imbued our compre-
hension, words that we usually are inclined to dismiss as fanciful
or unreal.
In the death of Laurnell, each on of us who knew her
and loved her has lost a portion of his own existence. Each one
of us has lost an irreplaceable part of his own life, has lost that
part of himself that lived in her through her generous interest
and sympathy, while she was alive. Each one of us, therefore, is
bereft and impoverished today. Laurnell herself, the irreplaceable
being to whom we bid farewell, lives yet not only in the love and
devotion of her children, but in the intensely realized and affectionately
cherished memory of her that each one of us still holds in his heart.
Since she was intellectually fearless and sought to live without
illusion, it may be that this is the only kind of immortality which
she would have wished or have believed in-- that secondary sort of
life which we can give to the dead in our intensely realized memory
of them, that warm place still left in thought at least, beside the
living, the desire for which is in so many ways so great with most
of us.
She was kindly and gentle and good. She was generous and
loving. Her quick spirit of sympathy was infused into every situation
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in herlife-- it was manifest in all her relations with others.
She was quick to appreciate what was attractive in those about
her and what was beautiful in existence itself. She was magnanimous
and free from pettiness and spite. I never heard her speak slight-
ingly, disparingly or maliciously of others; she never boasted
or spoke much about herself. She possessed to the fullest that
quality of long ago which Burke spoke of as the "unbought grace of
life," her running laughter was the music of her everyday existence.
As King Lear said of Cordelia, "Her voice was ever soft, gentle and
low, and excellent thing in woman." She was intelligent and open-
minded, curious about new ideas and new experiences, intellectually
courageous and not duped by falsehoods and vain illusions.
In her short life she lived most fully, for in 33 years
she compressed a depth and richness of experience which many people
never achieve in the full span of 70 years. If to those who knew
her she seemed a happy person, few knew that such happiness had been
hard won from pain and hardship faced in her early life. I never
knew till after she was dead. Nor does the world yet know what
early sorrows, what trials and difficulties she surmounted to become
the mature, self-possessed person we all knew so well. This community
of Olympia in which she spent the last years of her life, years of
happiness and fulfillment, as we like to recall-- this community saw
many evidences of her disinterested zeal and enthusiasm for things
of public consequence. And it has reason to know, more than any
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place, the fruits of her generous giving of herself.
She was a free spirit, untrammeled and unprejudiced. She
was free from every kind of ugliness, jealousy and intolerance. In
a world that is still, after so many centuries, ugly and brutal and
violent, she was sensitive and thoughtful and kind. She was a loyal
and loving wife, a devoted mother, a generous friend. She was un-
obtrusive in doing good. In a word, she was that highest product
of civilization-- a noble and dignified human being. A majority
of such would be the regeneration of the world.
But while these things were true, she also possessed a
most distintive individuality. No one that ever knew her could
confuse her with another. She was not one of any number of people,
she was as unique as her name. There was only herself. Only through
the power of love can we appreciate, as I mentioned before, the
absolute uniqueness of a human being, and such love she had the
power of inspiring. This is what makes her loss so irrreparable. One
has to recognize that unique spirit which never was in all the cen-
turies before and never will be in all the centuries to come, is
gone, and gone forever. Thou'lt come no more again, never, never,
never, never, never.
I have stressed her generosity of spirit. It was such that she
would never have wished her loss to weigh like a stone upon
the living. She would never have wished in any way to be an encumbrance
upon life itself. Instead, she would have wished us to incorporate
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our keen remembrance of her into our own emotional life, to renew
ourselves in her memory, to realize in our continued existence
the values which she herself cherished and fought for. Remembering
this, I think perhaps it would have given her pleasure to know
that there would be quoted at this commemoration a slight and un-
pretentious poem by Christina Rossetti:
Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)
When I am Dead, My Dearest
When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain;
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.
BETSEY McGUIRE: Our Unitarian custom is to gather together as
friends who love each other and share coffee. Jim would like to be
able to see some of you downstairs where coffee will be served.
Scanned copies of the original typed transcript are here.
It looks like someone took shorthand or recorded the memorial service,
and then someone typed it up. Special thanks to Pat Holm of Olympia
who appears to have the only known surviving copy.