Gone from My Sight

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says: “There, she is gone!”

“Gone where?”

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says: “There, she is gone!” there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout: “Here she comes!”

And that is dying.

Rexene P. Boren, 69, of Mexico, died at 4:45 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2004, at her home in Mexico.

Funeral services will be held at 1 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 24, 2004, at Pickering Funeral Home in Mexico with the Rev. Doug Vernon officiating. Visitation will be on Saturday from 11 a.m. to service time at the funeral home. Burial will be in the New Liberty Primitive Baptist Church Cemetery.

Ms. Boren was born on Nov. 27, 1934, in Boone County, Mo., to Robert Truman and Alcie Ellen Davis Pace. She graduated from Ashland High School in 1952. On Oct. 11, 1955, in San Antonio, she married Lyle Craig Boren, who died in 1976.

Moving to Mexico in 1966, she was employed at Kaiser (National) Refractories, where she became the plant’s first female foreman. She retired in 2001. She was secretary of the board of Kaiser (Show Me) Credit Union from 1988 until 2000. She bowled on several leagues for many years and enjoyed flower gardening and playing bridge. After her retirement, she did volunteer work at Audrain Medical Center. She was a part of the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life in Mexico.

She was an active member of Southside Christian Church in Mexico where she taught Sunday school.

Survivors include her daughter, Belinda Ellen Campbell and husband Carl, Centralia, three grandchildren, Shane Fierge and wife Amanda, Fort Campbell, Ky., Lydia Ellen Fierge and Kathryn Rexene Campbell, both of Centralia; five sisters, LaVerne Black and Ruthie Purcell, both of Ashland, Joetta Strand, Cardwell, Mont., Saralyn Pace, Springfield, and Martha Ellene Vanskike, Mexico; and a brother, Russel Pace, Centralia.

Her parents and a brother, Robert Davis (Pete) Pace, preceded her in death.

 Pickering Funeral Home  
Caring Service Since 1884