Van Hooser, Joan Wiser
As a girl. she danced with her grandmother on rainbows cast by prisms hanging in a window. As a woman, she used her God-given gifts to positively touch and influence the lives of countless people. Joan Wiser Van Hooser was born on June 22, 1955, in Marion, AL. She finished her journey in this world in Nashville, TN on Tuesday, May 26, 2015. In the years between, Joan lived a remarkable life -a life of powerful personality and heroic deeds that served and sometimes rescued those fortunate enough to know her. Joan is the daughter of Dr. Winfred Wiser and Dr. Nell Wiser. She grew up in Jackson, MS, Memphis, and Nashvllle. She loved the movie Pollyanna because of the unshakable optimism of its title character. She grieved when Jim Henson and Mister Rogers died.
She was a self-proclaimed "professional appreciator." And Joan wrestled with God because that's what you do when you care deeply about that relationship. Joan is survived by her husband Davld, her loving partner through adventures that ended all too soon. She is also survived by her children, who grew to understand and appreciate this woman who launched them on their own journeys. Daniel (and Allison) Nadeau, Lauren (and Dee) Travis, Winfred (and Lindley) Nadeau, and Brittany Van Hooser Childs; also by loving grandchildren, Story Henson Childs, Veda Grace Childs, and Arthur Ian Travis; her mother, Nell Wiser; bIg brother and life-long friend, Nick (and Cay) Wiser; and by several cousins, nieces and in-laws. In a very real sense, Joan is also survived by all of those people whose lives she touched as a school counselor, a pre-school teacher, mentor, coworker, and friend. A Celebration of Life service for the amazing Joan Wiser Van Hooser will be held Friday, May 29, at Otter Creek Church, 109 Franklin Road, Brentwood. Visitation is at 4 p.m., with the service at 6 p.m. In lieu of flowers, friends are asked to express their love for Joan with a donation to the Wayne Reed Christian Childcare Center, Nashville. A portion of the funeral services is being handled by Harpeth Hills Memory Garden~ Funeral Home. “Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” (Ephesians 3:20·21)
Communion Meditation…by Joan Van Hooser, May 2014
It has been my experience that God is always preparing me for the next thing. I never really get it at the time, but God has often graced me with 20/20 hindsight.
When I was growing up, there were four words issuing a requirement that was not negotiable in our family: COME TO THE TABLE! As a little girl, it was hard for my brother and me to come in from our magical neighborhood play, but we came. It was a high family value to sit at the table together as a family and share, not only nourishing food, but even more importantly the events and our feelings about the day.
When I was in elementary school, my father was in private practice as an OB-GYN in a small Mississippi town. We would always postpone our dinner until the last minute in hopes that he could
join us. Babies are not born from 9:00-5:00. When my mother would finally accept that he was not going to be able to join us, she would reluctantly issue the COME TO THE TABLE instruction, and my brother and I would come. Almost without fail, as we bowed our heads to pray, we would hear Daddy’s car pull into the driveway. Somehow, he always showed up at the table, even when we lost faith.
As I raised my own children, the family value stood firm. Our most cherished times at the table have been holidays and birthdays and celebrations. COMING TO THE TABLE meant eating together at the dining room table, using three generations of china, crystal, and silver. We would remember, often tearfully, all of the women who had fed our family on those dishes.
When David and I married, our family grew quite large. Now the dining room table extends all of the way down the living room, using two extension tables for time together as a family—brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents. We used to tease David’s mother “Granny” because we would not have finished our meal before she was planning the next one. We would moan about how full we were. Only now do I realize it had nothing to do with the food really; it was looking forward to the next time we would COME TO THE TABLE as family.
I remember a number of years when I struggled to understand what the point a bit of cracker and a thimble of juice had to do with our worship service. I understood the symbols intellectually, but not spiritually.
Last Sunday was Mother’s Day. All of my children came home to COME TO THE TABLE with me. As I watched them and listened, we shared our lives and who we are, and how we are all doing our best to honor God’s calling in our lives. My Lauren is pregnant with the fourth generation to COME TO THE TABLE for the first time—a new birth! I was suddenly awash in what it all means.
I have battled stage-four cancer for over a year now. The tumors just continue to grow. I am standing inches away from death and here I am AT THE TABLE with my spiritual family just as Jesus was as He was standing inches from death at that Last Supper, saying, “Remember me.”
I am not afraid of death. I cannot say I am not afraid of the process. Christ was not afraid of death. He is the conqueror. However, I have a new intimate understanding of His begging God to “Let this cup pass from [Him]” as He prayed in Gethsemane.
