PANDEMIC FUNERALS [R, 9-16-21]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith and Live for the Years of Winter

A friend my age said recently that the pandemic has showed that we don’t need funerals/memorial services. “At our age, we usually go to a lot of funerals, but there haven’t been any funerals because of the virus pandemic, and we’ve gotten along without them just fine.”

I admire and respect her, but I don’t agree. Yes, I’ve gotten along without memorial services because I’ve had to. I’ve done that with a lot of public stuff—church, eating out, traveling, clubs, etc—because I’ve had to, but that doesn’t mean I’m just as well off. I think my life would be better if I could do those things. Especially memorial services.

Helen said that when the pandemic was over, we’d spend a year doing nothing but going to funerals because so many had been put of “until an appropriate time.” I can think of three right now that I’m looking forward to. All of them have been scheduled and postponed and scheduled again. Will they ever happen? I don’t know, but if they do, I want to be there.

I once visited with an old railroad man when I was doing “special preaching,” what we used to call “revivals,” at his church. His job had been to water the locomotives. He had taken the job when he got married, because a house went with it. He had to live beside the water tank, because there were many locomotives each day, from dawn to dusk, and each one had to stop just long enough for him to put that big water boom over the engine and pour the water in so that it could create steam to run on. It was a 7 day a week, 12 hours a day job. He said, “When my wife died, they gave me one hour for her funeral and told me if I got back late, they’d fire me. Forty years I’d been coming out of the house and swinging that boom over the engines… forty years she put up with that… and they gave me one hour...” Only one hour, but I don’t think he would have gotten through without it.

In the old correspondence I’ve been winnowing is a letter from at woman who said…

“Thank you for doing the funeral for my step-father. My mother and I agreed that you said just the right things in just the right way, which is remarkable, since she loved him dearly, and I couldn’t stand him. But you let her remember her love, and you allowed me to let go of my bitterness.”

I do not remember the man, or his funeral, or his wife, or his step-daughter. But I’m glad I did that funeral, because I don’t think that woman could have gotten peace about her relationship with the man her mother loved without it.

I’ve always liked funerals, even those necessary because of tragedy. They give us a chance to gather up the loose ends. It’s okay if you feel like you can get along without them now, but it’s also okay, I hope, to look forward to gathering once again in remembrance and hope for those who have moved on.

John Robert McFarland