I don’t know why it feels so insulting to have a funeral on a beautiful sunny day. It should be gray, rainy, cold on the day of a funeral. The whole earth should be miserable on the day of a funeral. When it’s sunny and dry and gorgeous, it feels like the earth isn’t paying attention to the terrible loss that has happened and is oblivious in its own affairs to honor the passing of one of its humans.
Instead of getting ready to start my online writing group that recent sunny day, I was sitting in front of my dressing table applying mascara that would eventually be cried off. I reminded myself to bring tissues, even as I gave myself a pep talk about not being too weepy at the church. But I know me; I weep. I cry easily and messily. And I was pretty sure I’d be crying at the funeral of the 50-year-old woman who just died of cancer; who I just saw a few months ago, who once babysat my kids. Who sat next to Annie the few times they had chemo scheduled together at the cancer center where they were both being treated.
There was a lot happening that morning, in that church, sitting next to Annie. This was the church of my kids’ childhood, where they went to Sunday School, appeared in the Christmas pageants and where I worked for a couple of years as the church secretary. We saw so many familiar faces—they stayed at the church; we were the ones who left. We discreetly waved and smiled at the ones who recognized us and nudged each other when we recognized others.
And as sad as I was for the family I had known for over thirty years, sitting at a funeral with Annie was almost too much. It was days away from what would have been my sister’s 61st birthday, who died of ovarian cancer and as the service began the losses converged on me:
A mother lost a daughter
A sister lost a sister
I wanted to hold on tightly to Annie at the same time I didn’t dare even look at her.
Many of the family member’s, including the woman’s sister—also a former babysitter--stood up to share their love and memories. Then the minister started his sermon and as he spoke, the words, “Free to acknowledge our human frailties” landed in my ears and kind of annoyed me. I grabbed the notepad out of my purse to write it down. (Annie gave me the look I used to give her when she was ten and fidgeting with pew cards and pencils—"stop that!”)
I don’t have anything against church—this isn’t about church, it’s about the things people—a minister in this case—say during times of loss, death and grief. Some of the things, like the ever-awful, “God needed another angel” really don’t capture what is going on. I certainly didn’t feel free to acknowledge any kind of human frailty; what I usually hear is how to buck up, be strong, “they wouldn’t want you to be sad.” Of course they do—for a little bit anyway. Because it is sad to lose a mom or a sister and it’s tragic to lose a daughter or a son. People have to be sad and crushed and devastated and a weeping mess--all those things.
However, when the woman’s husband stood up and spoke, his voice was clear and strong. He spoke about their great love story and credited his wife for the love that changed him. The love that allowed him to see beauty in the form of caring friends and flowers and generosity during a week where being shattered would be totally reasonable. And how she helped him to heal before she was even gone.
During the reception afterwards, I spoke to the woman’s mother in as an inept way as I’ve ever spoken to anyone. I stumbled and was clumsy, but I think even in her grief, she understood why—she knew my daughter had cancer. She knew my daughter visited her daughter in the days before she died. My grief was only imagined; hers was real.
I thought about the husband’s words, words I understood as his acceptance of his wife’s death. I’m not sure I had it right and I turned them over and over in my head. I don’t think I could accept death—anyone’s death—as anything but sad and tragic. And I’ve had a lot of deaths in my life lately. In four years I lost three-fifths of my family. They have each been uniquely painful. Is acceptance frail or not? Is grief? I went home nearly completely drained.
Over the following days, I kept coming back to what the husband said about seeing beauty instead of unfairness. As our family gathered to observe Susie’s birthday, I still felt a deep loss and sadness for her loss, but I also felt—happy. I was happy that we could all be together, I was happy to have been able to prepare a meal for us, I was happy to wear the blue bandana-print dress from the Vermont Country Store—the last gift Susie gave me.
I don’t know why I feel compelled to share all this, but I guess that’s what I do. Writing has always been the way I process my experiences and I think in the sharing of grief there is a path through the difficult times. Not to avoid them, but to move through them with support and love and pain. To be present for everything that comes up, even if it doesn’t conform to what’s expected.
One of the women sitting with us in the pew, a work friend who lost her mother recently, couldn’t do anything but laugh at the hymns. I thought of that quote from Steel Magnolias—“Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion.” She was sitting with the right frail humans…Annie and I joined her.
Yes to all those emotions everyone feels but cannot express
Thank you for bringing us, via your extraordinary, lucid writing, into experiences that honestly hurt and yet glow with love.