Dear Kristin,
Did you hear that Marie Frana died? I just read it in the paper, but her funeral is today already. I’m going. Want to ride in with me?
To be honest, this is more than a carpool invite. I want to tell you my thoughts about funerals, share some powerful cultural truths that I wish someone had explained to me many decades ago. Since I didn’t know, I missed out on many opportunities to be part of the weaving of community that happens in its once-and-only way at each funeral. I missed out on the opportunity to show up in a way that matters to the whole like you’ll never know until your own loved one passes. And I missed out on chances to help hold together the map of our community.
Here you are, new to the neighborhood, bringing your children and your many gifts, ready to be wholly part of this place. I offer you these reflections on funerals as an invitation to that wholeness. Yes, it’s a straight-out attempt to convince you, my new neighbor, to come with me to this and all future neighborhood funerals!
I used to think of funerals like I did weddings. You wouldn’t just show up at someone’s wedding; you need to be specifically invited. That’s clearly true where seats and meals are carefully counted, and it’s easy to see why I conflated weddings and funerals, as they are both held (around here) in church sanctuaries and church basements, with pastors and flowers and prayers.
But of course there are no personal invitations to funerals. The invitation is broadcast to all via the printed obituary, the church bulletin, the word-of-mouth. I used to assume that I wasn’t included in that invitation, because perhaps I didn’t know that person well, or because I didn’t think I should take up space, that I would seem an intruder, an outsider, a voyeur. I’m not really from here..how could I be welcome?
Yet, how do we become ‘from’ a place but by participating in the rituals of life? Is there any other way to learn the stories that weave us together except by showing up to listen and remember on behalf of all? Funerals bring together a particular group of people that will never again converge, their hearts all oriented in that particular direction in that one moment, telling those particular stories. If we show up, we can catch some of them. There is abundance, and all are welcome to this table of telling and remembering.
The stories that hold our connections through generations have to be carried, and we humans are the vessels that must carry them. They are sacred relics of our culture, kept alive only by the moving breath of voice and the open heart of ear. We can carry stories that happened long before we were born, and in the telling of them we add yet another layer of the story. The only way to begin carrying them is to begin. To begin is to become part of the warp of community.
I think part of my blind spot on funerals came from a sense that, in order to take up space there, I needed to matter somehow to the bereaved. I needed to feel a particular connection to the deceased, or have a particular task at the funeral, else I would be invisible and thus not matter.
But I see now how being invisible, perhaps not mattering to anyone there at all, is a deliciously humble perfect non-self to bring to a funeral. Being part of the funeral congregation, I can feel my individual presence utterly absorbed by the whole. It is important to the bereaved to see many faces, many yeses to the life that lived here among us. Showing up at funerals is an easy way to shed the need to matter for who we each are, and practice mattering only as part of the whole. Surely our ancestors knew this way well.
If we, the random neighbors and acquaintances of the deceased, don’t show up, are we missed? No. But if we do show up, we get to instantly be part of the community soup. What’s it like to both not-matter, to not be important to the deceased or the bereaved, to not have a task, yet to live in the knowing that we truly do matter as part of the whole? When the community makes funeral-soup, it is the bereaved who are the meat and vegetables, and we others who make the broth. It all matters.
You want to hang around elders more, hear their stories, jokes, and ideas? There is no better place than at funerals. Because they sure would not miss it. And whether you’ve just arrived from the moon or you’re the neighbor they’ve only met once, you are welcome. They are glad you’ve come.
You want to learn the old ways and stories of your community? You don’t have to live there 30 years to earn the right to ask questions. You don’t have to get a research grant. You don’t have to slowly build relationships through weekly coffees (though let’s do that too). You just have to show up at funerals, stay for the lunch after, linger around the coffee urn and photo boards. Your interest will feed what is wanting to be given. For those stories are longing to be told, and you earned a ticket to the grand show of life-and-death just by being here.
At funerals you have extra permission to ask questions that can be hard to fit into other settings. ’Do you ever remember seeing your mom and dad dance together?’ ‘What was it like when you sold the cows?’ The questions almost seem to be sitting out there in the space between you, begging to be asked. For there is an open-hearted spirit pervading it all, urging ‘Now! Here, and nevermore! Listen, tell, remember!’ Everyone feels it, everyone obeys. Full participation in the sacrament is natural, unavoidable. We were made for this.
We white people of European decent sometimes bemoan the loss of meaningful ritual that’s embedded in our lineage. It’s true that we retain only a smidgen of what our ancestors did to hold their world together. While we re-imagine meaningful ceremonial ways for our descendants, let’s also honor those that remain in place. Funerals are one of those, and they always include the essentials: folks take pause from whatever else they were doing that day, gather in reverence, pray and sing, share food and share memories.
On top of that, there might be even more to teach or remind you of pieces of our cultural history: the white robes; the waving ball of incense; the ceremonial carrying of sacred objects by children; the sharing of the blood and body of Christ; the carrying of rose stems by teary-eyed loved ones; and the partaking of roast beef sandwiches and coffee made by women who know their gifts and know that others will do the same for them someday. Whether you celebrate or mourn the history that brought us these rituals, you have to see what they are, in the end: perfectly imperfect humans honoring life in the best way we know how.
A few years ago when my dear father died, I learned another good lesson about funerals. His memorial was in the Twin Cities, 150 miles from the place I’ve made my home for 36 years. Dad was a public figure there for many years so of cause there were hundreds of people in attendance. But the people who meant the most to me there were the seven friends from home who surprised me by traveling all that way to attend the 2-hour memorial. Sure they knew my dad, but when I saw their faces at the door I understood that they came for me. They knew how their presence would feel to me. My tears flow even now to remember them there. Such a gift. All I can do now is keep giving it back. Maybe this letter to you is a small part of that.
I’m grateful for what I’ve learned through time and missed chances. I’ll keep passing it along, just in case anyone else missed this learning like I did. Let’s keep the together-fires burning in our neighborhood! Come, let’s be the broth! Come let’s be vessels, let’s catch some strands of story to help hold our community together!
Bring the children!
Love,
Liz
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