Marjorie Ransley Eulogy and Service 13April2005
CELEBRATION OF LIFE
MARJORIE ANNE RANSLEY
24 March 1940 – 7 April 2005
Celebration of Life
11 am Wednesday 13 April 2005
Bribie Island Baptist Church
7-9 Cotterill Ave Bongaree (Cnr Bestman Ave)
Order of Service
Welcome by Pastor John Gollan
Hymn No 229: “Jesu Thou Joy of Loving Hearts”
Sharyn Booyens – Piano
Bible Reading – 1Cor.15, 2Cor. 5:1-11
Bev Ford
Christian Eulogy
Bev Ford
Life Eulogy
John E Ransley
Message of Comfort – Pastor John Gollan
Prayers
Hymn No 216: “O The Deep, Deep Love of Jesus”
Psalm 91
Gloria Adam
Chorus: “Shout to the Lord”
We invite you to stay for light refreshments after the service.
Additional Hymn requested by Pastor John Gollan
SHOUT TO THE LORD
by Darlene Zschech.
MY JESUS, MY SAVIOUR,
Lord, there is none like You.
All of my days I want to praise
The wonders of Your mighty love.
My comfort, my shelter,
Tower of refuge and strength,
Let every breath, all that I am,
Never cease to worship You.
Shout to the Lord all the earth, let us sing
Power and majesty, praise to the King.
Mountains bow down
And the seas will roar
At the sound of Your name.
I sing for joy at the work of Your hands.
Forever I’ll love You, forever I’ll stand.
Nothing compares to the
Promise I have in You.
© 1993 Darlene Zschech/Hillsongs
Australia/Kingsway’s Thankyou Music.
A Songs of Fellowship Worship Resource
CHRISTIAN EULOGY
by
MARJORIE RANSLEY
(to be read by Bev Ford)
Ever since I can remember from my childhood, I had awareness of God and as a child, I talked to Father God. I went to a Presbyterian Church and Sunday School.
In first year at Home Science School, I learned to play the piano and my teacher took me to a Methodist fete where I was invited to Sunday School at Hornsby Methodist Church. There a family adopted me and I went there for meals until I was 17 years old.
I attended Junior and Intermediate Christian Endeavour, Sunday School and Church.
At an Anglican Scripture Class taken by Miss Cook I heard about asking Jesus into my heart and asking forgiveness for my sins, and this I did that night.
After two years of nursing I went to Hornsby Baptist Church which I attended for 11 years. Whilst there, I was water baptised, became a member and attended Young People Christian Endeavour and the Youth Group until I was 30 years old. Mrs Rule helped me over those years.
At 34 years I came to Queensland and went to a Lifeline group for 3 years. With the help of Pat Bird, I attended the Caboolture Baptist Church. Later I attended a Bible study at Bribie and became a foundation member of that Church. While there, I was librarian until the end of 1994. After that I went to the Assembly of God Church until now.
In 1978 I went to lectures at Queensland Bible Institute and the lectures were on the Holy Spirit, and New Testament Greek and exegesis of Mark and Hebrews. I had an experience with the Holy Spirit in 1979 and 1988.
Father God, the Lord Jesus and The Holy Spirit are the three loveliest people in the universe. They have been with me all my life in sickness, and health, trials, crisis and joys, and I recommend them to all so that they can have a relationship with them.
I wish to thank those in the Baptist Church at Bribie, especially Gloria Adam who helped me to get well. All my friends at Bribie and at the Bribie Christian Community Church for their friendship and love and concern and help. Thank you Bev Ford for all your prayers, help, love and hugs and teaching over all these years. Myra and Cliff, Jim and Dell, Innes and Rosa from Elijah House, I wish to thank for all their advice and prayers.
With Elijah House I did the Basic School in 1994 and repeated a few times and in March and October in 1998, I did the Advanced School. From these schools I had a lot of healing. I have prayed for counsellors and helpers and counselling schools for years. I thank God for all the lovely people I have had friendships with through Elijah House. I thank Elijah House for all the help and healing I have received.
EULOGY FOR MARJORIE ANNE RANSLEY
by Marjorie Ransley & John Ransley
Bribie Island Baptist Church
Wednesday 13 April 2005
On behalf of Marjorie’s family, I would like to thank everyone for coming today.
Thanks very much to Bev Ford for reading Marjorie’s Christian Eulogy. Some of you will know that Marjorie also left a short “Life Eulogy” to be read at this service. However, on the copy she gave to Pastor John Gollan there was a note saying “Johnny”, (which is what she called me) might alter it a bit. So I have altered it a bit, mainly to flesh it out as well as to add some comments from the family.
