Waking up on the day of a funeral is what you make of it. It depends on the context really, your relationship with the departed determines what the day holds for you. I’ve only had to do it a handful of times in my life, but I’ve found that funerals are far more for the living than they are the deceased, and there’s not anything wrong with that.
I had managed to distract myself with my own affairs over the past week, knowing that Sunday was looming like a dark ominous cloud that was going to head my way sooner or later. After the last particularly personal funeral I’d attended, I tried to wake up this morning with a resolve that I wouldn’t be shaken; a daunting task considering the agenda for the day.
My mouth still offered the taste of last night’s medicine when I woke up. I had gone home early to prepare myself for the day, and was thanking myself for it in the morning. I had my clothes hanging up, breakfast ready, everything I could do to make the following day easier was done the night before. Wake up, get dressed, stay focused. Gameface.
I pulled into the funeral home at 9:03, not quite sure what the mood or environment would be when I got there. I had never met any of Jeff’s children save his youngest daughter Ashley, whom I wasn’t really close with. As far as I knew his children had grown apart, many of them living in different states.
My grandmother was the first person I saw as I opened the doors. My lively, vivacious grandma had been slowed down in recent months by a hip replacement, but was getting around much better than I expected. She was talking to my mom, who was around the corner dawning a tasteful black dress with white trim. No sobbing family members yet, which was a good sign.
They were standing over a table of pictures and keepsakes that belonged to Jeff. His Noles hat, a collage of random letter-shaped objects made by his daughter Ashley that spelled out “Music”, a framed copy of his favorite poem “Desiderata”, these were the things that had been decided to define him by those left behind, and rightfully so. Included in the pictures were dozens of photos that his sons had brought that neither my mom nor I had seen before. Pictures of him in the late 70’s, adorning bell bottoms and loudly colored suits, playing guitars and standing in front of amps. He looked like a rockstar.
After admiring pictures of Jeff being way cooler than I ever knew he was, I took a moment to introduce myself to his family. They were polite folks, many from Tennessee with a nice thick southern accent. We said some hellos, then piled into our cars. We were to drive ourselves to the gravesite, where they would be burying Jeff’s ashes in the same lot my mother was to be buried in. That lot stood next to my grandmother’s lot, who had bought the space for my mom over a decade ago when she was still struggling with cancer. You know, just in case. At least we were all being honest with each other’s mortality here.
We got to the gravesite, where my mom said a few short words, and broke the seal on what would be many tears shed throughout the day. A couple others followed suit, and my uncle played a song that they had prepared on his iPad. It reminded me for a moment of Jeff trying to explain to me what awful quality sound Apple produced because it was a MP3 player as opposed to WAV files, which he preferred for his music. We couldn’t all be technological savants though, and I don’t think Jeff would have minded technology permeating into his celebration of life.
My mom took her seat back down next to me, and I couldn’t stop from clutching her tightly once she continued to cry. I began to realize how foolish it was to wake up this morning thinking I would not be shaken watching my mom transition from wife to widow. The two of us sat there for quite a while longer than the others, in preparation for what would be our final goodbye to what remained of Jeff in the urn in front of us. I managed to hold it together, for the time being anyway.
She had asked me to drive to and from the cemetery, which I was happy to, just her and I. We got back in the truck and headed back to the funeral home. When we got there my mom wanted to show me the slideshow that they had made the day before, set to the backdrop of The Beatles’ “Let It Be”, which Ashley had chosen, as it was her song of choice for her dad to sing to her as she went to sleep as a child. It had taken them nearly 12 hours of sorting through pictures and choosing exactly what photos correctly portrayed Jeff in the broadest and most accurate scope. I thought to myself how immense of a challenge this must have been to condense the love of your life into a few short minutes of a picture slideshow, and was thankful I had not had to do it.
Pictures of Jeff in early years, more pictures of Jeff looking like a rockstar, pictures of Jeff and his kids, pictures of he and my mom. The pictures looked to have been arranged in chronological order, which is appropriate I think when trying to correctly convey the depth of one’s journey. We had made it towards the end of the slide show when the day finally caught up to me.
The projector flashed a picture of last year in Vegas. There the four of us sat, my mom and I, with Hailey and Jeff on our sides, looking every bit as blissful as we were, ignorant to what the following year would hold for us four. The symbolism and inescapable imagery of the photo opened the floodgates for me as I realized that the four of us had been reduced to two, and once again it was just my mom and I, as it had been for much of our lives.
I got up to take a moment for myself, and took a minute to find the same photo on my phone. In the picture her hands were holding me tightly as they usually were, and I took a few moments to lose myself in memories. I snapped out of it to return to my mom. The day was about Mom and Jeff I told myself, not Hailey, no matter how freshly and effectively the day was slicing open old wounds.
