Sister Marilyn Vanden Bosch
April 1, 1936—October 24, 2014
Marilyn Gertrude Vanden Bosch, religious name Sister John Francis, nicknamed by her family, Sally, was born On April 1, 1936, at 4:00 a.m. in Shreveport, Louisiana. Her parents were Mary Louise Jacobs Vanden Bosch and Henry Cornelius Vanden Bosch. She was baptized 11 days later, April 12. In 1943 the family moved to Beaumont, and Marilyn enrolled in St. Anthony Elementary School and continued her education at St. Anthony High School, graduating in 1953. After graduation she joined the Houston Dominicans on September 8. Her first profession was March 26, 1955, and her final profession June 8, 1960.
Sister Marilyn earned her B.A. from Dominican College with a major in English—no surprise to those who knew how much she loved to read. She pursued a Masters in Library Science, but with teaching assignments in various locations it became difficult. She had graduate hours from 3 different institutions, and not every university accepted every hour. She had all the knowledge and used it in schools where she was missioned, so none of the effort—and there was effort—was wasted. She accrued 38 hours in Library Science.
Perhaps it was my first meeting with her that I realized how closely she watched food prices. She was at Sacred Heart in Austin one summer when I was sent there to be the summer driver. All the drivers who lived there were in summer school in San Antonio. One day I drove her to the grocery store to do the shopping. When she got to the bread section, she looked at several loaves and then counted the slices in each of the loaves. Inwardly I said to myself—“I thought I was frugal!” Years later when I lived with her at Seton Convent, she was still making out the grocery list. She couldn’t do the shopping herself very easily anymore, so several of us took turns doing it. We used Sister Marilyn’s list and her stack of coupons. If it was on sale or if it had a good coupon, it was on the list. I said to someone one day that the pantry was stocked with enough canned goods and non-perishables to last for months. And, of course, there were the items that were needed for baking. I marveled at her baking with her one good arm. She baked often and really enjoyed it, I believe. Once when the school was having a fund raiser, she volunteered to bake an Italian cream cake. She was taking it out of the oven—and it dropped! I gasped! She did not. We helped her pick it up and without batting an eye, she proceeded to start baking another one. We enjoyed the one that dropped and the new whole one made it to the auction for the fund raiser.
Sister Marilyn was a quiet person. I began with her various names, maybe an indication of her mystery. We are all mysteries; we spend our lives trying to be the person God created each of us to be, sometimes being a mystery even to ourselves. One of Sister’s qualities—one of her mysteries that I admired—was her never complaining. She had enough health issues that would have permitted her to do that. Right after she died, I was reading The Story of a Soul, the autobiography of St. Therese the Little Flower. When St. Therese was living with an aunt and uncle and cousin for a while after her mother’s death, she observed her cousin crying often over a headache. Her mother would give her much attention and comfort. St. Therese decided that since she had headaches every day, she would cry the next time. Well, she did not get the same response. Her aunt spoke to her as if she were an adult and told her not to cry. Therese decided that each person was different; she was not to complain about pain. I wondered when I read that if that is what Sr. Marilyn had decided a long time ago. When she looked like she was not feeling well and one asked her how she was, she always responded, “I am fine.” The doctors, nurses, and aides all experienced this.
Sister loved her family. When we brought her things here to the Villa after she died, we found albums of pictures of family. They will be treasures for her family now as she does not need them to remind her of her loved ones. Her sight is clear and beautiful.
The first reading for her Mass of Christian Burial is from Isaiah—the one that I read this evening. It is among the suggestions for funerals, and I chose it because it refers to the heavenly feast that Sister Marilyn is enjoying and also to the destruction of the “veil that veils all people.” Sister Marilyn sees reality now—her own beautiful mystery and the beauty and mystery of others. We pray with her the closing lines of that reading: “Behold our God, to whom we looked to save us! This is the Lord for whom we looked; let us rejoice and be glad that God has saved us!”