Mary Jane Kowal (née Hamilton), 87, of Westchester, Illinois. April 13, 1935–August 31, 2022.

Mary Jane was born and raised in Shenandoah, Iowa. She came from a musical family, with a father who played the piano for silent movie houses, as well as the calliope when the circus came to town. The famed professional keyboardist, Pat Hamilton, was her big brother.

“Murray” (Mary Jane’s childhood nickname) was that cute girl in bobby socks and saddle shoes who played the clarinet in your high school band. She was also the elegant young woman who played piano in the jazz and pop combos that helped to put you in the mood for your sock hops and ballroom dances. She performed with Clare Horning and “The Shenanigans” featuring, among others, drumnist Jerry Redmond and a young Don Everly on guitar, and was close to Cecil Blackwood of the Blackwood Brothers Quartet. She studied French and majored in music at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, falling in love with Richard at the beginning of their freshman year there under the watchful eye of the largest ginkgo tree in the state. After marrying on September 4, 1954, Mary Jane left school to become a full-time homemaker. It was a role she embraced as a sacred calling, as she and Richard raised five sons.

Mary Jane was a stellar cook, and she had what the Bible calls “the gift of helps.” She wrote poetry, was a disciplined and avid journal-keeper, and loved to read. She liked to walk and ride her vintage blue Schwinn Breeze to church on nice days. Mary Jane was often asked to offer conversational prayers at extended Kowal and Hamilton family gatherings. Through her participation in her church’s bereavement and eucharistic ministries, Mary Jane comforted those who had lost a loved one, bringing communion to and praying with residents of senior homes decades before she herself chose to enter an assisted-living facility in 2019.

Those who were blessed to meet and get to know Mary Jane often commented on her personality using words like “sweet,” “dear,” “gentle,” “kind” and “patient.” She was a good listener, and gave others her full attention. She embodied all of these traits naturally and unassumingly, but two other qualities that were not always observed so readily were her strength and depth, which were fed as if by supernatural currents.

Mary Jane was born and raised in the Methodist Christian faith and converted to Roman Catholicism when she married Richard, but the most profound influence on her spiritual formation and the ultimate source of her strength and depth was her nonsectarian, personal experience of God’s presence and guidance through daily Bible reading and prayer. She did not carry the ideological baggage that has come to be associated with the biblical terms of being “saved” and “born again.” Mary Jane’s faith was attuned to the “still, small voice” of God in the midst of the storms of life; it had nothing to do with the superficial stereotypes that some attribute to “religious people.” While she might display a childlike simplicity and naïveté at times, contemplation and solitude nourished her soul on a deeper, subtler level, giving her the wisdom and strength to become the person she believed God had called her to be in relation to others in this world.

When a series of pandemic lockdowns made it all the more difficult for her to see her loved ones (including even her next-door neighbors and fellow residents at Caledonia Senior Living, in North Riverside, Illinois), Mary Jane confessed that she identified with the final words of the psalmist’s petition to be saved from death: “Thou hast removed lover and friend far from me; my acquaintances are in darkness” (Ps. 88:18). As she witnessed others around her dying or simply requiring more assistance with their activities of daily living, she spoke of realizing in a deeper way the meaning of the words of Jesus: “Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go” (John 21:18).

Nevertheless, she persisted…and dazzled many by her unflagging and resilient efforts to walk, even while they knew her heart condition was worsening. As her own physical infirmities progressed in the final years of her life, her caregivers often commented on how slight and frail she seemed. It was difficult for those alongside her to watch the arthritis in her hands progress to the point that the things that had been such major parts of her life—making music, cooking, holding a pen to write poetry, letters and journal-entries, and even turning the pages in her well-worn New Testament—over time became practically impossible. Even so, she continued to deflect attention from herself. To the question that she had become so accustomed to hearing in her final weeks—“Mary Jane, are you in any pain?”—she would politely aver, genuinely and unassumingly, with a simple “No.”

Mary Jane thrived while living for others in this world, but she also longed at least as much as any Christian does to continue her life beyond. When asked what she thought followed physical death, Mary Jane invariably summarized her belief by using one of two short expressions: “Seeing Jesus face to face,” and “Entering the full presence of the LORD.” To her, paradise was something more sublime than the secularized notion of “going up there” to be with family and friends who had passed before. She believed the biblical teaching that the kingdom of heaven is primarily a place for the redeemed to worship their Savior without worldly distractions; anything else, however comforting to imagine, is, at best, a “second blessing.”

After a full life lived well here, Mary Jane was ready to “put away childish things” and “to know fully, even as [she was] fully known” (I Corinthians 13) on the other side of death. Hymn lyrics that resonated with Mary Jane’s thoughts about eternity include “This world is not my home,” “We will understand it better by and by,” and “Waking up in glory, and finding it home.” A song about the Christian’s joy at departing this world and entering the next, Phil Keaggy’s “What a Day,” was a special favorite of hers.

For Mary Jane, that joyful day has finally come. Here, every ginkgo leaf trembles with envy.

 

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A visitation will be held on Friday, September 16 from 5 to 9 p.m. at Hallowell & James Funeral Home, 1025 W. 55th St., Countryside. Family and friends are invited to gather on Saturday, September 17 at St. Francis Xavier Church, La Grange, for a 10 a.m. Funeral Mass. Funeral info: 708-352-6500

In lieu of flowers, please consider making a contribution to the Shenandoah Public Library Foundation, or to Pillars Community Health.