Today’s Word: Death

There is no death! The stars go down
To rise upon some other shore…
— John L. McCreery

These three days of the Christian liturgical year — the Triduum of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday — tell the story of Jesus’ final days and minutes and, at the same time, remind us all of the one inevitable moment that hangs like the tarnished old chandelier in the midst of our living rooms: our own deaths. For even as we hope and anticipate the day of Christ’s resurrection, even as we trust in our own “something else”  beyond these mortal days on earth, it is death that holds our attention now. And that’s the point. There is no death without first living, and there is no life beyond without first dying to this world.

Yesterday I had the honor of being a pallbearer at the funeral of my Godmother, my 88-year-old Aunt Ruth. Although I didn’t get to see her much in her later years — perhaps once a year at our family reunion — she and her late husband, Fred, hold important and iconic places in my life and memory. She was a woman of exquisite beauty and deep faith. She was always impeccably dressed, and never was a hair out of place. She was, using that old word that just doesn’t get used enough these days, elegant. She was likely the first elegant woman I ever knew.

The daughter of a Baptist preacher who married into our largely German Protestant family, she and Uncle Freddie were also the elder spiritual leaders of the extended Eickmeyer (my paternal grandmother’s) clan, the people to whom we turned to say an eloquent and faith-filled grace before our reunion and Christmas meals. No one else ever seemed willing or equipped to do so, so God bless the Baptists! In later years when she could not be present, those gathered began turning to me to say the prayer, a mantle I have been honored to assume. The family’s faith has spread out over the years to include a variety of expressions, including a few Catholics like me, as well as others who don’t profess any faith at all and yet hold on to these few sacred moments of family with heads bowed and eyes tightly closed. Grace indeed.

Funerals are always a reminder of our own mortality, of course. Some shrink back from them, not wishing to experience death so up close and personal. Others are able to embrace and celebrate these moments, finding in them, perhaps, that this three-fold journey of life and death into life is one we all share. Exactly what passage lies between the realms we cannot say beyond conjecture or article of faith. We want to believe, as the minister stated so beautifully yesterday, that it is merely a heartbeat that separates us from what awaits us on the other side of the veil. We’ll see. Indeed, we’ll see. For now, as the Christian band MercyMe sings, we can only imagine:

I can only imagine what it will be like.
When I walk by your side.
I can only imagine what my eyes will see.
When your face is before me.
I can only imagine.

See video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_lrrq_opng

I kind of like cemeteries. I enjoy a leisurely walk among the stone and trees. Like funerals in general, they stand sentinel and serve as constant reminders that there is more to this life than what meets the eye. But neither do I believe there is much beneath those stones other than the biological waste of dusty bones. Whoever these souls are that so enthralled us when they were alive and among us, they certainly don’t lie beneath the rolling hills and engraved memorials. So I’ll end with this, with the hope of heaven and resurrection waiting just over the next dawn. Happy Easter.

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.

— Mary Elizabeth Frye

Ask yourself in silence: What do I believe about what comes next? What are my hopes? My fears? What does my faith tell me?