Final Resting Place

I attended a service last weekend for a 96-year-old woman who had died peacefully in her sleep a few days earlier.

"She had a long, full life," people said. None of the mourners was in despair. We all recognized that 96 years, 2 months, and 13 days is a gift as rare as it is precious. "Her last few years were difficult," we acknowledged. And yet she was not demented; she had family nearby; she was able to travel by airplane to visit her hometown just a few months back. Her body did not give the service it had rendered during her first nine decades; but she ate, she slept, she listened to music, she had social contact, she exercised, she was safe, she was attended, she had uninterrupted time to reflect upon her memories.

So why are we sad?

The Lutheran minister who led the service in the splendid dome of the mosaic chapel at Minneapolis' Lakewood Cemetery kept talking about our lives. What would each of us do with the reality of death in our own life? He really talked about that a lot. "Bernice," he said, "is free. She will not have any of the struggles of life to experience, ever again. She has figured out what to do when death comes. None of us here has figured that out. We have not faced it. We have not touched it. We need to let her go. She is free. She is safe. She is home." Consolation is among the most beautiful of the gifts we human beings are able to give to one another. His words were consoling. But they were also in your face, challenging, a little bit confrontational. He was not going to permit mere sentimentality to get anyone through that service. We had to wake up and be present and be real.

"I want to speak to you children who are here," he said, about two-thirds of the way to the final amen. "I want to tell you a story. You deserve something for being here." And he told a story for the children, and for all of us, about how his daughter's parakeet was lost on a camping trip. The parakeet saw its chance at freedom, and it flew into that freedom. "And that is what Bernice has done," he said. "She has taken her chance to be free." But what I liked best about that part of the service was not the story, although it was a good story, even a model story of its kind. What I liked the best was his statement that the children deserved something for being there.

He was right. They did deserve something, those precious little midwestern children, attending with their parents and their grandmother the funeral service of their great-aunt, a woman whom they had known little or maybe not at all. They were there in evident goodwill, suitably dressed, completely silent, snuggled into their little family group and perhaps taking comfort in the familiarity of that membership in the midst of the splendor of the setting and the strangeness of the occasion. These beautiful little children did deserve something, for being there without complaint, for trusting their parents to have a good reason for what they required, for going along just because it meant something to Grandma and they love Grandma.

Somehow, in the composure and the barely stifled life-affirming energy of the children, lay one right answer to the challenge posed by the minister to all of us: What are you doing about the reality of your own death? Well, if I were to follow the example of those children, recognizing that my own death will face me in due time, I would trust. I would love. I would share. I would show up. I would appreciate it when someone recognizes that I deserve something for showing up. Here are some of the things that I would not do: I would not judge other people. I would not say anything disrespectful about another. I would not stay alone. I would not let you see my inner struggle (at least not much of it) but I would let you see my joy. I would not hold a grudge. I would not take refuge in ignorance. I would not be afraid, because -- remember? -- I would trust.

Whether to take children to funerals is a subject that can engender debate: "It is a part of life. They should experience the cycle of life and death." "They are too young to have to think about death. Let them be innocent a little while longer." I don't know if it helps the children or not. I do know that seeing the children at this funeral service helped the adults who were there. The children themselves were, like faith as described by St. Paul, the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. And, at a funeral, the things not seen are the most present things there are.