We sat there for a few moments and watched the slide replay as people began to enter the funeral home. This time it was my mom’s turn for her gameface, as she greeted everyone who came in. She acted with compelling grace, accepting condolences and thanking people for coming. I wished she had delegated more responsibility to me as I realized the most heartbroken person in the room was also having to act as a host. Couples walked in two by two, embracing one another as people often do at funerals, unaware at how painful that sight can be to someone who just lost a lover. At least she knew that I knew how she felt, whether we talked about it or not.
It wasn’t going to be a big funeral, and no one expected it to be. Some loved ones showed up that I was surprised and comforted by, some friends that I assumed would come didn’t show. I hoped my mom wasn’t keeping track as I was. In the background was a CD playing on repeat of a Navajo Indian tribe that Jeff had found while he and my mom were living on the reservation in Arizona.
Minutes before the service was to start my mom asked me if I wanted to say something. I had considered it but wasn’t sure if it was my place. The fact that she asked if I wanted to told me that she wanted me to, and that was fine. I racked my brain for something I could come up with in a matter of minutes that would be meaningful and appropriate.
My first instinct was to reach into one of my endless notes of pertinent and somewhat situationally exclusive quotes that I had collected over the past year. I knew there was a reason why I kept these things. I had my favorites, and chose a particularly special one to me that had been sent to me by a friend. Worried that I would find myself stuck in front of a congregation with a cliche quote but no personal story about Jeff to offer, I began to look over his things for something to reference. As I searched around I found a stack of thick construction paper, neatly cut into strips, with a excerpt from the same “Desiderata” poem that Jeff kept multiple copies of throughout the house and was framed on the table in it’s entirety. The excerpt however, read a specific verse, that went as follows:
“Whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore, be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. Whatever your labors and aspirations in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all it’s shams, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.”
I had read the poem hundreds of times before, and never once had it spoke the volumes to me it did at that moment. I was reminded of the first time I met Jeff. My mom had invited me to dinner to introduce me to a new guy that she had met and liked. I was at a time in my life where I was finding myself and my spiritual beliefs, and I was feeling rather inquisitive that night at dinner, nearly seven years ago. I began to ask Jeff a range of questions pertaining to the supernatural, as well as his thoughts on God. My mom was probably mortified, but he navigated the conversation smoothly, explaining that he couldn’t explain in the brevity of one conversation what it was he thought the secrets to the universe were; God was a vague term to him, but the most important thing was to be a good person and the rest would work itself out. He hit the proverbial ball out of the park, and that was the last conversation I ever had with him about the topic.
I had just a few short moments before I was to get up and speak at yet another funeral less than a year removed from the time I had last taken up the task, and it wasn’t any easier this time around. I told the dinner story briefly, as well as it’s importance to the excerpt from the poem as I interpreted it.
“Be at peace with God” I said, was in the same vain as the mantra used by so many of my loved ones that I never could quite stand behind: “everything happens for a reason.” The insistence that this is all pre-ordained is a notion I’ve never been comfortable with, to say the least, and instead I’d adopted a motto of “trust the journey” I explained, because at the end of the day we don’t really have a choice but to anyway. There may be a fundamental difference between the two adages, but when it’s all said and done, why does it matter what it is we tell ourselves to get through tragedy?
“Be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be” was the perfectly worded mix of spirituality and practicality, in a way that truly embodied Jeff. Being at peace with your life and your beliefs is important, but adding that we all conceive God differently, and that it’s perfectly okay to, that is a vital acknowledgement. It matters to me far less now what those around me conceive God to be, all that matters is that we get through whatever it is life (or He, if you’re into that sort of thing) throws at us.
I closed my short speech with the quote that I had chosen, by Ms. Helen Keller: “What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.” I can say with conviction that the things and people that I’ve loved are what make me, with the same weight that the genome code in my DNA does.
After the service we were led outside, where my mom had prepared several dozen (biodegradable) garnet and gold balloons to release as a final farewell. One by one all the guests grabbed their own balloon, symbolic of their own goodbye to Jeff. My mom was always big on symbolism and meaningful gestures, and it had seeped it’s way beautifully into the ceremony. As we released the balloons, they picked up in the wind and headed west towards Doak Campbell. We found those in the crowd who meant the most to us and hugged them one by one, starting with my mom and I, and radiating outwards.
I was left the rest of the day reminded of what makes life so precious: the singularity of it all. This is our one shot to make our mark amongst a sea of billions trying to do the same. In the end, what will it be that lines your tables of keepsakes? What pictures will your loved ones choose to define your journey? Choose and act wisely, because once it’s over, it really is all over.
I swore to myself I would find the words today to summarize that picture of us four from earlier in the day; part of my ongoing refusal to ever leave a meaningful experience untold. As I sit down to write this on my outdated Asus that Jeff and my mom gave me for Christmas years ago, the first song to play on my Pandora? The Beatles, “Let It Be”. Life is crazy.
joshsamman 