This year when John and Dallas were helping me put up the trees for the Memory Tree service, I was reminded of taking the leaves off last year. And how with each leaf, I was struck by the diversity of names, gifts and lessons people had written on the leaf as an expression of what memory that person had left with them.
It is that diversity that has me thinking about the memorial services I've conducted and the lessons they have taught me. I wanted to share three of them with you this morning.
They were arguing - a brother and sister over their deceased father. Arguing in that way siblings can about who remembers something correctly or whom a parent favored. We were reminiscing about their dad - Stan. Finally Mabel said to her brother Teddy, "Oh for heavens sakes, it doesn't really matter, I've been arguing with you about this since forever, since we were 12!" Forever seemed like an apt time, as Mabel was 79 and her brother Teddy was 77. Stan their father was 99, a month shy of his 100th birthday.
We sat for an hour or so, and I listened to more shared stories and antic dotes about their meticulous, tidy father. He was the sage keeper of town lore and first hand witness to historical events of days gone by. Mabel and Teddy were a tad lost. Losing your parent at 79 seems like it should be such an easy task, but it's not. They admitted they had come to think of him as immortal, that somehow he would escape the bony hand of the grim reapers grasp. But alas, now they two were firmly placed, "next" in line for death, and struggled with that orphaned feeling that overcomes children no matter what their age.
Soon, the memorial came, and I have to admit I expected to have maybe 100 people show up, as with advanced age, you tend to outlive everyone you know, often your own children. Instead, the room was packed, standing room only: children, youth, young adults, the middle-aged and elderly, sat shoulder to shoulder. The doors to the vestibule were open for overflow. I had forgotten who Stan was.
I got up to speak to Stan's life and the room was alive. Filled with who he was in spirit and life. Stan had a gift for bringing life to people, and that was evident in that room.
Each morning, until he was 98, he would go to his shoe box of jokes. He kept them categorized by subject. They were carefully typed on index cards with his 1930's Smith Corolla with the t that dropped below the rest of the alphabet. He'd put the card into his sport coat, and set out after a cup of Sanka. For an hour or so, he would walk into all the shops on Main Street, carefully checking the joke before he'd open the door, then with a panache that few others could muster, deliver his jokes for the day to all present in the room.
Now Stan didn't just collect jokes, he collected birthdays too. The first week I was in that small town parish, I got a typed card from Stan, with a request to send him my birth date a.s.a.p. With a joke: How do you get holy water? You boil the hell of out it. Every three or four months a similar card would come. Once when paying him a visit, I asked how he kept people's birthdays straight. He pulled out another shoe box with envelopes packed into each month's category. The cards were already addressed with a pencil mark on the lower right corner with the date to send it so it would arrive on time. I asked the congregation how many received a birthday card from Stan, and I tell you there wasn't a person in the room who didn't have their hand up. They looked around at each other, with a knowing smile and a hearty laugh.
Those simple little birthday cards and those silly jokes were why most of those folks were there. Stan's memorial service helped me answer a question: What makes an individual life matter? What makes a life 'weighty" enough to leave an imprint on the lives of others?
Stan didn't have a so-called successful career; indeed many of those present didn't even know what he did before he retired. He was smart enough, but not full of ancient wisdom. Despite his joke telling, he really was quite shy, never the life of the party or a natural leader. What Stan was - was generous.
There are many ways one can be generous, many ways one can give themselves away to others; the jokes and birthday cards were Stan's particular way. He wasn't selfish. The way he interacted so often was other-focused. That's what stood out and amazed people about him, even indebted them to him. The jokes were for them, to make them happy.
It sounds odd to say that our lives gain weight when we give them away, but Stan life taught me that it's true. He taught me that generosity is what makes lives matter it's what leaves imprints behind.
In Syracuse, Scott and I lived on a drumlin with a beautiful vista like view. That house and hill were our sanctuary. We'd go there when life felt spent, hopeless and unfair. Sitting on an Adirondack chair one June day, I watched the sun set deep in the sky and cried. I cried a lot. I was trying to get it out before the next day when I was to give the eulogy, so I read those painful, heartfelt words over and over again. It was for a 19 year old who had come home for a weekend from college. On Saturday night, he got in his car with his buddy. They were on their way to the high school to see old friends and enjoy the spring musical. They never made it to the high school. The car was sideswiped and Brian died soon after reaching the hospital. His friend Josh was holding on in the ICU.
His parents had found me through a friend of a friend. The day before, we sat on that hill chatting about their remarkable, youthful and spirited son. They grasped hands with their 21year old daughter, and sputtered and shook, gulping for air and the words to describe his life, gifts and talents. I walked them to their car, and the mother pulled me back and said. "You know, we were going to tell Brian this weekend - this weekend. We had to tell him, we're getting a divorce after 22 years. " I grabbed this mother's hand, gave it a squeeze, and walked her to their pickup. They waved good-bye and I said I would see them tomorrow.