As I look across this auditorium, I see many with whom I have COME TO THE TABLE for thirty-plus years. You have loved me in thousands of ways that have helped me to at least begin to GET IT. God has indeed been preparing me for the next thing: death into a new birth and a new life. It is my honor to invite you now to COME TO THE TABLE.
Comments by Gail Srygley
Joan and I emailed a lot over the last two years. At first it was about arranging a time to eat out together, but the emails evolved into a lot more than scheduling. Joan, ever articulate, talked of the disease, her frustration, her joy, her family, her faith. I saved excerpts from those emails and will include them as we go along. It’s my way of letting Joan preach her own funeral.
Joan taught me much. Joan believed in the value of lipstick: she wore lipstick all the time, no matter how bad she felt. Maybe a little vanity. She did love being a redhead, but I think her wearing lipstick came from a core belief; it was her way of embracing the day. And she lived her life, filling each day full. Joan proposed to David. I think that clearly shows her zest for life. She said she was ready to get on with their lives together: holding patterns weren’t very comfortable for Joan. She did not entertain bitterness, she did not do regret. She was quick to forgive. Oh, she certainly had things in her life that she would have liked to have changed, but she didn’t camp where she had no control. She landed hard on let’s make the best of things and let’s move on.
She had an adorable, but severely diabetic four-year-old in her class at Otter Creek. She wasn’t going to let him or his mother camp on what his challenges were. She researched, found books to read to the children, and made his circumstances so interesting that another student went home and asked her mom if she could start getting her finger pricked every day before lunch.
Joan’s Emails
I got the beginnings of an asymmetrical haircut today. Cancer and age encourage either a bit of craziness or depression. I choose the former.
I believe that Joan’s live life to the fullest commitment was deeply rooted in her choice to live in gratitude.
Email, June 2013…I am committed to staying as authentically positive as possible. It is who I am.
July 2013…God so knows exactly what I need, exactly when I need it. One would think I would come to expect such. However, it never ceases to take my breath away. I so believe that the best medicine in life is your attitude. With cancer I would never have been able to maintain anything resembling a genuinely positive attitude without the love and support I have enjoyed.
Nov. 2013…We are now entering the season of MY favorite holiday….Thanksgiving! I memorized the 100th psalm when I was in the 3rd grade in my public elementary school in Greenville, MS. It continues to be my favorite psalm, and one I say in my head during scans. It is a psalm of THANKSGIVING! Whereas most of the Bible is often confusing to me, this psalm has always been a comfort to me in my relationship with GOD! For a day that began in a trench I honestly was not certain I could climb from, it has been beautiful! Just about the time I begin to think, “God must have put me on MUTE with all of my endless talking to Him, then something fairly magical happens. I had lost my THANKFUL journal. I knew I stuffed it somewhere when the cleaners were coming. I had searched everywhere for it. It is an anchor for me when I begin to feel I am lost at sea. I mean I searched everywhere. It is colorful and has a ribbon tie, so it is not easily hidden. Today in my rantings with God, I went back through everywhere I had already looked before….even among my cookbooks. Well, today, there it was in the very basket I would have first imagined I would stash it. I have been through that basket piece by piece umpteen times. Today, it was there. I am not trying to be a mystic with this, but when I asked God if HE had put me on MUTE, the journal appeared. How like God to give me my anchor just at the time I needed it. Monday’s doctor’s visit continues to have me dancing on Cloud 9.
April…Lauren and Dee, this was written just after your shared the news that a grandbaby was coming.
I will be honest, I have not felt well at all. In spite of that, my life is so filled with joy that I could burst!
June…Daniel is coming for my birthday. I love to look forward to things
July 14...It has been a hard day physically, but a beautiful one spiritually. God is preparing me. What a comfort! I want to ask for your prayers around tomorrow. I have always told my children that God is always preparing them for “the next thing.” I have told them that, because that has been my experience with God. I have never recognized it as it was happening, but always been awash in gratitude after the fact. I trust that now more than ever.
Oct 14, 2014…A Tennessee fall is my favorite season! God is teaching me so much that it quite overwhelms me at times. Sleep is still not my friend, but I do see it as a beautiful time of prayer and reflection on how very blessed my life has been. God has been so gracious to me these last weeks. How can I despair?
I am writing notes of gratitude to cheer me this morning as I am a bit anxious about the scan.
