Why do the living insist on putting themselves through the self inflicted agony that funerals induce? I understand that we want to honor the deceased and need closure to their lives, but I wish we could find a less exhausting way to do that. When my work on earth is finished and the Almighty calls me home, I hope my family cremates my body and spreads my ashes at the ocean... at least I'll know they took a vacation that year. OK - bad joke.
Today, I attended the funeral of a woman that I barely knew. She was someone I considered family, but in 8 years she never even knew my name. My late husband spoke of his great-grandmother so highly that I longed to know her, but Alzheimer's took her away from her family (mentally) a couple years before I had the privilege of meeting her. This woman was a staple in my husband's childhood. She helped to raise him and was partially to thank for his Christianity. I've heard a million stories about this woman and spoken to her a hundred times, but I never really knew her. Still, I went to her funeral because of the many ways she affected my life.
As I entered the funeral home, I could see myself in a different life. I could feel every emotion that consumed me the day we buried Steven. Why did I insist on going into the same room where I once looked over my husband's dead body? Why did I sit down and glance across the room at a chair I once sat in? A chair that I could see myself sitting in almost two and a half years ago. I could see myself nine months pregnant, wearing a black skirt, and a widow's veil to cover the sleepless, swollen eyes of a terrified woman. I could see myself with my left hand raised high and my eyes closed, listening to a song willing my husband to "go rest high on that mountain" because "his work on earth was done". To everyone around me it probably looked like I was praying. But I wasn't praying. To pray, I would have had to think and at that moment the only thing I could think about was the lump in my throat and how I had to focus on taking breaths because that lump was so big that it was preventing me from inhaling. I wasn't praying. I wasn't even thinking. But I had my hand raised high; silently and unknowingly begging God to pick me up... to lift me up. All these emotions and memories on my mind as I listened to a eulogy about Steven's great grandmother and how she felt the exact same emotions when her husband passed away. She didn't think she could keep living. I knew that feeling too well.
In the last couple of years, I have found peace. I have learned to praise God for the good and to turn my back on the bad. I have learned to trust God in all ways. But I suppose, there will always be moments of sadness and times of trial...
"For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord." -- Romans 6:23
