Rodney's Memorial Service

6/4/2018

On Saturday, June 2, we gathered at St. Michael & All Angels Episcopal Church to remember our dear friend, Rodney Gabriel. Over 80 people, including friends from L'Arche Tahoma Hope and a friend from New York, celebrated Rodney's life with a Memorial Service and Potluck. Members of our homes started the service by processing in and setting a table at the front with Rodney's favorite things: his suitcase, a necklace & hankie, a hat & sunglasses, root beer, his harp & keyboard, and watercolors & paint brushes. We then sang I'll fly Away (all songs at the service were favorites of Rodney's).

The Reverend David Perry (Associate member of L'Arche Portland), led an opening prayer, followed by Sharon Grigar (community friend from Ascension Catholic Church) who offered a reading from the Gospel of John:

‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father." (John 15:12-15)

​We sang You Are My Sunshine, after which Tricia Curley (former L'Arche Assistant) offered a reading:

“To love someone does not mean first of all to do things for that person; it means helping him to discover his own beauty, uniqueness, the light hidden in his heart and the meaning of his life. Through love a new hope is communicated to that person and thus a desire to live and to grow. The communication of love may require words, but love is essentially communicated through nonverbal means: our attitudes, our eyes, our gestures and our smiles.” 

​We sang Don't Fence Me In, after which Cindy Leonard (long-time housemate of Rodney's) read Rodney quotes remembered by his Neahkahnie housemates:

“Bear goes up a hill.... doggie in the window... skippie hop.”
“Make a jam out of it.”
“Make a harp song.”
“You will when the day comes. You wait, you’ll see.” 
“I ain't gonna issue it.”
“Goodnight sweetheart.”
“Come here, I wanna ask you something. Sit down, take it easy.”

We then listened to three friends of Rodney's reflect on his life (read at the end of this post).

Grace LeChevallier (former Director of Care) reflected on the experience of sitting with Rodney while he painted while everyone received a small square of watercolor art created by Rodney (handed out by former Assistants, Sean Baird & Michael Biornstad). She then invited everyone attending to sit with Rodney one more time and reflect on his life while a video was shared of Rodney painting.

David Perry led us in a final blessing and intercessions, before everyone serenaded Rodney with L'Arche Portland's song of blessing, The Beautiful Song:

Rodney, you are beautiful
Rodney, you are strong
Wonderful to be with
Carry us along
Rodney, you are a loving song

We ended the Memorial Service with the sign of peace, while Jeremy Hoffman played Ring of Fire on the piano. We then gathered for a potluck where friends gathered to socialize and remember Rodney.

A Reflection on Rodney’s Last Season of Life
by Robin Benedict, L'Arche Assistant

I knew Rodney for the final two years his life, and shared daily life with him for his final year and half at the Neahkahnie house.  From the moment I first walked in the door, other assistants and core members started teaching me a strange artform of how to live well with ‘the old man’.  It seemed like everyone else in the house was in some kind of intricate, delicate, and circular dance with him that lasted the whole day, and sometimes the whole night too.  

Day after day, week after week, Rodney would slowly roam in his wheelchair from one end of the house to the other, looking for someone to share his state of mind with.  He had a lot to share. Rod could inhabit the whole range of human emotion in less than five minutes.  He shared celebration, suspicion, appreciation, blame, contentment, frustration, songs, curses, befuddled stares, and quiet disapproving shakes of the head sometimes all in the same interaction.  It was very difficult to change his mood and was equally difficult to redirect him from his circular wanderings in the house.  So throughout the day you had to float in and out of his path, sometimes literally dancing, sometimes singing, sometimes tip-toeing to avoid being noticed, sometimes just silently mimicking his gestures.  Then the next morning Rod’s circular pilgrimage would begin again.  As exhausting as it was, participating in that bizarre dance was one of the great privileges of my life.  I experienced it as an invitation into God’s upside down kingdom, where instead of power, vulnerability, is the cornerstone of human life.
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In one of Jean Vanier’s books, he said “even the most beautiful community can never heal the wound of loneliness that we carry.  It is when we discover that this loneliness can become a sacrament that we touch wisdom…when we stop fleeing into work and activity, noise and illusion, and when we remain conscious of our wound…we will meet God.”  I think Rodney found the kind of wisdom Vanier was talking about, he remained ‘conscious’ of his wounds til the end, and by his steadfast refusal to hide his pain made space in his life to encounter God.  Thank you for all the ways in which you have been witness to that encounter, and I hope it will inspire and encourage you on your own ‘journey home’.