Pastor John Gollan commented that in 15 years of ministry, this was the first time he had encountered someone who had so thoroughly prepared their funeral service. I might add that our mother also prepared her funeral service, when she discovered she had metastatic breast cancer. She left instructions about the choice of her church and pastor, the hymns, the bible readings and a special song by a friend. She also arranged her cremation and memorial plaque. However, Marjorie has certainly gone one better by preparing her eulogies as well!
As you will hear, there were four main themes in Marjorie’s life. First and probably foremost was her Christian faith. She asked for this to be dealt with in her “Christian Eulogy”. Second, her lifelong attraction to jobs and, later, voluntary work, that involved helping people. Third, her enthusiasm for learning. And fourth, her deep love of music.
Marjorie was born at Narrandera in NSW on 24 March 1940, about a year after her sister Judy. Dad was already working on the railway then, so he wasn’t required to go to war, the railways being a reserved occupation. So Marjorie, unlike other many other war babies, enjoyed having both parents at home.
Soon after, our parents moved to Hornsby. Marjorie started at Hornsby infant’s school at age 5 and attended primary school up to year six. Then, instead of going on to high school, which is what the rest of us did, she attended the Home Science School (at Hornsby) where, apart from the usual subjects, she learned sewing, cooking, book-keeping and that incredibly useful skill, typing. She graduated from there at age 15 with her Intermediate Certificate.
Both Marjorie and Judy learned to play the Tonette, then the Recorder. Marjorie played Recorder in her primary school band. In secondary school she learned piano but could only practise at the Children’s Library, Hornsby, because our parents couldn’t afford to buy a piano. My sister Robyn remembers that although Marjorie’s piano teacher was very strict, she said Marjorie had a very sensitive touch, and “felt” the music rather than playing it mechanically.
Marjorie started her singing life in the choir of the Junior Christian Endeavour, which sang at the Hornsby Baptist morning service. She also joined her secondary school choir, and for a few years she sang soprano and alto in a large choir performing Handel’s Messiah over three nights at the Sydney Town Hall. Much later, in Brisbane, she sang in the Benny Hinn choir at the Boondall Entertainment Centre before hundreds of people.
She also attended orchestral concerts in Sydney Town Hall several times a year. She loved classical and choral music, as her large collection of CDs demonstrated.
* * *
Marjorie started her working life at a Fruit Shop in Hornsby but she only stayed there for a short time. She worked next at a gramophone factory in Galston Road, Hornsby Heights, putting gramophone needles on cards and using machines to wind the springs. A far cry from our contemporary iPods and other digital music players!
When she was 17 she started nursing training at Prince Henry Hospital, La Perouse, (Maroubra). She worked there for 2 years, then switched to Hornsby Hospital for 9 months. Unfortunately she never completed her nursing certificate. At both hospitals she lived in the nurses quarters, but somehow I doubt that she got up to the high jinks that young nurses are famous for.
After nursing she worked as a typist at the “Southern Shipping” shipping office in Sydney, typing manifests for ships trading between Sydney, and Launceston and Deniston in Tasmania. She left the shipping office after a year, there not being enough work.
Then she worked for 12 months as a relief staffer at the Dalmar Methodist Children’s Home (situated between Eastwood & Epping) in Sydney. Her work there involved looking after children from broken homes, from infants to 15 years of age. She lived-in, worked five and a half days a week and was paid the grand sum of 12 pounds and 10 shillings per week, out of which they took 5 pounds for board. She loved this work and because she was relieving staff she worked in all the different sections of the home, with all ages. The children attended school from the Home. Marjorie said it was like being a mother to the children, although the children called her “sister”, not mum.
From there she got a job in a Department of Social Security typing pool for 8 months. Then she left DSS to work in the Sydney City Mission Old People’s Home at Redfern. She worked there for 4 years as a nurse’s aid and greatly enjoyed the work. Yesterday amongst her things we found the briefcase the ladies purchased for her when she resigned. She left because once again she wanted to further her studies.
She returned home to study physics and chemistry for 3 months so that she could qualify for entry into the same Biology Certificate course that her sister Judy had completed. Judy remembers being somewhat amazed by this. During Marjorie’s first year she had a night job at a plastics factory and attended technical college during the day. After the factory closed she got a job in Her Majesty’s Customs as a Technical Officer Grade 1. She left there in 1969 after nearly five years, retired on a life superannuation pension.
Subsequently she worked part time for 6 months at the Chesalong Anglican Nursing Home in Chatswood, before she was forced to take sick leave. When she recovered they had no work for her so she did washing-up work for a while at the Baptist College. She lived in a flat at Mt Kuringai, near our childhood home at Hornsby.
