lazarus’ funeral home
I guess I’m reaching the age where friends are starting to leave this Mortal Coil. Last weekend I went to another funeral. Same church, different deceased. Same minister, different crowd. Same platitudes, different Bible quotations. Most of last week’s mourners were old ourselves. Watching them hobble down the aisle, you sort of knew we’d all be back here way too soon.
You might’ve guessed. I’m not a real big fan of funerals. I can only listen to the 23rd Psalm so many times. And I’m not real comforted by the promise of ‘Going Into the Light’ or ‘passing through the Pearly Gates.’ I never was much for Gated Communities and all those covenants and bylaws. Oh, I know a lot of folks get some reassurance there’ll be a Better Life, but me, I’m not that unhappy here and now. And the promise of Life Eternal … well, that may sound good to some but I’m not too keen on filling the hours of Eternity with something that’ll hold our interest. Most folks are bored by afternoon. Try half past Perpetuity and see how bad daytime TV can get, even a Perfect World.
Death is one of those so-called facts of life we don’t want to believe in. So we say it’s just a way to go to the ‘after’ life. Not really dying, just shedding some skin. If folks really believe this, we’d be partying for the deceased, celebrating their new birthday, the first in a line of them stretching farther than the decimal calculations for Pi. Dust to dust, is my thinking. Ashes to ashes.
There will come a time — for all of us —when all these words fail us, when vision is lost and memory has receded back to its source. We are really spirits who emerge from some unnameable darkness and for an all too brief moment, glow incandescent. It’s little wonder that what we know of the world is that small circle of light….. We who share it together can take some comfort that for a fleeting moment we could rise like sparks from that same fragile fire.
In the end we won’t know many others. Friends and family are few. All the more remarkable and precious it is to share some of each other’s light and each other’s warmth. When the darkness beckons, some part of us will pass on, but certainly not the totality of what was us. Each of us who knew the deceased and loved him and were loved by him, we each carry some part of his spark now. We each carry a piece of him in our hearts and our memories. Prize it because it’s a very valuable thing. It is the most valuable thing. It’s what keeps the circle from being broken. From here on out, in no small way, we are now their torchbearers. And always remember: this is all that holds the darkness back.
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