Feb. 2015…I showered in hopes of feeling better. Showers do wonderful things for me. I enjoy watching the things bothering me go down the drain!
I am weary, but grateful…..so grateful for the love that surrounds me.
Joan taught me to wear lipstick and to be grateful, but most importantly, she taught me about the nature of God. Josh Graves told of taking his seat on an airplane, and immediately the passenger next to him began chatting and asked what kind of work he did. To his reply that he was a pastor, his seatmate said, “I don’t think I believe in God.” Josh responded, “Tell me about the God you don’t believe in. I might not believe in him either.” Joan has shown me a God that I not only can believe in but am drawn to believe in.
Joan had real conversations with God, sometimes they were intense. Like the Shunamite woman of scripture, she railed at the unfairness of life. She was indeed a Pollyanna in her love for others, but there was no bland Pollyannish belief in her interaction with God. She didn’t live the last two years in naïve hope, but in convicted faith.
Before the first round of chemo Joan writes, I am, of course, feeling great fear about the procedures of the next 2 days and the illness that will follow in the battle with the tumor. Intellectually, I know that courage is not possible in the absence of fear, emotionally, I still feel the dread.
It has interested me that many people with whom I have shared my journey seem to think I am lacking the faith to live if I talk about or plan for my death. Needless to say, I disagree. My faith is rooted in all that we don’t know and God’s endless faithfulness throughout my life.
Another email …Here is where I live with prayer. I have lived through and witnessed so many things that seemed “unfair” and made me ask the question,”If YOU are there, GOD, why is this happening?!”
Who among us has not asked this same question? I have found comfort and direction in Joan’s answer.
After my rants, not unlike a teen-ager, and I am finished with my FIT, I always come back to, “ YOU are GOD and I am not.” Ultimately it is the parental, “Because I am in charge and you are not.” I don’t believe in the POWER of our prayers, I believe the POWER of GOD! I have abandoned seeing the Bible as an idol, as well as seeing prayer as a “magic wand.” It does not mean I don’t believe in prayer. I have a deep reverence for prayer. However, I believe that trusting God means seeing prayer is GOD’S desire for relationship, just as I longed for my children to talk to me; not to “talk me into something that I already knew was not in their best interest” but to let them talk out loud and build relationship! I always let my children say what they wanted to say (except, I Hate You was out of bounds), but they knew ultimately I would do what was in their best interest in the BIG PICTURE. In my lifetime, GOD has always provided ultimately what is in my best interest! I am living that beautiful life. It is what makes it hard to let go!
With where I am now, no matter how much I cry and question, I have a lifetime of experience and RELATIONSHIP with GOD that ultimately says, ”I am GOD and you are not!” It is eventually a delightful place of rest.
My morning prayer for years has been to ask God to show me what HE needed me to do and to give me the courage to do it. HE has been so faithful to me as I have raised my children, been a counselor, and even now, as I am facing this beast of cancer.
June 13… The visit was a gift just at the right time. Therein lies my faith. It is not that I am not dying, but that God loves me and is surrounding me with people to support me into the next life.
God has been relentlessly faithful to me!
Joan was a master at metaphor, especially metaphors about God. She had a small photo of David and Winn on the mantel over the fireplace. She referred to it often. There was a tradition among Joan’s children that they each as they were old enough carved their own pumpkins at Halloween. These were very creative children and there were some marvelous productions that emerged. In telling me why the picture was so dear to her, Joan explained that it showed Winn trying to carve independently for the first time. The intensity of the task shouts from his face. David is holding the pumpkin so it won’t slip off the table. Joan loved to recall that David was so patient, so encouraging, so able to let Winn do it all himself, but when Winn got that that tiny acute corner that forms the edge of a pumpkin smile, he struggled. David said, “Corners are hard. Would you like me just to cut around the corner for you?” Winn agreed, immediately taking back the knife when the corner was turned. For Joan, the picture was a metaphor for God. God lets us do it, lets us design, implement, is there to encourage, to support, to keep us from slipping off the table, and willing to help us get around the hard corners.
There are several references in scripture to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The meaning of those verses has been expanded for me. I now know the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, and the God of Joan.
Comments by Sandra Collins
One day at Lipscomb, teachers were talking about dreams they had had more than once: dreams of missing the big exam, sitting down only to discover that the final was written in a foreign language, going to the wrong room, or going on the wrong day.
Epics, novels, and movies often center on a hero’s big test in facing the enemy, the great whale, a disaster, questions of conscience--sometimes in malfunctioning space ships, sinking boats, and concentration camps.
