Being Church

Another of the elders to whom I’d carried communion died—our second in less than a week. Several of my fellow Lay Eucharistic Ministers (LEMs) were at the funeral to keep company with D on the last steps of his earthly journey. There were LEMs in the pews and LEMs as crucifer, reader, chalice bearer, and acolyte (me). As the Rector remarked just before the service began, it was time for us to “be church.”

The funeral itself was loving and dignified. I was humbled to learn that D kept up a weekly vigil against the war in Iraq long after most people habituated or resigned themselves to that endless war. My spouse and I talk often of what we could—or should do—about the war. But while we were talking, D was out there every Friday on the pedestrian mall, whatever the weather, increasingly frail and bent, holding a lonely protest sign.

There was no trip to the cemetery after this funeral, for D donated his body to the Anatomy Department. His wife of 56 years told me how pleased she is that D’s ashes eventually will return home to rest in the Parish columbarium. He will, as she said, be “right there.” I am pleased too, for I intend that my own ashes eventually will reside in that same place. D will be fine company.

In the meantime, my office window looks out over the building that houses the Anatomy Department. With every glance outdoors, I hold D and his family in my prayers and I express my gratitude for D’s quiet and powerful witness for peace.

We who are many...

I was struck by the intimacy of the Funeral Director’s touch. He tucked the casket lining about K’s body and soundlessly closed the lid. But I wished that we were in our own Nave. I wanted the bell to toll. I wanted the crucifer to escort K’s body on each step of this last journey. But instead we were gathered in a generically tasteful viewing room, overlarge and overstocked with strategically placed tissues.

But in the end, it made sense that we came to bid farewell to K in an alien setting, for that was how most of us knew her. And once the Rector began the Burial Office, “I am the Resurrection and the Life, says the Lord,” it didn’t much matter where we were. Open the Book of Common Prayer and the Episcopalians make themselves at home.

K had few family left. She’d been devoted to her sister T, but T died not so many months ago. And there were only three cousins left to attend the service. But a dozen or more of the Parish’s Lay Eucharistic Ministers (LEMs) were there. We all knew K from carrying communion to her over the years. First in the house she shared with T and then in the nursing home.

The reading from John’s gospel made me smile—“in my Father’s house are many rooms”—for K’s small space in the nursing home lay near the end of a long tunnel of rooms and I had to pay close attention in order to find her. In theory, the other LEMs and I were serving K in bringing her communion. But in substance, it was us who were blessed in our visits to K. Increasingly frail, short of breath, and mourning her sister, K always was filled with gratitude. Every time I visited—except the very last—she took my hand firmly in hers and asked God to keep me in his care.

That last visit—four weeks ago—was different. In my email report to the chief LEM, the Rector, and the Assistant Rector, I wrote: “ K was in her wheelchair, with portable O2, in the day room. The nursing staff said she was quite confused today, and that was indeed the case. She was able to say part of the Lord's Prayer and took the host, but not the wine. It didn't seem like she ever really connected who I was, which is unusual in my experiences with K.” I left the nursing home wondering whether K would still be among us the next time my LEM turn came around.

After the Office had been read, we escorted K’s hearse to the cemetery. This was not the dignified string of black cars that I remember from funerals in my childhood. What family there were fit into a single SUV. And the Parish followed in the same cars we’d used to carry communion to K. The Rector’s battered pickup, a Honda sedan, a well-used BMW, and my own cluttered station wagon. One “The Episcopal Church Welcomes You” rear-window decal after another. It was a gorgeous morning for a family outing. As we slowly made our way through the eastside neighborhoods, I lowered my windows and drank in the Spring. Great clumps of bluebells. Carpets of creeping phlox. Lilacs just beginning to open.

There were no designated pallbearers. I joined the men at the rear of the hearse, a little uncertain if women were allowed. But the funeral director nodded and smiled. We were a small group and not young. He needed the hands. And so, we who had carried a small box of consecrated bread and wine to K each Sunday now carried K herself to her grave.

As the line of cars reversed their path and wound back out through cemetery, the flowering trees showered us with great clouds of pink and white petals. Springtime confetti. K never disappointed. To share time with K—even for the reading of her Burial Office—was to be blessed.

Postscript. I’d been wondering how to begin this blog and had been actively hatching some ideas. But K’s funeral went straight to the heart of daily life in my Publish and Parish world. I went from K’s graveside to my desk. Instead of beginning my academic work with my usual prayer from Psalm 90, I began my work day with the prayer we use to send forth the LEMs: We who are many are one body because we all share the cup of blessing and the one bread.

Amen.