Reflection on the life of Rodney Gabriel
by Sister Susan Mitchell, former Community Leader

Twenty five years of sharing life with Rodney Gabriel—what a roller coaster ride—what a challenge—what a privilege—what a gift. Rodney filled the opening for a new core member at Nehalem House when our founding core member, David Maeyaert, moved on in 1993. I and assistants Rob Hoisington, Eileen O’Reilly, and Tricia Curley—along with the other founding core members: Joni Smith, Cindy Leonard, and Mike Peterson—helped welcome Rodney to our community. I have journeyed together with Rodney literally and figuratively since then.
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Rodney and I, with Tricia, moved to a rental home in Gresham in 1994 while Neahkahnie House was being built. There the three of us welcomed Sharon Doane from the state institution in Pendleton to join us.  When Neahkahnie House was completed in 1995, Rodney, Sharon and I were the first to live there. Rodney and I shared life in community until I retired from L’Arche in 2013. I was honored when I was asked to be a part of helping Rodney move to his new home at Redwood Adult Foster Care six months ago where I continued to visited him regularly.  It was such a gift to have spent time with Rodney there the afternoon of his death.

A description of the mission of L’Arche Portland on its website captures the dynamics of my experience with Rodney:

We start by building an environment in which relationships of trust and openness can flourish. This growth takes time, but the more we give ourselves to it, the more we find ourselves transformed by the friendships that emerge. Into what, you might ask? Into more authentic versions of ourselves. The masks come off, and the real you and I appear to be received and celebrated. This kind of love, radical in its simplicity and day-to-day-ness, is the sign to the world of what is possible.

Those first years with Rodney were not easy ones for me or for the others who shared life with him as we struggled to get to know and understand each other.  We thought we were doing Rodney a great favor by giving him a family-like home with his own bedroom, only to find several times during those first months that he had moved all of his belongings out of his room and into the front yard during the night. It took a long time for L’Arche to become a true home for him. Gradually Rodney found that we valued him and his gifts of helping out around the house—sweeping the floor, vacuuming, emptying the garbage, mowing the lawn. His first vocational setting discovered his gift with watercolors and soon his paintings were decorating our walls and used for making greeting cards.  At the rental home we appreciated Rodney’s care for our new core member, Sharon Doane, and the ways he watched out for her.  Rodney’s vulnerability and insecurity from the loss of his family in childhood and from the wounds of institutional living continued to express themselves through challenging behaviors. At the same time, his authentic self was emerging through the transforming power of love.
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And my life, too, has been transformed through my friendship with Rodney.  His love and acceptance of me with my vulnerability and my challenging behaviors have helped me to become more fully my authentic self. Thank you, Rodney, for welcoming me, and so many others, into your life.  Thank you for being my teacher and my friend.  Your spirit and your love will live on in my heart always.

Alison Hilkiah, former Community Coordinator, Remembers Rodney

Rodney was at the heart of community life at L'Arche Portland for 25 years, and a special part of my life for the last 20 of those. He was challenging to live with. He was one of my best teachers. 

When I moved in with Rodney in 1998, he was still very active. He carried out household chores as Susan mentioned. He was able to take walks around the neighborhood, go on camping trips, dance with the ladies, play his harmonica, and of course paint with watercolors. 

