grandpa and grandma for president

Homily

Funeral Mass for Eulalia Goetz Ochs

Sacred Heart, Park, KS

19 October 2020

I wish the Chiefs hadn't won the Super Bowl.  There, I said it.

After 50 years of frustration, the experience of the Chiefs winning was bound to be like dying and going to heaven.

Grandpa, and now grandma, have taken it a bit too literally.

Things were better when Chiefs were losers and grandma and grandpa were alive.  Their passing  in the same year is a huge loss.

But today we celebrate that their lives are a huge win!  Much bigger than any Super Bowl win could be.

Grandma and Grandpa won an incomparable victory in the game of life.

Give them a trophy!  Better yet, we should elect them president.

With the world around us being torn apart by danger, lies, fear, hate, distance and division, Leo and Eulalia leave the opposite as their legacy.  A safe home, an honest living, giving more than they took, an experience of love and forgiveness, doing it together.

What grandma and grandpa did is the recipe for fixing everything that is wrong in the world.

We should elect them president.

At the very least, today by our prayers we vote for their election into Jesus' Hall of Fame.  They will get in on the first ballot!

Plant seeds.  Make a commitment. Choose life.  Build a home.  Go to Church.  Make time for family. Trust God.  See if He gives a good harvest.  Rinse and repeat, day after day, for two days short of 70 years.  Then watch it add up!  Those who are faithful in small matters will be given great responsibilities, says the Lord!

Look at the beautiful mess, the bountiful harvest that came from the seed of their faithful marriage.  It's bigger than any Vegas jackpot they ever imagined.  

I dare any one of us to do it better.  Grandma and grandpa weren't perfect.  They never claimed to be.  Yet they did their best and did it the right way.  The door was always open.  There was always food.  There was always time!  I got to know my family, because Grandma and Grandpa created a home.

I'll never be happier than a Thanksgiving or Christmas at Grandma and Grandpa Ochs's.  I could have spent a lifetime playing football in the yard.  Heck, I was so happy I even learned to like cauliflower salad, which is more than I can say for Aunt Jean.

Grandma and grandpa.  Nobody did it better than you.  We are blessed to be your family.  We love you and miss you.  I am sorry the Chiefs won the stupid Super Bowl.

On the plains of western Kansas you filled up what Dorothy meant when she said there is no place like home.

Give them a trophy.  Elect them president.  Let them hit the jackpot.  They deserve it all.

There is no place like home.  Be at rest and at peace, Leo and Eulalia, in the home Jesus has prepared for you in the heart of our Father.  Amen.