What I always ask when I read or see these confrontations is “What would I do? Would I cave in?”
For me, all of these are metaphors for the final test. How will I deal with terminal disease or imminent death?
Joan faced the great test we all dread. She faced it head on with dignity, peace, questioning, even joy. She never stopped going out, listening to others, commenting on what she had learned from her experiences as a daughter, a granddaughter, a wife, a mother, a counselor, a teacher. She shared with me stories about challenges and learning experiences, stories about students, and about her gifted children and My David, of whom she was so proud and for whom she thanked God continually.
She loved and carefully preserved family traditions: table settings with best china and crystal (no fears about breakage, people more important than things); blessings jars at Thanksgiving, crystals in the pockets of first graders, scores of decorations for every holiday carefully and traditionally placed and remembered. She told me about books from her wide reading of children’s literature and gave me some she knew I would love —books I have read at home to my grandchildren, with our life group, and at the Wayne Reed Center. One was the book about a poetic mouse named Frederick. About that book, our daughter Erin wrote the following: “Like Fredrick, Joan was a poet. Joan brought life to death. Despite the impending threat of the end, she saw the beauty of her surroundings. She grabbed hold of family and friends. With her sunset glow and the mellow hum of her voice, she comforted others through her sickness and death.” Erin was right.
Joan’s signature feature, she would say, was her red hair.
But she was wrong. Her signature feature was the lively expression on her face as she told a story that was a metaphor for living.
She was right, however, that her gift was the gift of encouragement and appreciation. The man who taught thousands of little children to play the violin--Shinichi Suzuki—did so by deliberately encouraging the most minute accomplishment. Once, some friends brought an older man to play violin before Suzuki just to see what in the world Suzuki would say about the old man’s limited skill. When the man finished playing, Suzuki stood, smiled, opened his arms wide, and said, “You play the violin!” Joan was like that. Even when it was hard to find something encouraging to say, she would find it or, as she might say, God would give it to her.
I have always appreciated her intelligence, her creativity, her love of books, her love of all the students from three to eighteen that she inspired and consoled, and our shared love of metaphors that we have seen all around us. But I am especially grateful to her for teaching me about really living here and now.
Of the hard times in her past, she would say, “I was being prepared….” Trial after trial, triumphant through grief and loss, each obstacle created an opportunity to learn, to grow, and to face the next obstacle with greater strength and wisdom. She confessed that there were many times of anger, fear, sleepless nights, lots of crying out to God in hard questions, but like the Psalmist she let God turn her “mourning into dancing.” She chose to live intentionally, noticing every seasonal change, every leaf, every bird, every flower, being fully present, “redeeming the time,” trying to “take no thought of the morrow,” but relishing the day.
Most of us fear death, but Joan has shown us that accepting the inevitability of death can move us to be fully present every day.
Death is a gift, making me think of what I want my family to remember, making me want to encourage others, making me appreciate even cloudy, drizzly days, making me more likely to forgive and let go of resentments.
Joan did not live in denial. She faced facts head on, asked the hard questions of her doctors, got all the information she could even when the news was disappointing time and time again, and when they said Hospice, she may have been taken aback briefly, but then put on her makeup, met caregivers at the door, continued to go out to run errands, get her hair done, come to ladies’ class, go out for lunch, and decorate the house. What an example to me, to her family, to her medical team, to all of us.
And when she looked a little tired or resigned, something in the conversation would remind her of a story or evoke a word of wisdom and her eyes would reclaim their sparkle and her face become animated once again.
As a high school senior, she wrote a paper with the unlikely title, “The Optimism in Camus’ Pessimism.” She believed that in his essay about the mythical Sisyphus, who must roll the stone up the hill through eternity knowing it would always roll back, there was optimism--an enjoyment of the journey. As she talked about her premise, I was reminded of a line from Camus which summed up what I saw in Joan. “In the midst of winter, I discovered there was in me an invincible summer. And,” he said, “that makes me happy, for it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me there is something stronger, something better that is pushing right back.” Joan would tell Camus the “something” was God.
Portrait by Erin Collins delivered before Joan’s last Easter Sunday, representing not only grandson Arthur but also the hundreds of children and teens Joan loved and counselled. child into a Nashville public school for the first time Joan’s husband, David Van Hooser, has made videos of Joan as she tells the prisms story and others. Dr. Gary Jerkins encouraged him to create a book. Prism People is now available and the video is available on U Tube.