Saying the final goodbye

Published: Wed, 01/29/20

My mother’s funeral was yesterday. It went well although there were only about 35 people there. My father’s funeral in 2001 was attended by nearer 400 people and it is not that my mother was any less popular. However, in the intervening 19 years a large proportion of that congregation have died or become too old and infirm to travel any more. My sister does have a large folder of correspondence from people who we notified about Mum’s passing. All these letters and cards express how sad they were at my mother’s passing and how much she had meant to them in the past. I gave the eulogy during the service and the feedback afterwards suggested that everything I said was appropriate and illuminated who our mother was and celebrated the full life she led.

I also prepared a slide show of 60 photographs which we displayed on a big screen at the wake. The first image dates from 1939 when my mother was 13 up to ones taken in the past year or so. I dug through a substantial archive of scanned slides which my brother digitised a few years ago as well as scanning prints from my mother’s photo albums. Preparing the eulogy and compiling the slide show meant digging through my mother’s life, right back to many years before I was born. Seeing the pictures of times I do remember brought back memories too, many of them happy but provoking a sense of puzzlement too. Whatever happened to that rather lovely young woman, obviously in love with my father and delighting in her babies? Many other images show her growing gracefully into a mature woman surrounded by family and friends. Later still as a doting grandmother enjoying her small tribe of grandchildren. Her grandson helped his father and
uncles to carry the coffin from the hearse into the chapel yesterday. Her two older grand daughters read the lessons during the service. My brother’s daughter Anna read the 23rd psalm and she struggled to keep her voice from breaking with emotion.

Then there was the late decline into dementia, the final stroke and the days of simply waiting for her to let go and move on while her children and grandchildren maintained a vigil beside her bed. When she finally took her last breath in the evening of New Year’s day my sister and I were able to spend a valuable hour or so with what was left, saying our goodbyes and coming to terms with knowing that she was no longer with us as a physically incarnated being.

I don’t pretend to know where she is now in a sense that there is a great deal that is simply a mystery. What happens to the soul or spirit before and after our material incarnation is all part of that mystery. I have come to the conclusion that a spiritual or religious faith enables us to accept and embrace that mystery without fear or despair. I like the idea that my mother is reunited with my father as they were when they were young and in love. I can like the idea that my mother is now vibrant and beautiful again and looking down on me with love from heaven. But those are just projections and I have no attachment to any particular idea of the afterlife, I am confident in the wisdom and love of the creator and I just trust in that benevolence.

I remember asking my father many years ago what he believed in. I knew he had been involved in the Methodist church since he married my mother and I wondered what it really meant to him. He said that he didn’t really know what he believed in a religious sense since so much is a mystery beyond our understanding. However he believed that being part of a faith community helps us come to terms with the mysteries of life and death, even if the answers and explanations we are given are just human beings doing their best to make sense of the inexplicable. Reflecting now I realise how much of that attitude has influenced me too. My father’s response to religious faith is by no means un-biblical either. St Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13 ‘For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.’

In my father’s eulogy it seemed appropriate to quote the Havamal stanza 72 about raising stones in memory. I concluded by asking those who had loved him to remember him in their hearts even if there was not great rock by the roadside for him. I thought about quoting stanza 76 for my mother, ‘but fair fame never dies for the one who wins it’. In the end I realised I had more than enough to say, but it was in my mind and I did my best to describe the ‘fair fame’ I believe my mother achieved.

If you are interested in what I wrote for the Eulogy (and more or less kept to when I delivered it) then the text is here.

Picture of my mother with my younger brother and me from about 57 years ago https://www.screencast.com/t/WivMWasx1SIq

Text for her eulogy https://www.screencast.com/t/Ke6IEZNlTD Please note that it needs to download before you can read it.

regards

Graham

PS Religion, faith and divinity are contentious issues these days. However, a theme I want to address this year is the principles of religion. I will speak on this subject at a couple of camps this summer and it will be one of the themes we will explore at the rune retreat. I try not to tell people what to think, but I do do my best to make people think. I will be updating the content for the event but the dates and other details are correct here http://rr.stavcamp.org/