By Marie Duquette
Lisa’s funeral was three years, almost to the day, from when she was first diagnosed with stage four colon cancer on March 17, 2020. She was my friend, my colleague, a woman I admired, respected, loved. From the day she was diagnosed, she wrote daily in her Caring Bridge online journal. Throughout the pandemic, her chemo, and the unmentionable discomfort she endured, Lisa wrote. She told us the ugly truth of her experience and the beautiful hope and moments of joy that met her on her journey through life to death. Hundreds of people, including myself, regularly read her updates, even as we prayed, sent gifts, wrote letters, and signed up to send dinner to Lisa, her husband, and her four young children. Because all we could do some days was to be her witness, she wrote, and we read.
That is until the day when her journal entry began, “This is Lisa’s husband writing…”
Lisa’s funeral was two states and 221 miles away. It was the farthest I had driven alone since the pandemic began. It was my first time entering a church since I resigned from my pastoral duties. I had left the congregation only a month before, which had me grieving a different kind of loss.
I carried to that funeral guilt for not seeing Lisa in person after she was diagnosed. I carried a commitment to make the drive and show up for her and her family despite my desire not to go. I carried the familiar dread that everyone who has ever attended a funeral, packs for the occasion.
St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church was packed. Easily a thousand people or more attended; many standing for the entire two-hour service. Together, we heard remembrances from five people, beginning with her mother. The remembrances were well-crafted. The words these five people spoke helped us not just remember, but understand more deeply, the details of who she was. The words made us laugh. They made us cry. They made us hold the speaker in a communal embrace of support. When they faltered, or needed water, or needed…a minute…love tempered the pause.
I have been a pastor for twenty years. I have served four churches, in three different states. I also worked for a funeral home in Columbus, Ohio as their on-call pastor for those who wanted clergy but did not have a church they called home. I have officiated at more than 200 funerals. And while I am currently deconstructing my faith and reconsidering the value of weekly worship, the one thing I know for certain that we should keep are the funerals. The funerals, if nothing else, have a value one only knows after attending a well-done funeral.
Despite what one might think of the liturgy, the dogma, the history of the church, I know that holding space for a funeral is one of the most holy gifts the church still gives to this hurting world. This is true whether a funeral is in a church, or in a garden. The structure for a funeral was designed specifically because of its proven power to help those who mourn process their grief. One need not use the actual words from the liturgy, but they are helpful when trying to figure out what to do and what to say. They help us find life in the midst of death, the life that is found in authentic community, where love stands in sometimes as words, and just as often as music, or silence.
The pandemic expanded the trend in which funerals were becoming less common, less formal, even optional. I’m sure you’ve heard, or even spoken yourself, the argument against having a funeral. It goes something like this:
“I don’t want a damn funeral. Just throw a party. Go to a pub. Toss my ashes in a lake (the ocean, the mountains, by the cabin).
“If you have a funeral, I swear I’ll haunt you. I don’t want everyone sitting around being sad because of me.”
At the other extreme, is this one from those not-yet-dead:
“I’ve already paid for everything and set everything up. The flowers, the hymns, even what I want to wear.”
These positions do something that I doubt the one who emphatically says them understands:
By saying you don’t want a funeral, or, by planning everything that will happen when you die to the last detail, you are depriving the people you love from the healing that is gained by having a funeral. You are compounding their grief.
In lieu of a funeral, I’ve also heard, “We’ll have a celebration of life…later.” That celebration may or may not actually happen. But the “later” part dismisses the lived wisdom that having a funeral close to the death is the most helpful thing for those who are plunged into grief when their loved one dies. Even as they dread it. Funerals and memorial services facilitate healing in ways that nothing else can.
A funeral (with a body) or a memorial service (with an urn):
Enables the friends and family of the one who has died to see, in a memorable way, that they are not alone in their grief. Having an old friend show up, having come a long way to be with you, is an experience of love unlike others. Years later, when you remember your grief at that time, one of the things you will remember is when they walked in the door, and you first saw them.
Allows those who grieve a unique opportunity to get to know the one who has died in a fuller way. When my own father died, I heard stories about his life that I never knew. How his brothers held open the doors at St. Catherine’s so that he could ride his motorcycle down the hall and past the front office on his way to enlist in the Air Force. How he helped refugee families, putting himself at risk. The things we hear and see at a funeral paint a picture of the one who has died in a way we may have never seen while they lived.
Gives purpose to those who are grieving. Fresh grief creates a compulsion to do something-- making calls, preparing food, writing an obituary, a eulogy, are actions that help the bereaved process their loss. When there is no need for these actions, grief tends to linger even longer and make those in the deepest mourning feel isolated.
Gives those who live far away a prompt to respond to the loss. Flowers, charitable contributions, and sympathy cards, or buying an airline ticket gives them something specific to attend to in order to honor the life of the one being laid to rest.
Officially marks the beginning of life without that person here, on Earth, in the way that we are accustomed to having them. Grief is hard enough to bear. To bear it alone, from the moment of loss, multiplies the mourning.
After Lisa’s funeral, I stayed a night with my son and daughter-in-law. They did not know Lisa, but they knew I had attended a funeral for a friend. When I got to their place, they spoke gently, listened, and made comfort food for us. I would not have been a recipient of those gifts of care if I had not gone to Lisa’s funeral.
A funeral is an ancient ritual that has stood the test of time. As the Church continues to reform, I hope we continue to plan and attend funerals. Our healing begins sooner when we gather to say goodbye to those we have loved, and to love those they leave behind.
Marie Duquette is semi-retired and working as a cook part-time, a job that has delighted her with the degree to which it satisfies her hunger for camaraderie and a sense of fulfillment. She was a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America for twenty years, most recently serving at King of Kings Lutheran Church in Ann Arbor. She writes about the connections she finds between what we know and what we can yet only imagine.
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