Tag Archives: Funeral

Courage at Twilight: Military Honors

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Christine chauffeured us in Larkin’s heated limousine to the cemetery. My brothers and sons and nephews and I grasped the handles as pallbearers and carried the casket to the open grave, stepping to the bagpiper’s I’ll Go Where You Want Me To Go, the last notes croaking to a close in the 19 degree F chill.  I thanked our missionary friend for his touching musical contribution.  The Air Force color guard stood graveside, their long coats, hats, and gloves inadequate for the cold.  From a distance, an airman played a moving Taps on his silver horn.  Two airmen floated an American flag above the casket, and one began to fold the flag in precise, crisp triangular movements, each fold finished with a deft creasing ceremonial swipe of the hand.  Few knew that Dad had served in the U.S. armed forces, for he rarely mentioned his service.  His orders kept him stateside as an interrogator, linguist (Romanian), intelligence officer, and airman second class, serving eight years in the Army and Air Force reserves and the Utah Army National Guard.  Completing the last fold of the flag, and tucking the borders into the folds, an airman knelt in the ice and snow on one knee before Mom, held out to her the folded flag, and whispered solemnly to her, “On behalf of the President of the United States of America, I thank you for your husband’s service to his country, and present to you this American flag.”  The moment for departure came, and we turned to walk away from the icy grave and the casket, covered in the most beautiful multicolored flowers.

Courage at Twilight: Missionary Choir

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How different this funeral from the funeral of our father’s daughter 370 before, a funeral marked by tragedy and despair and anger, the wrongness of it all bound up in rightness of faith and family love.  Now, we basked in the power of our father’s life and legacy, trusting in our convictions about the goodness of this life and reality and betterness of the life to come.  We retold old stories, and told new stories, unknown to most, stories of love and service and faith.  And we wept.  In a powerful funerial moment, Mom called to the front of the chapel all of Dad’s former missionaries from Brazil.  These 30 men and women, all in their early 20s during their missionary service with Dad, now brought their 70-something gray hair and aching knees and backs to the front, and sang Israel, Israel God Is Calling, in parts, in Portuguese: Israel Jesus Te Chama.  My Portuguese-speaking sons and I joined the choir, and we felt the power of love and conviction and camaraderie echo within the chapel walls.

Courage at Twilight: An Enormity of Love

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Dad insisted I speak at my sister’s funeral. Logical, of course, but impossible.  I had met her husband at the funeral home, at his invitation, where we spent three numbing hours making impossible decisions about vaults and caskets and flowers, payment plans and printed programs and Zoom links, fingernail polish and lipstick and hairstyle, rings or no rings, makeup to cover her wounds.  Feeling dead ourselves, we wandered through the casket showroom, and slowed before the Virginia Rose maple-wood casket, gently grained and softly carved in roses, lined with Easter pink fabric embroidered with a flower spray.  Tracy looked at me and choked, This is where she wants to rest, and I turned my face to the corner and sobbed and knew he was right.  The viewing became a bizarre reunion of a corpse and family and friends, with hundreds of hugs and thousands of tears.  “How’s Nelson holding up?” an uncle asked Mom.  Pierced.  That is the word she used.  Dad was crushed and broken and pale—and pierced through.  He has whispered revelations of his agony every day: I may not survive this.  I thought I might just go with her.  And he told us all of loved ones he looks forward to meeting on “the other side,” his grandmother Natalia Brighamina, a sweet-hearted Swedish beauty who infused the little boy with love and worth, his grandfather and namesake Nelson who rescued the mine’s company town when he detected the odor of almond in the water, his grandpa William T who lived in an unheated unplumbed shack and taught him to snag trout barehanded from the brook—and Sarah, who beat him there.  Every morning I wonder if Dad has survived the night.  The viewing room was hot and crowded and happy-sad, and I could not face my sister, meaning, I could not go to her and gaze at her and hold her hands or even glimpse her unliving body.  One little boy felt like I did, avoiding her “creepy” “plastic” visage.  I averted my eyes and said good-bye a million times in my heart, resolute on remembering her living laugh and her tight embrace, and her I love you dearest brother.  And the inevitable moment came when they closed the lid and clicked it shut, and I sank clear to the earth’s core.  The utter finality of that muffled click…  Her casket came rolling by, and I touched it, and I turned to the corner and sobbed.  Do I really have to speak?  Can I?  In my terror of the task to talk, a lovely friend eight states away softly suggested: Just speak to her.  And that is what I did: “Sarah, you are beautiful to me.  You share normal human imperfections, but to me you are a perfectly delightful, forgiving, super fun, uber smart, good, kind, hard-working, lovely, and loving woman.  You are one in a billion.  I adore you.  And I will miss you sorely for a long, long time.”  Standing at the congregational pulpit, there was no corner to weep in, but I wept anyway.  And I cannot deny that, in that fiery crucible of grief, I felt an enormity of love, and a universe of prayer, wrapping me warmly and holding me aloft and carrying me gently forward to tomorrow.  I love you dearest sister.

 

The maple-wood Virginia Rose.

Sprinkled with Rose Petals

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This poem is written from the perspective of my daughter, Laura (then 9), who lost her special duck Wingers to marauding dogs.  Other beloved creatures succumbed, like her kitten, Diamond.  Laura and I somberly buried each in the garden, resting them on beds of green grass, and covering them with loosely sprinkled rose petals.  Each funeral was tender, both sad and sweet.

SPRINKLED WITH ROSE PETALS

Wingers was my special duck.
I raised her from a day-old chick.
But she died when the neighbor’s dogs roved over
In the middle of the night.

Diamond was my precious kitten.
I watched her being born.
I stroked her fur when she lay sick.
I gently stroked her fur.

I found a yellow-breasted song bird:
Her feathers scattered on the grass;
Her wings stretched out;
Her beak upturned, eyes staring at the sky.

I laid them all in garden graves,
On beds of soft, cool grass,
Wrapped in soft, white cloth.
I sprinkled them with rose petals,
Red and pink and white.

Chapter 18: Mary

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–Bend, bend, but don’t break.–

I had rescued Austin from his fall just two years before.  Now the barrel-chested man was gone.  Mary, his widow, a diminutive black-haired woman in her nineties, lived alone.  We tried to visit her one afternoon.  We knocked and knocked, but no one answered the door.  Later we learned that she slept during the day and lived her waking life at night.  I now understood the dim yellow light that glowed late at night from her living room window. Continue reading →

Chapter 3: Hawk

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–In the presence of goodness, good people rejoice.–

My boots crunch loudly on the loose and frozen gravel, rousing common sparrows from their cold roosts in the willow and wild rose bushes.  Despite being leafless in December, the bushes seem an impenetrable tangle of twigs and dead leaves.  I hear, rather than see, the birds fluttering and tweeting within.  I have bundled myself against the bitter cold, and wonder how these almost weightless creatures survive Winter.  I imagine them huddled in their houses, mostly protected from the wind, their feathers puffed out to gather insulating air, with temperatures sinking to just above zero.  I marvel that these birds constantly peep and sing, fluttering about with the energy of jubilation.  I envy them their unconditional happiness.  I have come to appreciate their enthusiasm, to rely upon their unassailable cheerfulness. Continue reading →