I first met Carlyn after she had already moved to Shrewsbury.
I took communion to her one Sunday, and we had a long chat about how much she loved St. James,
the activities she had been involved with here,
and the family who sat behind her and Leib every Sunday morning.
She talked about the children of the parish and how much they meant to her,
about her friends, about how much she missed being here.

I didn't get up to Shrewsbury again until a few months later. Carlyn wasn't in her room, so I began looking for her in the halls,
and was startled to hear a voice behind me, saying, "Are you looking for me?"
There was Carlyn, with a welcoming smile on her face, perfectly composed, with not one hair out of place.
She remembered me - she even remembered my name, even though she had only met me once.

John says that she had a remarkable memory for names. It went along with her love for people, for entertaining, and for hospitality in general.
Carlyn was known as a gifted homemaker - one of those amazing women who was good at every part of creating a wonderful home - she was an excellent cook, an even better baker, a gardener, and a loving wife and mother who put her family first.
No matter how busy she was with activities at St. James and her many clubs,
she was always home for her children in the afternoon.

Carlyn used to say, "Cooking is an art, but baking is a science." She understood that only so much experimentation could occur with baking if one wanted to make sure breads and cakes rose properly.
Her "scientific" achievements in baking were well known - she baked so many cupcakes for the St. James Horse Show that "Cupcake" became her nickname.

But her greatest love was gardening.
And she did it with the same energy and creativity that she showed in all her other activities.
She loved flowers, had many heritage roses, won awards for horticulture, and belonged to local garden clubs.

I think of Carlyn and her garden as I look at the passage from John's gospel. In this fourteenth chapter of John, Jesus is giving his disciples instruction for the last time.
The Last Supper is finished, and in that pause between supper and his journey to a lonely Garden where he will meet his final destiny,
Jesus tells his disciples that God, his father, and their father, has prepared a place for them in heaven.
"in my father's house is many rooms. Would I tell you that I go to prepare a place for you, if it were not so?"
While we do not know what life after this one is like, we do have these images given to us by Jesus and others in the Bible.
We do not know if there will be gardens, but we know that there will be love, and joy, and peace, that God will wipe away every tear,
And that the pain and suffering Carlyn endured will be gone,
We know from the reading in Revelation that she will be radiant, singing God's praises, as she loved to do here at St. James.
We know that she will be united with her Savior, Jesus.

When I think of Carlyn, and her journey from this world to the next, I think of the beautiful passage in the Song of Songs:
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
The winter is past, the rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth,
the time of the singing of birds has come,
And the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.
The fig tree puts forth its figs,
And the vines are in blossom;
Giving forth fragrance….
Arise, my fair one -
Arise, Carlyn….
And come away.
Come, and dwell in the Garden of the Lord.