Remembering Bill

Bill Van Buren, April 24 1953 – May 1, 2009

Eulogy for Bill Van Buren, by John Guido

Bill before the Silver Anniversary Tea in 2005

If I were Bill, I’d start with a joke or two. Many jokes have been shared these past few days to remember him –if you want to hear some ask Sue M, or the folks at the Green House, his agape group, the Woodery, Craft Studio or the Club –a special room in heaven is reserved for those who have endured so many of Bill’s jokes. I don’t tell jokes because I can never remember the punch line –of course that never stopped Bill. He would often screw up the delivery, allow someone else to save the joke, and then laugh louder than anybody else. Ultimately, it was never about the joke but the desire to share a laugh with his friends. Bill had a God-given talent for making others laugh whether teasing David and Peter, sharing with the Woodery about his “shitty weekend,” or his marathon sessions of meaningless patter, rehashed Bill Cosby routines and slapstick physical comedy with Annie, Mike Ricci, or Mel. I’ll never forget the car ride to Chicago where I drove while Bill entertained Annie non-stop –for nine hours. Bill loved playing Santa not only because it was about happy childhood dreams, but also because he got to be jolly -eventually he became fat enough to drop the pillow! I can imagine the gang at the Club playing “the game of life” and joyfully playing out the dreams for the lives they may have had. Bill could crack you up with his take on the funny, potentially embarrassing things that happen in daily life and could poke fun at anyone or anything including himself. He enjoyed being teased back -as long as he knew you were laughing with him not at him. Like many comedians, Bill was terribly sensitive despite being almost shameless in revealing the things that most of us try to cover up.

Camping, 1970s

Nor was it always easy for Bill. Bill lived with a broken heart. I believe that this was the source of both his contagious laughter and his abundant tears. Most of us learn to protect our fragile hearts, mask our vulnerabilities and hurts, and seek to please those who make us feel safe. Not Bill. Because of his disabilities and breakage in his family, Bill did not develop the usual defenses. This put him at great risk as a child, yet he was blessed with an inner strength, a deep and simple faith in God, and the good fortune to be welcomed to L’Arche by Steve and Ann. At Daybreak, Bill’s vulnerability would become the doorway to healing for him and the many people his life was to touch. I never heard Bill speak of his parents with anything but deep compassion for their limitations. He loved the time he spent at the home of Carol and Tom, with his sisters and brothers, nieces and nephews. Unlike many of us, he wasn’t disappointed that his family wasn’t perfect, but cherished them as they are. It gave Bill great peace that his birth family and his L’Arche family were united around his hospital bed last week.

With members of the Green House, Christmas 2007

Bill lived his life free of the masks that most of us spend so much energy maintaining or struggling to remove. It is a powerful image that at the end of his life, Bill did not want to live with an oxygen mask over his face. Of course, he had been pulling off his oxygen mask at night for 18 years -and being rude to those who tried to keep it on him. Bill could not live with a mask on his thoughts and feelings either. I’ll never forget watching Bill on a respirator many years ago after gall bladder surgery struggling to share what he was living –unable to shut up despite the pain. The other day, when I was thinking of how easily Bill expressed his feelings, I thought of the famous masks of classical theatre, the laughing face of comedy and the painful tears of tragedy. Sometimes, we think that comedy is just about laughter and that is a mistake –both comedy and tragedy engage us through laughter and tears -the difference is the outcome. Tragedy ends in tears, destruction and the death of hope. In a true comedy, the usual order of the world is turned upside down –the powerful are made low, those considered weak and foolish are revealed to have the needed wisdom and power to heal; love and goodness conquer all; while there is death and sorrow, it is not in vain, but brings forth the hope and possibilities of new life.

