GRIEVING WITHOUT GATHERING [Sat, 5-23-20]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

GRIEVING WITHOUT GATHERING   [Sat, 5-23-20]

Death completes the story. That is why so many movies open with a cemetery funeral scene. We know the story now, at the funereal end, so we can tell it in its fullness.

Good movie directors tell you up front, in that first scene, what the story will be like. If there is rain, or snow, or wind, the story bodes ill. If there is sunshine, and bird song in the trees, and summer dresses, well, that’s different.

Either way, there is completeness, and that is what I hope for those who are gathered at my funeral, gathered together and gathered into themselves, be the day sunny or cloudy. Gathered, before they go out once again into a fragmented world, to pick up pieces of themselves to prepare for their own final moment of completeness.

These days, we don’t get that final scene. The story hangs there, in the air, unfinished, untold. Zoom is not a very satisfactory way to bring the story to completion.

I am a great believer in the healing power of grieving, in the healing power of funerals. I am always saddened when an obituary says, “There will be no funeral, at the request of the deceased.” How much they must hate the people who are left behind, or how much they must hate their own story, to deny that final opportunity for wholeness, to spite those who remain, by denying them the comfort of grieving together.

So what shall we do when we cannot gather to grieve? I only know what I do. I tell that person’s story. I tell it to God. I am a writer by inclination, so I write the story, but stories have been told since the beginning of time without writing them on stone or parchment or paper or a screen.

It’s okay to ask your pastor to send you a copy of the funeral service from The Book of Worship. Read it for yourself, in trust that the Holy Spirit will be with you in it. At the proper place in the service, tell the story of the one you grieve, in whatever way seems best to you. Tell it to God. God wants to hear it.

John Robert McFarland