Rodney was always gentle with animal friends. He talked fondly about his childhood days living on the farm. He loved visits from various dogs that were friends of the community, and took a special interest in Cindy's pets (the turtle, the rabbit, and especially Moki). He liked to fill the bird feeders on the porch and watch our feathered guests. He also had a tender heart for children. He liked to sit on the front porch at Neahkahnie house and watch the skippies play in the park across the street. He liked to tease children who came to the house to visit. In fact, Rodney liked to tease everybody. He loved to joke and laugh. Attending church services often seemed to put him in a giddy mood. Live music in any form really stirred his soul. His toes would start tapping and his arms would swing with the motions of a conductor leading an orchestra. Rodney was capable of deep empathy. Sometimes, upon hearing bad news that might trigger an outburst of curses and threats, Rodney was instead able to say simply, "That's sad." And his eyes might well up with tears for someone else's pain, not his own.     

We shared a bathroom when I lived in his home as an Assistant. I artfully arranged pictures and candles, decorating the space just so. I was annoyed when he kept moving one of them. I moved it back. He moved it again. It took me a few weeks of this back and forth to realize that he moved it because he needed to lean one hand against the wall. He had never complained about my things being in his way; I was the one who had been irritated. He helped me learn understanding and compassion.

Rodney really rattled me with threats of violence at times. Not feeling safe in my own home, I got to taste a tiny sample of what life must have been like for him, not feeling safe where he lived for decades. Through Rodney I learned new ways of reconciliation. He couldn't apologize for the ways he hurt me when the incident was over, but he could and did re-affirm his affection. One morning, after a particularly frightening episode, I gave Rodney a wide berth as I helped the other core members get ready for their bus. I let him dress himself, and I slid his breakfast on to the table while he was in the bathroom. I watched from a distance as he took his meds. But there was one task he couldn't complete by himself: clipping his suspenders on the back of his pants. He stood at the table waiting for me. When he noticed my hesitation, he said, "I ain't gonna bite ya." Which I accepted as reassurance of our restored relationship. I clipped his suspenders on, by which I communicated my willingness to stay in relationship. And we continued as housemates.

Rodney's provocations and my response to them revealed my own brokenness- my impatience, my sense of entitlement, my fears, my need for control. Rodney had been hurt. Badly. Which didn't make it okay for him to hurt me. But living with Rodney, I gradually came to understand that flawed though I was, I had an opportunity to bear the cross of Christ--who although innocent himself, suffered the consequences of other people's wrong doings. If I could not bear the anguish and anger that sometimes leaked out of Rodney, as a result of what others had done to him, I would miss out on the wonderful gifts he had to offer: gentleness, tenderness, humor, joy, art, presence, wisdom. By accepting and loving him, despite the challenging behaviors he presented, I received the opportunity to participate in his, and my own, redemption. Through Rodney, I learned that any of the people who might hurt me in my life had likely also been hurt themselves, and that the wounds I would receive from them were probably a fraction of the wounds they themselves had suffered. I learned forgiveness.

When I returned to L'Arche in an office role, about 4 years after moving out of Neahkahnie, Rodney picked up our friendship as though no time had passed. As soon as he saw me, he would ask "You here today?" He seemed confused if I explained that I was going to be in the office most of the day, that I was just stopping by his house for a meeting, that I would be in and out more than once... So I ended up just answering "Yes. I'm here today." And each time that question was an invitation to me to Be Here, to be fully present today, rather than living in my head focused on the tasks I had to do. Rodney offered such shifts in focus to all of us.

By the time I left my role as Community Coordinator, Rodney's physical mobility was much diminished. He used a wheelchair to get around. And the triggers which before had seemed predictable, following certain patterns, became increasingly erratic and hard to anticipate. Scientists who study the human brain say that as we age, our short term memory decreases, but our long term memory actually gets stronger. Rodney seemed more and more to be reacting to spectors from the past, which were as real to him as the actual present situation.

Rodney, your ability to trust again, to love again, to attach to people who cared about you again, after all you went through--moves and inspires us. You possessed so much resilience and courage and power. You changed my life, and I want to say thank you. And I love you.