Jeanne Greeson

It was an early fall evening, the leaves on the trees, rustling in the gentle breeze, were crimson and harvest gold. The setting sun had the cloudy sky splashed with smears of fiery reds, oranges and yellows.

Jeanne looked up when she heard the click of her mother’s heals coming towards her. “I've been calling, Jeanne, it’s time to come home, my petit. Everyone is waiting for you.”

When her mother reached out to take her hand Jeanne uncurled from where she was sitting, but stopped only once to look back at the stooped ninety-four-year-old woman sitting where she had been, and smiled.

Jeanne reached out to gently stoke the cheek of the woman and said her goodbyes. The woman’s hair was silver and her face, a roadmap of wrinkles, showed the journey of a life well-lived.

Jeanne knew the woman well. She’d been born on April 22, 1930, in Windsor, Vermont to Thomas and Annette Levesque and was one of nine children.

She’d spent her youth as a child born during the Great Depression. Her father has passed away when she was thirteen, and her mother, with nine children to raise, struggled to make ends meet. Money was tight, but with an unshakable faith in God, the family flourished. Her older brothers left for the military and sent their paychecks home. Babysitting money was used to pay bills and the bountiful garden the family grew provided the food to fill their bellies. Because of that faith she been raised to have in God, she became a nun after graduating from high school as the Salutatorian of her class.

After a few months in the convent, a different calling summoned her.

In 1953, she married Robert Greeson, a GI in the US Air Force, and over the years, they moved about the country as military families do. She was blessed with six children of her own. Michael was the oldest, an old soul from birth and then Patrick, who was a child with a zest for life and a devil-may-care attitude. Timothy followed two years after Patrick and was a serious, quiet thinker. Another two years passed and the first daughter, Paula came along, followed by Martha, sixteen months after that. The woman had spent her twilight years living with Paula and had been very well cared for with the help of Martha. Martha was followed by Daniel, the baby, the apple of his mother’s eye, sixteen months later. Her life was filled with all the things being a wife and a mother entailed. The marriage to Robert’s lasted for twenty-seven years, but as is true with many things in her life, a new road had taken the two of them separate ways and they divorced. She never remarried, but remained friendly with Robert until he passed away in January of 2012.

As Jeanne looked back at the old woman, she knew without doubt that she and the woman were one and the same. She knew she no longer needed that old shell, the trappings of a life here on Earth. Her mother, her father and all nine of her brothers and sisters were waiting for her to come “home.”

With a spring in her step, Jeanne turned back to her mother and said, “I’m coming Mama, I can hardly wait to see what the next adventure brings!”

On November 10, 2024, Jeanne (Levesque) Greeson passed from this world to the next. She’d lived a life filled with the love of her family and left without regret and with great joy in her heart. She left behind six children, twelve grandchildren and eleven and half great-grandchildren.

At Jeanne's request no public services will be held....the family is planning a private service at a later date.