Today I am grieving. One of my best friends for nearly 40 years is dying. In fact, she may be dead by the time you read these words. For 20 years we were partners in the ministry of Baptist communications. I was supposed to be her supervisor. The truth is, she was my teacher.
In those days I was young and largely inexperienced. It was the wisdom, grace and patience of Mary Dee Enloe that helped mold me into being an editor of a state Baptist paper.
Together we published an award-winning Baptist paper for the Missouri Baptist Convention. Together we re-established a state convention communications and public relations program. Together we directed the lobbying effort of the state convention. Together we directed four statewide ballot issues fighting gambling and parochial aid and won three of them. Together we coordinated a three-year missions partnership with the Baptists of Taiwan that resulted in thousands saved and 27 new churches started plus strengthening existing churches in numerous ways.
Mary Dee and her husband, Frank, were more than partners in ministry. They were part of our family. Jefferson City, Mo., was about 700 miles away from my late wife Eleanor’s parents and mine. Mary Dee and Frank became surrogate grandparents to our children. In turn, we became friends with their parents, their children and grandchildren.
Our two families traveled together to Baptist meetings. We vacationed together and over the years became best friends. Whoever said a boss cannot be friends with someone he supervises never knew Mary Dee. Over the 20 years of working closely together there were moments of irritation but we were always ministry partners and friends.
Mary Dee regularly improved my editorials with questions about clarity and word choice. Her years of Baptist service gave her valuable insights into Baptist life and the personalities of Baptist leaders. When I began in Missouri she already knew at least half the full-time Baptist pastors by their first names. What I learned in school she seemed to know instinctively.
She believed in me and in our friendship enough that she sometimes questioned the wisdom of some of my ideas. More times than I want to admit, she helped me see that my suggestions were not the best and sometimes just plain wrong.
One year a coworker in the public relations area won first place in a national contest for an audiovisual presentation. Mary Dee’s name was not on the award but it was her critique of the original version that caused the project to be reworked and her observations that provided direction for the winning entry. She was always more interested in the outcome of a project than gaining personal recognition. In fact, she shied away from recognition.
As a child Mary Dee had polio and worked hard to overcome the physical disabilities left with her by the disease. She was successful enough to play on the high school basketball team. That experience shaped her entire life as she gave herself tirelessly to every project, to every goal. And she and Frank passed that same determination and hard work on to their four children.
In 1998 when Eleanor died from injuries suffered in an automobile accident in Durbin, South Africa, Mary Dee and Frank were at UAB Hospital when we arrived after being air-evacuated back to Birmingham. Even though I had been gone from Missouri for three years, Mary Dee took off work and helped coordinate everything during that terrible week.
On the night of the funeral visitation for Eleanor, Frank took me from the hospital to the funeral home for two hours and then back to the hospital where I was recovering from a major surgery following the accident.
Last week it was my turn to sit in a straight-back chair in the Enloe living room and hold Mary Dee’s hand as we reminisced and talked about her coming death. Parkinson’s disease has taken a heavy toll on her body and an unusual reaction to some of her medicines has destroyed some of her vital organs. But Mary Dee was as strong as ever and still clear in her thinking. She was aware of what lay before her and was already looking forward to seeing Eleanor and other family members and friends who await her in Heaven.
After we prayed together I told her good-bye. “It is not goodbye,” she said in her halting speech. “It is so long until we meet again in Heaven.” Her confidence in her Lord and Savior was as strong that moment as it ever was.
Make good friends
After Eleanor died I read a quote somewhere that said the best thing one can do to prepare for grief is to make good friends 20 years earlier. That is the kind of friends Mary Dee and Frank were to me following Eleanor’s death. I knew they cared for me. I knew they understood me. I knew I did not have to pretend in front of them. They would care for me even if I said or did something wrong. Our friendship had been tested by time. It was solid when all else seemed to be shifting sand.
That is an unusual gift in a day when people toss around the word “friend” so easily but seldom act like friends when the relationship is tested.
I am trying to be a true friend now to Mary Dee and Frank, even as I grieve for Mary Dee and for the loss that awaits Frank, her children and all who love her.
Grief comes to all of us. It is part of life for all who open themselves to relationships and love. The deeper one loves, the deeper grief will be. I pray that when you travel the grief journey, you will have true friends to walk the journey with you like I did. I know it makes a difference.
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Press time update to Bob Terry’s editorial above
Mary Dee Enloe died Oct. 19 and her funeral will appropriately be held on All Saints Day, Nov. 1.
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