Jerry Arbuckle, a great friend and mentor to L’Arche, is teaching us to read the parables and life of Jesus through the transformative narrative of comedy where love and life ultimately triumph over hatred and death. This is a great lens for us to understand the life and calling of Bill Van Buren. How is it that Billy who came to L’Arche at the tender age of 16, with his intellectual disabilities and vulnerable heart, would have such an impact on the lives of so many people and even on the history of the church in North America? Bill never forgot the importance of his being the first core member of L’Arche as Steve and Ann brought this important mission to North America in 1969. Along with David Harmon, John Smeltzer, John Bloss and the other founding members who have died or moved on, he is our Raphael and Philippe, and has had immense influence on the story of L’Arche. No small part of this work has been sharing the story of L’Arche with countless numbers of people within L’Arche and the wider community across North America and as far as Germany, and welcoming and forming many new members, with and without intellectual disabilities.

Bill with Henri Nouwen

Bill working at the Craft Studio

For the past two decades, Bill lived a journey no one imagined when he was welcomed as a skinny teenager -the gradual but steady weakening of his muscles with all of the painful and humiliating co-factors of pacemakers, breathing machine, multiple falls and other accidents. For all his coarseness in language and manners, and let’s face it he could be pretty rude and crude at times, Bill was incredibly graceful in living with physical disability. Every time he fell and broke a bone, Bill’s stubborn determination would pull him through recovery, though always with more loss of mobility. After years of working on the farm, workshops and in the Woodery, Bill got in touch with his creative side and thrived in the Craft Studio working in pottery and drawing. Bill took great pride in his work in the office which allowed him to help chronicle the history of the community told through thousands of slides. Despite struggling with multiple losses, Bill relished his work with his buddy, Ann P, as he mentored a new generation of members with intellectual disability. At the club, Bill lived another deep loss as he needed to give up bowling, one of his great passions and personal triumphs –gracefully, he shifted to being coach and cheerleader for the other bowlers, a role he took seriously to the end of his life. Fittingly, as the founding core member of L’Arche in Canada, Bill’s life illustrates the transformative power of a community which is rooted in helping each member to discover and share his gifts. It isn’t a place close to being perfect –what fun would that be –but the power is God’s love coming through our human weakness, broken heart to broken heart. In this, Bill was the mentor to many throughout Daybreak and beyond.

In these and many other ways, Bill cooperated with God’s grace to write a different ending to a life story that might have ended up a tragedy. He so longed to be on the stage one last time in next week’s 40th Anniversary Gala. The Galas have become a creative place for us to celebrate the powerful comedy of L’Arche. At the 25th Anniversary Gala, this was celebrated in several story lines: the dance of mutuality between a tiny woman with disabilities and a powerful young man; the famous priest and formidable nun who learned to play as cowboys; the concert pianist who found a soul-mate in the woman who had been a discarded child; the life which comes when we are faithful to a friend who is dying. Bill was asked to add a story and I was asked to help him. So I asked him what he wanted to talk about, and he said “the time you left me and I forgave you.” So I said “that’s a good story, but that may be a little too personal, what else do you want to talk about?” And he said with absolute conviction “the time you left me and I forgave you.” I realized then that this story, which I knew was powerful, yet was still deeply painful and embarrassing for me, was going to be the story we told. For Bill, who was at home on the stage and comes out pretty good in this story, the hardship was being able to remember his lines. For me, who was then terrified of speaking in public and looks pretty bad in the story, I had big issues to deal with -and the problem of getting Bill to remember his lines.

John Guido and Bill

The story we told was a simplified version of the break down that I went through when sharing an apartment with Bill, where under intense pressure in my leadership role and deep doubts about myself, I could not bear living anymore. So I took off with the intention of never returning. For Bill, whose deepest pain, his broken heart, stems from abandonment, this was quite cruel. When I received the grace to return, it was without hope for my life, merely resignation. From most people, I received sympathy which was too hard to accept, but from Bill I received red hot anger. I knew that it was complexly justified because of what I had done to him. I also knew it was anger for all of the others who had left him before me. Even in my sorry state, I knew that Bill’s anger was my worst nightmare -that I could harm another person. But I also realized that it didn’t kill me. Bill’s anger illustrated the degree to which he loved me; I could never have wounded him so badly if he hadn’t. The road to forgiveness began when Bill let me move back in with him as a fulltime house assistant, to slowly and painfully re-establish trust that I would never harm him again. Well before I could forgive myself, Bill forgave me.

