Your recent essay on sending off
the dead and the accompanying photo reminded me first of my amazement when I saw some of
the church yards in England, the ground uneven and lumpy with old head stones, in some places
set three deep and secondly of my own experience burying my mother.
My mother was an atheist, and
my father was raised a Roman Catholic, but has devolved into something approaching unitarian
belief. The only time we went to church as kids was for weddings and funerals. We children
have all found our various ways into Christian belief. When my mother died in 2007, we were
faced with the task of 'what to do with mother'.
My father needed to have a church
service for his wife, even though his wife died an atheist. He wept many tears in fear that
'the church' might not want to help him bury her because of her lack of belief. Since I am
Episcopalian, we turned to my church and the liturgy of the BCP to put together a service
that helped him feel that the right thing had been done. The burial service prays "acknowledge,
we humbly beseech you, a sheep of your own flock" and in those words my father's fears were
healed. The willing flexibility of the priest who only insisted that we have a gospel reading,
is a testimony to the way that ministry is done in this church and to the genius of the BCP.
Good liturgy ministers to people of all sorts, even those who do not realize they need to
be ministered to.
And the irony of the whole thing
is that my atheist mother's remains are now interred in the church columbarium. I wave to
her on the way to choir practice. My father trusts the church to care for their remains in
perpetuity, as he bought a spot for himself next to her.
Oh yes, we did have a reading
from Gibran, too, "What is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless
tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered? ....when the earth shall claim
your limbs, then you shall truly dance."
Michelle C. Jackson
Trinity Cathedral, Sacramento
Elk Grove, California, USA
astraeus@accessbee.com
2 August 2010
“With
each passing year, we all deal with serious illness and death among our family, friends, colleagues, and neighbours”
Ain’t it the truth. Sooner
than we necessarily think. My oldest friend a few months ago had some sort of intimation
of mortality and took it into his head to ask me to deliver the eulogy at his funeral when
the time comes. Not that that is likely to be any time soon but I was happy to agree: an
easy task at this stage when we baby-boomers still think ourselves immortal, and actually
a rather pleasant exercise to spend a few hours reflecting on the great value of a much-loved,
lifelong friend while the issue is entirely moot. (My no-nonsense mother figured he had just
got a little too enthusiastically into the scotch.) We were, after all, born well into the
reign of the present queen and were only aware of what we were doing when we heard that President
Kennedy had been assassinated.
Then two weeks ago I myself became
only the second person of this generation of my friends and family to have a confrontation
with the Reaper: I had a stroke. Me, mind you! Maybe I should email my friend’s children
the draft eulogy: I may not be on hand to deliver it in person. I appear to be safely and
quickly on the mend: as you see, I am again able to type, though I may not play the piano
again (other than perhaps Ravel’s music for left hand) or sign a cheque.
But here are a few of the fascinating
insights that emerge from the unexpected and improbable reactions of family and friends,
not to speak of medical personnel.
“Are you religious?” (A
Malayali Orthodox Christian nurse.) “Depends whether I’m in trouble. At the moment,
you bet your boots.” “Great answer! I’ll use it myself!”
“How can you be in such
good spirits when you’ve just had this happen?” (A German registrar.) “Are
you kidding? After a wake-up call like this, being depressed is a luxury I can’t afford.” “Good
point. Nor me, come to think of it, and I haven’t had a wake-up call.”
“Dad! You look like you’ve
gone through a snow-blower! It’s horrible! I’m getting you an electric shaver!” “Oh,
relax. I have to get used to shaving with my left hand: this was only my first attempt.”
“Do you want a box in the
ground or ashes on the flower beds? And what hymns?” “Not so fast, my dear. I’m
not done yet. But the latter, when the time comes — and do have them whip out anything
first that someone else might find useful. Same hymns as for my Aged P, but the Marquess
of Lorne’s metrical version of Psalm 121 instead of ‘Abide with me.’ And
all verses, even of ‘For all the saints.’”
“You have to get serious:
no more of all this rushing about madly in all directions. You’re a sick old man.” “I’m
certainly not: just cut this out at once.”
But here was the really strange
part. It was only the most authentically and deeply pious among my connection who completely
lost it. (Does faith not enable us to confront these issues better? Nice to know one is cared
about, though it’s not all that helpful expressed this way.)
“Why did you take so long
to let us know?” (Pakistani wife of an Indian Muslim friend: well, she’s a friend
too of course.) “S [her husband] cried when he heard!” (Well, they were out of
town and I was of course in hospital.)
“Don’t joke. This
is horrible for me.” (Saudi friend.) “Oh, you are just dreading having me drop
dead on you over coffee.” “Exactly. No, no, not just that. I really like you.
Please don’t joke.”
God willing — and my own
willingness to scarf down a huge bulk of pills morning and evening (“Take with food,” the
instructions say: how much food can one swallow with all those pills?) — it will be
a long while before anyone will be singing hymns or delivering and hearing a eulogy at my
defunctive orgies. But yes, it will be BCP all the way, with perhaps the addition of the
lovely latter-day Alternative Services’ “Everyone goes down to the dust, but
even at the grave we make our song, ‘Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.”
Mac Robb
Holy Trinity Fortitude Valley (occasionally)
Brisbane, Queensland, AUSTRALIA
mac.robb@gmail.com
7 August 2010
