"The space around you is beginning to grow vast ... Be happy about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend.
"Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn't necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.... and don't expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it." ― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Dear Friends,
We have put together this blog to re-member Becky's life as she touched us all in so many ways. We treasure our memories of her and hope you do as well. We have divided OUR memories of her life up into 4 movements which were organic in real time:
PLEASE ... share YOUR memories of Becky
But OUR memories can never tell the whole story. It will be documented and completed only over time as its impacts become clearer to our minds and hearts
. So as you read this HOME page and the 4 permanent pages chronicling the movements in Becky's life on earth,
- PLEASE SHARE YOUR MEMORIES
- by simply clicking on the "Comment" link at the bottom of each page and
- relating the impact she had on you ... along with your identity.
- Leave comments on more than one page if the Spirit moves you to do so.
- And return from time to time to maintain the dialogue and help how the story unfold.
This request is not sentimental, although your memories may contain deep and strong sentiments. It is essential ... even existential. For YOU possess a part of this narrative that NOBODY ELSE HAS ... and Becky's story was and will never be complete without you.
The narrative we never imagined ...
Becky was laid low by irresistible forces of Nature on the afternoon of March 14, 2025. We thought it a tragedy sans hubris from our vantage point on earth. Many lovingly wept and faithfully prayed for her. Technology spared no expenditure or exertion of its greatest powers to save her life. But Nature was implacably and unrelentingly deaf.
And yet something hidden from us was silently and equally irresistibly taking place that we somehow failed to imagine. Until, on the afternoon of December 11, 2025 — after a family-wide spiritual gestation of almost nine months to the day — we blinked and she gracefully rose up from among us — as if responding to a voice we did not hear — to press on with her life's journey in a new and, at first, frightenly expansive way — like a seed when it first sprouts from the closed, dark earthly womb which bears it into the open, glorious light of the sun which nourishes it. And, although we could not accompany her on this new journey, we slowly began to realize that something other than "death" was happening. Her life form was no longer familiar, but we could feel that it was real nonetheless.
So we gathered as soon as possible with her friends and her body and — with natural and religious ceremony according to her wishes — we committed the body back to the earth from whence it came as we recited familiar words that suddenly rang truer than any tolling bell as they helped us imagine that she was never really alone as she laid low or as she arose. And, although we will greatly miss her bodily presence among us, we now have an undying, abiding gladness to have been present to witness her climb the step into eternity ... hand in hand with her great and everlasting Lord and with the great cloud of witnesses she loves and with whom she continually labored and is now joyfully reacquainted and reunited.
Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.
A time and a way to remember ...
A memorial service is scheduled for Saturday, January 10, 2026, at 2:00pm at Eastminster Presbyterian Church, 1958 N Webb Rd, Wichita, KS 67206.
No flowers or food are needed right now ... her many gardens will bloom with them
soon enough. But if you wish to express your love, consider joining in
her most recent work in memoriam at
Sunnydale Community Library
may God bless you ... as God has and is blessing Becky,
The Elder Family