Funeral, Eulogy, and Memorial Talks
EULOGY FOR JUNE ESTHER HOLBROOKS TALLEY
[Talk presented by John E. Enslen at a graveside service held in the cemetery adjacent to Faith Baptist Church on Chapel Road in Wetumpka, Alabama, at 11:00 a.m. on December 9, 2014.]
I feel very honored today to be called upon by family members to say a few words on this sacred occasion as we remember a special daughter of God—a wife, a mother, a sister, a relative, a friend.
June Esther Holbrooks was born on June 14, 1940, in the State of Georgia. She died on December 5, 2014, in Titus, Elmore County, Alabama. She was 74 years of age.
She was raised by her father Bill Holbrooks and her stepmother Belle Holbrooks.
She was the oldest of three children. She had two younger brothers, James Holbrooks, who predeceased her, and Bill Holbrooks, who lives in Colorado.
She was the wife of Leonard Cash, who is now deceased. She and Leonard Cash raised seven children to adulthood. They are John Dorsey, Kimberly, Revannah, who is deceased, Jason, Katherine, Becky, and Scott.
By a second marriage to Tom Talley, who survives as her widower, she bore two more children: David and Bryan.
The ages of her nine children from youngest to oldest covered a time span of 27 years. That equals 50% of her adult life, not counting the time involved in raising the last one. That statistic demonstrates the investment in family that her life represents. Those nine children have given June 28 grandchildren and a steadily growing number of great-grandchildren.
During her youth, June’s father was in the army and the family moved around. Perhaps that contributed to her lack of fear in relocating or becoming part of a different community. Although her formal education was limited, her extensive travels and personal experiences provided her with plenty of self-acquired knowledge and common sense.
With nine children, her primary labors in life were that of a homemaker. Being a mother of nine children necessarily involves a certain amount of serious disciplining. In exasperated moments she was known to tell a child, while demonstrably pointing her finger in the child’s face: “Let me tell you something. I brought you into this world and I can take you out of it.” The fear she intended to instill was successfully conveyed.
Understandably her time was mostly spent around the house. She crocheted, cross-stitched, and skillfully sewed clothes for her children with her sewing machine. She planted, cultivated, and harvested a garden, including backyard gardens in Meadowbrook and Wallsboro; she canned fruits and vegetables; she baked and cooked the food for the family and others.
Later, her cooking skills were put to use commercially when she operated the Twin Pines Café at the corner of Alabama Street and the Holtville Road, when she operated the Dickinson Family Restaurant in Dickinson, North Dakota, and when she worked in the kitchen of a combined hospital and nursing home in Mile City, Montana. Later, her childbearing skills were put to good use as she operated a home day care service.
Like many of us, the domestic skill she least enjoyed was cleaning, but she also used her cleaning skills when she ran a janitorial business that cleaned both offices and homes.
No one ever accused June of not being a hard worker. She had a superb work ethic, and her personal labors blessed the lives of many people in many situations. She was helpful to others and service oriented.
Her labors were not directed at accumulating more stuff for herself. She was not materialistic. She was not impressed with things, but quite content to have sufficient for her needs.
June loved her animals and responsibly cared for them—her dogs, cats, goats, and chickens.
June was not a complainer, despite whatever difficulties she was forced to encounter. I think that is best demonstrated by the way she faced her monumental health problems with courage and determination. In 2005, she was diagnosed with congestive heart failure which required daily medication. In 2007, she endured a two-year ordeal fighting lung cancer, which included radiation, chemotherapy, and surgery. In 2012, she developed bulging discs in her back, which no doubt had a connection to the physical hardships she had endured in her life. In February 2013, she became paralyzed on her right side as the result of a stroke. Two months ago, she was diagnosed with colon and bone cancer. In the face of all that adversity, she maintained her dignity, her faith, her helpfulness to others, her desire to be as independent as possible, and her will to endure to the end.
Despite her own health problems, she could still put others first. She put her own health at risk, delaying treatment, while she cared for her daughter Revannah who suffered, and later died, from pancreatic cancer.
June preferred a simple lifestyle. She did not try to draw attention to herself. She did not seek for accolades or the honors of men. She quietly carried her part of the load and then some. She made more than her fair share of contributions to make the world a better place to live.
You knew where you stood with June. She was plain and straight forward. She did not try to deceive you about how she felt on any subject. In some ways, she epitomized the counsel given to us in the Sermon on the Mount as recorded in Matthew 5:17: “But let your communication be, Yea, yea, Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.” That personal honesty is part of the commandment for us to “be ye therefore perfect.”
Each of us will have our own good memories about June that we can cherish and ponder in the years to come.
May we be comforted by our knowledge that death and separation are temporary. June has completed her mortal probation. She has relocated again, this time to a peaceful, pain-free community of relatives and ancestors. Her physical remains, elements of the earth, may lie before us, but June the person lives on. Her spirit body is the same person and personality that she was here on earth. We will immediately recognize her, and she us, when we meet her again.
I close with the words of prophets, which I hope you find comforting, about the resurrection that shall come to pass for all mankind, both the just and the unjust, because of the atoning sacrifice of our Savior Jesus Christ: “For the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallow up in victory.” (1 Cor. 15: 52-55)
Then, “Know ye that ye must … repent of all your sins and iniquities, and believe in Jesus Christ, that he is the Son of God, and that he was slain …, and by the power of the Father he hath risen again, whereby he hath gained the victory over the grave, and also in him is the sting of death swallowed up.” (Mormon 7:5)
I add my witness that death is swallowed up in the victory over death, both spiritual and physical, that has been wrought by the Son of God, the first fruits of the resurrection, even Jesus Christ. For those who know this truth, death has no sting and the grave has no victory. Life is eternal and life only gets better. In our resurrected flesh, we shall see June again and that reunion will be filled with joy.
In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.