Little boat journey and funerals

These past two years have been marked by funerals for me, and celebrations of life. I say that last part as one of the ‘funerals’ consisted of me in a hospital parking lot in Colorado praying over the place where my brother was born. If you’re tilting your head to the side and slightly confused, that makes two of us, but when you hear clearly that is what you are to do- you just do it. 

Ten different funerals or sort-of funerals last year. Ten. Each wildly different. The words spoken at them, often by the speakers, sometimes afterwards to those I was sitting next to, or the officiant guiding us through the grief passage like one of those men with a long stick on the back of a boat through a canal. 

Now I suppose a pastor or chaplain is like, shoot man, my record is like thirty funerals. And I get that, and as much as sometimes my job just plain stinks I am deeply glad that it is not my job to do anything at a funeral other than go, cry awkwardly,  fumble with breath mints, and put on whatever raggedy face mask I’ve pulled out of my purse (but I am deeply glad the face mask thing is no longer the norm- it certainly was for 2020-2021 funerals.)

 

At one funeral I picked up a dear friend in part because it was in her house that I met the wife of the deceased. When the wife spoke, I thought back to the first, or second, time I had heard much of the story of her having to be away from her husband after they were married for a year or so, and I remember thinking I could never be away from my husband for a year. 

One of the first funerals I went to reminded me of a dear friend we lost at the beginning of 2020. A couple from our church was killed in a horrific car crash, and their good friends who they would go on vacations with, took in the couple’s children. I sat stunned, because the good friend we had lost- was one half of a couple we would go on vacations with. 

It’s like we are all in these little boats, floating in a vast and darkened sea, and every now and then we approach another boat. Sometimes we moor ourselves to one other and spend some of the journey, floating next to each other in oblivion. Then the boat next to you gets gulped down by a sea monster and you are left sitting there, sputtering water. 

That first funeral, what I remember most is a person that I did not know then but do know now. She would clap her hands brightly, and tell us she wanted to teach us Spanish. I had a mild panic attack. I hate Spanish. I refuse to learn Spanish. This is because I had one of the best teachers ever in my life gently tell me that some people just can’t grasp foreign languages. I was squeaking by her Spanish class with a C minus. I refused to fail, and poured myself into it. I got to where I could have some simple work conversations in the language, and this thrilled me. Then. Then I gave birth. My dear first-born child reached up her tiny hand through my esophagus and ripped out every single bit of Spanish as she exited my womb. I swear this happened. My second-born child gave me back the ability to eat fish, just saying. That and pregnancy and what it does to us is just plain weird sometimes. 

Some of the funerals I would go to were for or through work, or to support someone in my world and I had little knowledge of the deceased. Some of them I knew them quite well. Some had been sudden and some had been a long time coming. At one I got to tell a co-worker sitting beside me words that I am quite certain he dearly needed to hear. They were words I had told myself, having confronted a friend about their poor driving habits a week before they were killed in a car wreck 19 years ago. “Aren’t you glad you said the hard thing?” I said. 

Words can heal and they can hurt. I recently went to yet-another funeral where I dearly wish a whole pack of words had never been said. It’s like, once they are out there, that’s it. There’s no taking it back. The one I just went to had an now-infamous picture taken that has spoken volumes. Not good ones, but, it was a death-story that had no bad guy and suddenly there was a giant of a bad guy literally sleeping through an important moment.

For those I hardly knew though, it was the words that resonated with me that surprised me. The universality of some things still amazes me. Do we know that we are all next to each other in our little boats? Do we know that we are all scared sometimes? Lonely sometimes? That we all love deeply, or at least want to deeply loved, and that when you lose one of those that you loved it can be like the void of that love can be filled with pert near anything. This in and of itself can be quite scary. What will fill it up? Alcohol? Sex? Counseling? Good conversation? God Himself?

So far I’m only at five funerals for 2022. Yay? My superstitious nature tempts me to not challenge the universe or whatever and suggest that this year will be better than the last. That and I can’t bear the thought of doing the mental Rolodex for who the remaining five will be. I am starting to understand the folks that danced around the fire in utter madness more and more. Their sheer earnestness to make something happen. Did they, in that space, miss it entirely when God Himself showed up in their midst as He lapped up the wood doused in water? Do we, in the space of grief, miss when He shows up in our midst as He laps our fire-of-hell engulfed soul in His holy water of compassion? I dearly hope we don’t miss it.

Like what if, just once, we all got together and the BIG miracle happened. Someone gets like straight up raised from the dead. I mean one, that would be so cool, we’d probably end up on the front page of the local newspaper, but to whoever that pour soul is that we collectively banded together and pulled from the clutches of death- by the power of Jesus alone of course- then that is one less that Death can claim and one more on the scoreboard for the good guys. 

This last funeral was one that I helped with to more of a degree than I ever have before. It was like suddenly I was having to help steer the boat this time, and I desperately wished I had paid more attention to the previous ‘steerers.’ I think ultimately if you get to honor the person, maybe learn something about them you didn’t know, and just process some of the often overwhelming grief, then that’s all that needs to happen to start the little boat journey.