“Lisa, we promise to watch over your children and keep them safe, and we'll follow the instructions you gave us, your students, to keep our faith bigger than our fear,” Jenny Kierstead told her big sister and us all Sunday.
Lisa McCully had ended a note posted on Facebook on dealing with the struggles created by the COVID-19 pandemic with those instructions just weeks before her murder.
McCully was one of 22 people killed in a 13-hour shooting rampage that began in Portapique on the night of April 18.
Those closest to the 49-year-old teacher, mother, musician and dedicated community member gathered in Truro for her funeral.
The rest of us were able to watch the service online.
Through services like the one held for her, obituaries and testimonials by loved ones, we are learning the enormity of the hole the killer tore in the life of this province.
McCully spent much of her 17th year living in the mountains of Guatemala with an indigenous family.
Beyond her native tongue, she was fluent in French and Spanish.
She had two masters degrees.
She settled in Portapique to raise her children.
There she taught them physics on a backyard bike ramp, biology along the shore and music by campfires.
“The role she cherished most was her role of mother to her two sweet children,” Kierstead told the service.
McCully was a woman of faith.
Religion has long grappled with our struggle to accept a world that can house both such good and such horror.
Her service was a window into how her fellow congregants at Upper Onslow's Trinity United Church reach out to one another during a time when we're not even allowed to touch.
“We have a faith in this thing we call God,” Rev. Valerie Kingsbury told the service.
“Some of think of it as a universal power. Some speak of it as Allah or the Almighty, some as just a higher power. … It is revealed in the smiles, the laughter, the joy, the tears, the wonder. It is here. It is revealed and it is continued to be revealed in Lisa as she continues to make a mark on us.”
Kingsbury looked to McCully's two children.
“I know the pain you're feeling now seems impossible,” she told them.
“I wish I had a magic wand or special words that could make it all disappear. I don't. What I can say to you is that you are surrounded by a love that is so powerful and so great that it will lift you up.”
