In Memoriam, Marjory C Folinsbee-Harlan, MD, deceased 24 April, 2009

[Marjory Folinsbee, MD (left) Marietta Fahey, SHF (right)]

Two years ago today I lost one of the most important people in my life. Marjory C Folinsbee - Harlan, MD, was my physician for @17 years until her retirement in @1989; thereafter she was my friend, unofficial formator, and mentor. In particular, she was one of those who taught me what it means to love and be loved despite every obstacle or resistance. Her consistent presence in my life since January of 1972 was a joy, and quite often, a major challenge I did not always appreciate as well as I came to later on!! I still grieve her loss but I also celebrate a new kind of presence because she has entered a realm which both transcends and interpenetrates this one of space and time. Especially, though, I rejoice with her as she has truly come home to God and is reunited with all those who died before her.

Marjory was one of the first and very few women in Medical school in Canada back in the days when it was truly a men's world and medicine itself a man's field. She was a pioneer in many ways, not least because she grew up on the frontier of Saskatchewan, went to a one room school house (she got there on horseback with her sister). Later on she went to medical school first in Saskatchewan, and then at Stanford. She was a pilot (her first plane was named "Therapy" because it functioned that way for her after the wholly unexpected, sudden death of her first husband), she pioneered programs for young women from difficult families, worked with the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in San Francisco, pioneered programs in other countries to allow the very poor to become entrepreneurs. Professionally, though she had begun practice in internal medicine, she went back to school to study psychiatry because it was her experience that most people needed someone to talk to more than anything else. While she was known as an expert in neuropsychiatric pharmacology, she disdained the practice of psychiatry which was merely oriented to medicating the patient. When I first met her she was associate chief of neuropsychiatry at Pacific Presbyterian Medical Center, also in San Francisco. She maintained a private practice as well, first in San Francisco, and then in San Mateo. Later she saw patients in Carefree, AZ, etc --- depending on where she and Ridge (2nd husband) were living.

When Mar first died, I simply had no words and though I borrowed a poem from the work of Jessica Powers (Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit, OCD), I never posted it. I think it still fits -- and it fits especially on this Easter Sunday as I imagine the welcome Jesus' death and resurrection made possible. (Ironically, it also echoes dimensions of the life I live now in part because of Mar's assistance!)

The spirit, newly freed from earth,
is all amazed at the surprise
of her belonging: suddenly
as native to eternity
to see herself, to realize
the hermitage that lets her be
at home where all this glory lies.

By naught foretold could she have guessed
such welcome home: the robe, the ring,
music and endless banqueting,
these people hers; this place of rest
known, as of long remembering
herself a child of God and pressed
with warm endearments to His breast

The Homecoming by Jessica Powers (Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit, OCD)

But today I need to add a little to this, and something far more personal than I usually post here. On this day when we celebrate the wonder that death no longer has the final word, it is especially poignant for me to celebrate her life. She struggled against death in many forms every single day of her adult life, and directly saved my own at least three times (e.g., via IV meds, CPR, and/or ventilation in the face of status epilepticus or serious seizures). More, along with my spiritual director, she worked consistently that I might have life and have it to the fullest. She knew that genuine freedom was the power to be the ones we are called to be despite constraints and limitations, and she wanted that for me. She reminded me of it in ways courses in theology, good as they are, could never do. When I was finally professed in community in 1976, she was present sitting right up front (she "wanted to see everything!"). And then again in 2007 for perpetual eremitical profession and consecration, she was present and carried up the gifts along with Sister Marietta and my sister (Cindy) and niece (Ellen). It seemed so fittingly symbolic to have Mar and Marietta, along with my closest family, carry up the bread and wine that would be so incredibly transformed into the very Body and blood of Christ.

In our last real conversation (November 2008) partly in honor of her birthday and partly for Thanksgiving, I thanked Mar for the gift she was in my life. We talked some about the death of her husband, Ridge Harlan (just a couple of years before this), about her own struggle with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (a splenectomy a number of months before had improved things significantly for the time being it seemed), and also about the shape and richness of my own life --- how right the move to diocesan eremitical life was, and how I was growing in it in the unexpected ways it made possible. I joked that I suspected that for most psychiatrists having a patient (or former patient) who quite literally became an "official" hermit would be counted by the physician's peers as a "treatment failure." Mar laughed at the general truth of this and then became quite serious. She affirmed she had "never doubted that my life in solitude was a true vocation" (she had certainly never said so to me in all these years!), and further, that in her view, I "had taken a 'treatment success' and [with the grace of God] turned it into a way of life." She said she "could not be prouder of or happier for me." For my part, it was humbling and a very great joy to know what all of this added to her own life.

Christ came that we might have life and have it abundantly. He came so that death, whether ultimate or in any of its lesser forms, would neither dominate nor define us and faith (trust in God) would replace fear. He came that we might be liberated from whatever cripples us and walk courageously, with integrity, wholeness, vision, and the wisdom and joy that comes when the exigencies of life meet the grace of God. When we are really fortunate, we find friends (and maybe even the occasional professional) who participate in this mission of Jesus and themselves summon us to its concrete realization --- even if they never speak in religious terms. Marjory Folinsbee (Harlan) was one such person for me, and on this day in particular I celebrate her memory and the gift she was, and continues to be in my life.