Over the course of the next eight months, we lived through many joys and celebrations and laughed our heads off many times. We also lived through the beginning of his physical decline –the breathing machine, the pace maker, the respirator. Bill loved decorating our apartment and took great pride in our home. It was his idea of the perfect set up –my companionship, lots of space to be alone and do what he wanted, his dear friends Joe and Cathy down the hall, the two ladies apartments providing the larger group where Bill could be surrounded by relationship and have the audience he needed at times. It was then when I came to Bill and told him that I still needed help to heal the wounds I was living with and that it meant that I needed time away from the community. I told him that the community did not have any male assistant who could live with him in the apartment and that my leaving would mean that he needed to move to the Green House. I asked him if he could give up this home that he loved so that I could be well. Without a moment’s hesitation Bill said “yes.” And through all of the frustration and anger he would live and regularly dish out on others, Bill never questioned his sacrifice when he was with me. He repeated this “yes” to being the ‘assistant’ to my ‘core member’ in the gala because he was very proud that at the moment of my need, he had laid down his life for his friend. In the process he helped me begin to remove the masks that kept me from vulnerability and intimacy. The Gala was just one more, albeit enormous mask that was removed.

We told our story at the Gala and many times over the years, because Bill knew that this was not only our story, but also God’s story. Our version is pretty dramatic, yet it is the story of all of us in L’Arche. Bill’s great gift and ultimate vocation was to be a ‘clown of God’ who helped turn his own life, the lives of so many of us, and the life of L’Arche into a terribly good story. It is story where life and love, lived in a blessed, homely community, liberate us of the masks which keep us from being ourselves–and of the need to take ourselves too seriously. Thanks Bill for letting us be a part of the beautiful comedy of your life.

Life Story

With Ralf Schmitz and David Harmon

Bill had lived at the Green House at L’Arche Daybreak since 1993. Prior to that he lived in several other Daybreak homes, including the old Avoca House in Toronto and at Genesis Place in Richmond Hill. Bill was a founding member of the Woodery where he worked for many years. Bill developed his artistic gifts in mid-life, designing and decorating pottery and candles at the Craft Studio where he became a talented artisan. More recently Bill had begun to spend time at The Club where he brought his coaching skills to the weekly bowling ritual there. He had been a champion bowler on a Richmond Hill amateur team until his bowling retirement in 2007. Bill had also become a mentor to many new core members who looked up to him as a wise and fun-loving community elder. Bill was a close friend of Henri Nouwen. He travelled extensively with Henri, giving retreats throughout North America. There is a photograph of Bill with Henri on the jacket of Henri’s book “In the Name of Jesus”, a book where Henri writes about his friendship with Bill, including his great sense of humour. Bill was a master joke teller, a gift he carried to the Intensive Care Unit of York Central Hospital last week to be treated for pneumonia. Bill regaled his nurses with jokes.
Bill is survived by his sister and brother-in-law, Carol and Tom Foley, several other brothers and sisters, and a legion of friends. Visitation will be on Monday, May 4th from 2:00 to 4:00 and 7:00 to 8:30 at the Dayspring Chapel at L’Arche Daybreak, 11339 Yonge Street in Richmond Hill. The funeral will take place on Tuesday morning, May 5th at 9:00 at Saint Mary Immaculate Church in Richmond Hill. A dear friend of Bill’s, Father Ralf Schmitz, is coming from Germany to celebrate the funeral mass. Ralf is a former assistant at the Green House. Bill visited Ralf many times in Germany. His last big trip was to see Ralf and his many German friends in May of 2007.
While we grieve here at Daybreak, we are deeply grateful for Bill’s very fruitful life.