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Aug. 16th, 2004 10:38 pmI went to a funeral on Saturday at my church. It was for a woman who had been to the Monday night group for a while; she was in a wheelchair and on oxygen due to a lung condition; I had prayed for her and her sister at the Easter Vigil last year. She’d been bedridden since last September, and finally lost the fight the last week in July. Her sister had been coming to the Monday night group most of this past spring, though she’d quit this summer when it was obvious her sister (her twin, actually!) was going downhill.
So the group volunteered to help out with the reception after the memorial service. Can’t have people going without food at a church event! I got there around 11 am for the 11:30 service and it was just like setting up for one of mom and dad’s parties—-put the ice here, put the water there, fill up this tray and put it out there.
The service was beautiful; they followed the Episcopal service out of the prayerbook, which has some wonderful prayers. My friend A is a retired dancer who’d been taking the woman home communion most Sundays since last fall, and the family asked him to be one of the speakers about her, and to do a liturgical dance. That was interesting! I’ve been in churches that do liturgical dance on occasion, but it’s usually vapid little girls or women doing floofy, flowery movements. It’s another thing entirely to see a professional do it, even if he’s making it up as he goes along.
I got pretty weepy during the funeral—not so much during the dance as during the other bits—and not so much for the woman who’d died (though the thought of losing my sister is always enough to move me to gusty sobs!!), but because the ritual of the funeral brought up so many other funerals. The woman had been cremated and was a small box up near the altar, which reminded me of how I’d gone with George in NY to the crematorium to see his brother Joe’s coffin go in the furnace, and how we’d spread Alex’s ashes down the hill at San Francisco, and that heart breaking act of pushing the dirt in over Granpa’s ashes last December—how many funerals have I been at or involved in??
I got a chance to sift through some of the feelings from Granpa’s funeral, going through so many of the same prayers and readings, but from the back pew, rather than up front with the family. It worked well, to remember how I felt and why and what the loss was like, without having to be among the chief mourners. I guess funerals are good for something, just to have an opportunity to sit and reflect.
The woman who died had been a big “decorator” and the family had set up a table with a bunch of her projects on it: painted verses, embroidered stuffed animals, sewn little doo-dads, that sort of thing. It was pretty impressive. Granpa had had his law books and degrees and saddle and cowboy hat and family and business photos. (It made me wonder what anyone would put out at my funeral—-Livejournal entries? Hah!)
So the group volunteered to help out with the reception after the memorial service. Can’t have people going without food at a church event! I got there around 11 am for the 11:30 service and it was just like setting up for one of mom and dad’s parties—-put the ice here, put the water there, fill up this tray and put it out there.
The service was beautiful; they followed the Episcopal service out of the prayerbook, which has some wonderful prayers. My friend A is a retired dancer who’d been taking the woman home communion most Sundays since last fall, and the family asked him to be one of the speakers about her, and to do a liturgical dance. That was interesting! I’ve been in churches that do liturgical dance on occasion, but it’s usually vapid little girls or women doing floofy, flowery movements. It’s another thing entirely to see a professional do it, even if he’s making it up as he goes along.
I got pretty weepy during the funeral—not so much during the dance as during the other bits—and not so much for the woman who’d died (though the thought of losing my sister is always enough to move me to gusty sobs!!), but because the ritual of the funeral brought up so many other funerals. The woman had been cremated and was a small box up near the altar, which reminded me of how I’d gone with George in NY to the crematorium to see his brother Joe’s coffin go in the furnace, and how we’d spread Alex’s ashes down the hill at San Francisco, and that heart breaking act of pushing the dirt in over Granpa’s ashes last December—how many funerals have I been at or involved in??
I got a chance to sift through some of the feelings from Granpa’s funeral, going through so many of the same prayers and readings, but from the back pew, rather than up front with the family. It worked well, to remember how I felt and why and what the loss was like, without having to be among the chief mourners. I guess funerals are good for something, just to have an opportunity to sit and reflect.
The woman who died had been a big “decorator” and the family had set up a table with a bunch of her projects on it: painted verses, embroidered stuffed animals, sewn little doo-dads, that sort of thing. It was pretty impressive. Granpa had had his law books and degrees and saddle and cowboy hat and family and business photos. (It made me wonder what anyone would put out at my funeral—-Livejournal entries? Hah!)
