By Edwin Cooney
I’ve decided to focus this week’s musing around a coming event in order to unburden my anxiety about it. I’ll be attending a funeral and I don’t like funerals! At funerals, one is saying goodbye to a family member or to a valued friend. Hellos can sometimes be a little frightening, too (depending on who you’re saying hello to), but goodbyes are usually pretty painful in one way or another — and who likes pain?
I can’t recall attending more than three or four funerals in my entire life. The last funeral I attended was on December 30th when I attended the service for my friend Harry Potter. I wrote about him at the time I learned of his illness. (I still miss Harry!) His funeral was moving, dignified and very personal.
PRE-FUNERAL MUSINGS — As I’ve been reminded from time to time, funerals are for the living, not for the dead. After all, the dead have moved on into “endless sleep” as my agnostic and atheist friends insist or into a dimension of paradise which we Christians believe to be heaven. Those of us who hope that those we’ve loved are in heaven often do our best to console others by sympathizing with their loss and pain. So, we attend funerals.
We, the living, by nature and culture, usually value life above all else. All we know is life. As for death, almost from the cradle we are indoctrinated to fear death above everything else except for the pain and discomfort which precedes it.
Worst of all, there is that permanent separation from friends, family members and other loved ones whose nearness has inspired and nurtured our lives. The loss of a brother or sister or especially the loss of a child is particularly wrenching! In the wake of such a loss, the first question that causes us to clutch our hearts is “why?”
The fact of the matter is that death is inevitable. No one has ever, or will ever, escape it. Death is as natural as breathing. Hence, my first question: must we fear death in order to value life?
If we must fear death in order to value life then it is inevitable that we will seek to protect life by using death as a tool to sustain life. Ah, I can hear you saying to yourself “we already do that, stupid, through war (legalized murder) and capital punishment (a form of domestic warfare). You are right, of course!
Question two: Suppose all humanity had historically accepted death as merely a natural part of life. That concept is so big that it’s hard to wrap your mind around it. If death wasn’t a natural enemy, who could ever be a soldier, nurturer, or a medical hero? Had our Creator — be it Almighty God or “Mr. Big Bang” — constructed our physical bodies to adequately resist anything but natural death, what kind of a people would we be today? If we weren’t afraid of death, is it likely that we’d have sought to conquer disease as we have? If death wasn’t an enemy, would we value life as we do? I think not. However, I think we’re ultimately strengthened exactly to the degree that we seek to master our fear of death even as we attempt to nurse our inevitable sense of loss in death’s wake.
POST FUNERAL MUSINGS—The gentleman whose funeral I attended was Michael Holley. He was 75 years old, a father, brother, an uncle and a grandfather. I got to know Mike because he was one of our bowling spotters for the Salt City Blind Bowling League here in Syracuse, New York. Each week between early September and mid April for the last ten or twelve years, Mike would spend time setting up special bowling rails, keeping score, spotting to see what pins each of us had left standing for frame after frame, year in and year out. Sure his interests included area sports such as fishing, golf, and especially bowling. He only bowled 300 once in his life, but he was more than proficient at the game. Although like most of us, he could get ragged around the edges sometimes, he was usually very friendly. Professionally, he was a hardware sales executive.
Throughout the simple and intensely personal service, Mike’s friends and family paid loving respect to him. The stories were about childhood pranks, fishing misadventures, as well as one or two heroic deeds. One lady told of how quickly Mike came to her aid while she was cooking bacon over a campfire one morning and some hot grease splattered onto her foot: Michael immediately grabbed a bucket of ice water and placed her foot into it. The foot healed miraculously — no scar!
One gentleman told of how, when they were about 11, he and Mike were smoking cigarettes in a kitchen. They attempted to hide what they were doing by blowing exhaled smoke up the exhaust fan. A neighbor lady saw the smoke and immediately called the fire department!
Mike’s sister told the story of how Mike had carved his and her initials on the top of the dining room table. Of course, Michael tried to lay the blame on his sister, but somehow their parents knew who the real culprit was! Today, the table is still in the family and is now an exceedingly valued treasure.
Of course, there was much grief today at the service. However, the grief was leavened by the nature of the grief. Rather than dwell on the suddenness of the heart attack that took Mike as he slept during the night of February 26th and the morning of the 27th, Mike’s family and friends chose to remember Mike for how he had helped them. When Mike’s daughter asked me what I remembered most about her father, I said there were two short words that would characterize Mike in my memory of him: He gave.
More thoughts: Life is almost never long enough. Everyone’s birth energizes and everyone’s death diminishes.
Hellos can be a little scary as life often is. Sometimes I wonder if babies, with all the joy they usually bring, cry more because they are hungry or because they instinctively realize how frightening life may be! Goodbyes are seldom anything but lonesome.
Maybe I ought to stay away from funerals, especially just before writing! What do you think?
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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