Tomorrow came and with it the memorial at the high school. Brian had attended a small school south of Ramsey, NY. And sure enough, everyone was there, the whole town practically. I met the superintendent, the principal and the extended family. I spoke to a room of 800. I remember feeling while talking about this young man, that these students were so shocked to have that veil of death lifted before their eyes. They lived with such a certainty of life. And Brian's death proved the crack in the veneer of their invincibility, the crack deepened with each story, each antic dote, like chalk on a board, scrapping its amplified volume consistently through the service. Personally, I found the kicker for me was - I really liked this kid. I wished I had known him. He was funny, smart, charming and with no other way to explain him - just "a good egg". The universe lost "a good egg."
A year later, I got a call from the family again. Would I come to put his ashes in the ground on the anniversary or Brian's death? So, we gathered in a country cemetery in the morning. It was pouring. Raining so hard that golf umbrellas didn't ward off the pounding. There was Josh, the friend from the accident, now walking with a cane, still cursed with memory loss and still working his way back to life. That morning, there were more tears, more grief but added laughter too. I said my goodbyes and walked back to my car. Through the fog of a steamy summer rain, I could make out the tops of the umbrellas in that graveyard. Still trying to ward off the rain, yet here we had all been soaked - soaked with helplessness and grief. Soaked with yearning for life, when only death presented itself. The umbrellas were just a veneer.
Brian's death reminded me that there are times when we need to surrender to helplessness. Brian wasn't coming back. You could rage against the universe, curse it, scream at it, damn it or even love it. It didn't matter, Brian was dead. Seeing a family a year after a death, let's you know how many let the soaking take hold and those who tried to ward it off. You could tell who had sat with it and who was trying to hold it at bay. Those who were moldy with helplessness, had spawned new growth and new life. They had weathered the storm. They had said their goodbyes. They were grateful for the love, comfort and words said to them. But they needed to sink and soak that first year. Umbrella or not, it was a surrender to a soaking helplessness, that gave them new wind, new spirit, new love for the young man who was just a boy- "a good egg."
An 8 year old called me. Could I do the memorial? Sure I said. We worked out the details and before I hung up she said, "I hear you have a robe with a thingy!, could you wear the thingy!" A stole I said, "Yeah that." I assured her I would.
The next day I arrived at the house. Standing by the car, I pulled my black robe up over my shoulders and slipped the thingy around my neck. Behind me I heard one of the kids yell, "The minister's here," and three kids trampled down to greet me. The 8 year old grabbed my hand, and yanked me up the driveway. The mother of this child came down to greet me with a baby on her hip, steering me with her free arm to the garden for the service. The garden gate was lined with crayon drawings on construction paper, tacked on with excessive amounts of masking tape. Each one was a drawing of the deceased.... Eloise, the family gerbil.
Seems the house cat, Boots, was the cause for Eloise's demise. That and a cage door carelessly left open. Poor Eloise never saw what was coming as she tentatively sniffed around a room after sneaking out of her cage. Boots had left the gerbil with apparent pride at the foot of the mother, warrior cat, meowing wildly. Eloise was skillfully disemboweled for glorious parental inspection.
Soon the neighbors gathered around the garden and I was instructed to start the service. The cat, Boots, sat on the porch steps with an air of indifference and superiority. Her tail flopping from side to side in measured time. Earlier she had walked through the garden sniffing the grave, whereupon a few children hissed at her in a menacing way, while others called out "murderer!" No matter, Boots walked away unrepentant with her nose in the air.
So the service began. I talked about how we love our pets and the gifts that they bring to us. How each of us was blessed to have the gerbil in our life, and how it was to have Eloise taken from us earlier than expected (to which five year-old Ian added, "yeah thanks a lot Boots," The hissing commences in earnest.)
I continue on. We sang a song off key, then invited others to speak.
Kate, the oldest girl, walked to my side at the head of the miniature grave. She stood tall and firm. From her back pocket, she pulled out a lovely picture of Eloise on her treadmill. She spoke of Eloise in glowing terms.
Next up, her sister Nellie (the one who had called me). She, too, exhibited a lovely drawing of Eloise: a pictogram of sorts of the gerbil, resting and then eating, then resting, then vividly splayed on the kitchen floor with guts and blood all over. Then she shared some words about Eloise, (though as an aside, it turns out the cat, Boots, was Nellie's so she brought to bear the importance of forgiveness and reminded us with a shrug and a smile - cats will be cats!) A couple of neighborhood kids followed with poetry and comments.
Now if you paid attention to what was shared, to what these kids were expressing, it didn't have as much to do with goodbyes as it did with saying 'thank you'! They weren't exalting their beloved rodent as much as lifting up the gifts Eloise had given them: company, joy lessons about never giving up even though the treadmill can seem hopeless.
The lesson taught to me by this memorial service for a gerbil was probably the most profound of any I've done. It taught me that grieving can be a form of gratitude. Mourning can be a form of saying, 'thank you'.
These kids taught me, that you can't separate the gift from that which you love.
That's why we don't' simply put the name of our loved ones on these leaves that each of us holds. That's why we add the gifts they have given us onto the back. The Memory Tree is not simply about remembering, it is about saying thank you and noticing the gifts our loved ones have left behind.
It is those gifts,
That I invite us now to celebrate,
Shirley/Ed are going to play us some lovely music, and I'd like you to write on your leaf a loved one you have lost, and on the other side, the gift they gave you of which you are grateful. I invite you to bring your leaf forward, to place on the memory tree.
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