While she was still in Sydney she spent 3 years doing drawing and painting classes at the Hornsby Tafe College. A strong memory while she was attending Tafe was Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s decree that all Tafe students should have one year’s free tuition!
When I asked her last year about boyfriends, Marjorie said she “had no permanent blokes, she just went with different blokes”. She said she was with one boyfriend called Ian for 9 months, a law student. He offered her an engagement ring but she thanked him and said no thanks. She told me she never wanted children.
* * *
She came to Bribie Island in July-August 1974, a couple of months after our parents moved into their new house at Ningi. Over a period of many years mum and dad mined sapphires in central Queensland by sinking shafts and searching through mullock heaps, well into their sixties. Marjorie lived with them at Ningi and sometimes accompanied them on their trips to Emerald and other places. Marjorie shared with them a keen interest in gemstones, and she had been for 12 years a member of a Sydney lapidary club. She also went scratching for opals at Lightning Ridge.
When mum and dad moved to Wollongong in 1979, Marjorie insisted on staying in Bribie. That’s when she moved into her Bestman Avenue flat, establishing some kind of record for long term occupancy—25 years—before she left us last week.
Our mother had worked for many years in the Children’s Library at Hornsby and she introduced Marjorie to library work at the Bribie Primary School. Once again Marjorie’s typing skills came to the fore. After mum and dad left Ningi, Marjorie continued voluntary work at the school for the next 17 years, covering books and typing catalogue cards, until in 1996 she was made redundant by computers.
Marjorie also became a skilled leather worker. She made wallets, belts and key rings, amongst other things. I still have some leather belts she gave me as presents.
She loved her little flat. She said it was close to everything and had everything she needed. For many years she kept a pet dog there, and was much affected when it died.
* * *
Like a lot of people in the sixties and seventies Marjorie smoked on and off for 6-8 years, ceasing in 1974. She said Jesus helped her to stop. She didn’t think she had suffered any lung damage from this, but suspected she might have suffered passive smoking damage from our father, when she was a child.
She said she had a lot of counselling for her “traumatic childhood”. She said the counselling had also healed a lot of anger.
Marjorie has been ready to die for a couple of years—I believe most people here today would be aware of that. In April last year she gave away most of her possessions, and told everyone she expected to die soon. In effect she saw herself sitting in god’s waiting room. Yes, she got the timing wrong last year, but already she felt she had finished her “life’s work”. She told me her body had aged quickly and she was too ill to go on. Certainly in recent years she suffered from severe breathlessness, although the doctors were unable to provide any diagnosis.
Last year she wrote out a detailed Will, she typed up her two eulogies, she mapped out today’s church service and she made a list of all the people she wanted to be contacted when she died. That’s why I phoned a number of you who are at this service today. She was very well prepared, very organised. When I mentioned this to some people, they said to me, “oh yes, that’s Marjorie”.
So far the doctors have been unable to determine a cause of death. Some people may have wondered whether Marjorie willed herself to die, but it’s very unlikely for two reasons. First, she specifically denied she was doing that. Second, it’s not that easy. A friend of mine told me her mother wanted to die for 15 years, and every morning she would wake up and complain that it hadn’t happened! Another friend’s mother told her family she was dying for the last 27 years of her life!
A friend who is here today told me there is a famous epitaph that goes “I told you I was sick”. Perhaps that could be applied to Marjorie.
* * *
Chris Christie asked me to mention a favourite saying of Marjorie’s which goes: “Isn’t He wonderful” (meaning Jesus). Chris also stressed how much Marjorie loved her family.
From the family side I can say that Marjorie always tried to ensure we stayed connected, even though we led very separate lives. Especially in the years since our mother died she liked to phone around to pass on the latest family news. Marjorie was especially close to our mother Lucy: when mum got breast cancer in 1994 Marjorie developed a breast cancer on exactly the same side.
Although we attended many of the same churches as children, my two sisters and myself never shared Marjorie’s strong faith. When our parents died we didn’t feel calm enough to speak at the services, but Marjorie went up to the front on both occasions, mainly to say “mum is in heaven” and “dad is in heaven”. When my partner Muktanand died last year I asked Marjorie not to say this at her funeral service, because it wasn’t appropriate – it wasn’t a Christian service. Marjorie was a bit put out by this request, but she said she would abide by it. However, at the end of the service, she turned around to where my mother-in-law was sitting and said to her “Muktanand is in heaven now but I’m not supposed to say it!” So she managed to get her way in the end, at least in part.
So here at Marjorie’s funeral, by way of farewell, I think she would like me to say “Marjorie is free now, she is at peace, she is in heaven.” Much love to you, Marjorie .
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