A Funeral

A Funeral

I know this is not a title that is going to draw you in, but if you’ll allow me to explain, I will.

Last weekend, I said goodbye to a woman I’ve known for decades. She was a kind soul who smiled through years of chronic illness. Having dealt with my own health struggles recently, I know how hard that smile is to maintain. She didn’t throw pity parties; she offered hugs and kind words to everyone she met.

I digress. This wonderful lady always had a smile and a kind word for everyone. She always had a smile and a hug for me.

Her final two years were spent in a nursing home—the place every senior dreads. Though she and her 97-year-old husband required more care than their large family could provide, the facility became a place of social isolation. Of five children and dozens of grandchildren, only a handful visited regularly. They languished there, largely forgotten, until she passed on Valentine’s Day.

I know what a hard decision that is. I know how hard it is to put someone you love in a nursing home – I had to do it with my father. The day my sister and I took him to the nursing facility, knowing he would never leave, was one of the worst days of my life. I cried.

Anyway, the lady and her husband languished in the nursing home, and hardly anyone visited. Of their large family of five children and sixteen grandchildren (and even more great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren), only four or five of them visited regularly. And I’d guess less than a dozen people visited them in the two years since they became residents of the nursing home.

You know it’s true – there will, for all of us, come a day when there is no tomorrow. And on Valentine’s Day, the mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and kind and sweet lady passed from this Earth.

I went to the funeral out of respect for her.

My mom died when I was just ten years old, and since then, I have harbored a morbid dread of going to funerals. However, at my age now, it’s impossible to avoid them (even, I suppose, my own). I’ve been to several funerals, besides my mother’s –  my grandfather’s, my grandmother’s, one of my favorite aunts’, and some friends’. My father, stepmother, and my sister have all passed away as well, but they chose not to have funerals or any ceremonies at all. They were cremated, their ashes combined and scattered exactly where they wished – thanks to my youngest son – in the rolling waves of Lake Erie, on a warm and sunny summer day.

So I will tell you this: It was not with great enthusiasm that I attended the funeral of this special lady who passed away just six weeks shy of her ninety-first birthday.

Her funeral was at a Presbyterian church, and her body lay in a cloth-covered coffin near the altar in the sanctuary. When I first went in, I was surprised at how many people had come to pay their respects.

I hardly knew any of them.

No matter how jaded a person is, it’s hard not to shed a tear or two at a funeral, especially for a wonderful lady like this who was always kind, always gentle, and who always had a kind word to say about everyone, regardless of their stature in life or in the community. She suffered from all kinds of maladies for over twenty-five years. Yet she managed to smile through pain and disappointment. Her smile almost made me forget about her bruised body, her puffy face, or her swollen and bruised ankles and arms. Her beauty was inside, and it never faded. She was stoic. She was brave. She was kind.

And now, she’s gone.

In the church, her beauty was still evident. It wasn’t in her physical form, which had been weathered and battered by twenty-five years of maladies, but in the stoic bravery she carried to the end. She was gone, and the sight of her husband of seventy-three years kissing his fingers and pressing them to her forehead for fifteen minutes was almost too much to bear. How do you say goodbye to a lifetime?

I couldn’t hold back the tears any longer.

Just then, everyone was surprised when the pastor stood up and read her last words. They were words of forgiveness and of hope. They were words of love for her family and friends. They were words of love for her God and for His son and of her faith. They were happy words. They were words of hope.

But there was one part of her parting words to us all that touched me more than any of the others. She told us all we should do a kindness for another person, today, right now. She told us to go visit the living, don’t wait until it’s too late. She told us to go and see a sick friend today, right now. She told us to be kind to a stranger. She told us to tell our children and our grandchildren how much we love them. And don’t wait. Don’t wait for tomorrow – do it now.

How profound the words were, and how deeply they touched all of us.

There I was, in a sanctuary, with perhaps fifty or sixty other people, all who managed to make their way to the funeral, but most of whom never went out of their way to see her when she was ill and lonely in the nursing home. Most of them were always too busy to take a few minutes to visit and to wish her and her husband well.

Yes, it’s true. I was one of the ones who was always too busy to take a few minutes to visit her. I was only there to see her three times in two years. I was always too busy to take time out to see her when she was alive, but on this day, I found three hours to spend with her when she was dead.

She was so right. We shouldn’t wait until someone dies to pay our respects or to spend time with them. We should not wait to let someone know we are thinking of them.

Her beautiful words touched so many. I wanted to pass them on to you so that you will remember to visit someone lonely, to comfort someone who is ill, or help a stranger, or tell a family member how much you love them, or spend time with your children or grandchildren. Give someone you love a hug. And don’t wait until tomorrow. Do it now. Do it today…because tomorrow may never come.