The Funeral - A Final Act of Love

My husband, Gary turned 65 in May. Needless to say, he is much older than I (wink)! Anyway… it seems that, when the bell tolls 65, insurance companies become quite interested in you. We’ve received more calls from insurance agents this May than we have throughout our entire marriage! While their primary concern is medical insurance, life insurance is usually offered also. Asking the caller if they would be willing to give him a few minutes of their time since they’ve taken a few minutes of his, Gary astutely uses the opportunity to educate the lucky person about our perspective on traditional insurance practices. Most listen respectfully, some ask very good questions and a few indicate that more of us should consider such an approach.

Our most recent salesman even received Gary’s education about our take on funeral arrangements,

“Our loved ones will place our bodies in a box that they build,

they will dig a h*** on our land

and

they will cover us with dirt.”

The seller’s response was, “That surely can’t be legal; can it?”

While our perspective on the final act of love may seem cold to some and certainly goes against the flow of modern tradition, elaborate funerals and headstones were once perceived as idolatry, are certainly unnecessary and sadly counter the biblical concept of “dust to dust”.

Having experienced Momma’s recent death, I appreciate this quote from James Farrell’s, Inventing the American Way of Death, all the more:

The paraphernalia of the American way of death keep people… from their own feelings… This social convention developed historically, but it continues today, as Americans delegate control of death and the funerals to specialized funeral service personnel. Consequently, funerals are custom-made only in the same sense that automobiles are, the price we pay for paying our last respects in the American way of death is the price of our personality, which we have purposely withheld from the funeral. By our passive role in directing our funerals, we have transformed an important rite of personal passage into an impersonal rite of impassivity.

Momma and Pappa purchased a burial plot and made some funeral arrangements, based upon tradition, in advance. Consequently, our options outside those plans were somewhat limited. While I realize that there are truly compassionate funeral directors, had we been more intimately involved in preparing Momma for burial, it could have enhanced our grieving process and drawn our hearts nearer to one another as siblings. What memories would have flooded our minds had Sissy and I been able to adorn Momma in her beautiful dress, fix her hair and apply make-up on her like we did when we were kids. What a precious closing to her life it would have been for the six of us to place Momma into a “treasure chest” that the boys had built together, dig her final resting place and lower her into it. In not doing so, I believe that we missed out on something very important in the cycle of Momma’s life.

Our American culture has convinced us that we are demonstrating respect when we allow our loved ones’:

veins and arteries to be drained of blood and filled with chemicals,
chest and abdomen to be emptied of fluid and replaced with preservatives,
eyes to be fixed shut using barbed objects under their eye lids,
anus and vagina to be packed with cotton or screwed shut,
face to be cosmetically “restored” using stage makeup, injections, plaster and/or wax!

Is this really what we desire as our “final act of love”? Are there other options? Stay tune for part two of The Funeral - A Final Act of Love.

Whole-Heartedly,

Bonnie

P.S. Please feel free to contact me with questions, thoughts, topics you’d like to ponder or to read past articles at: http://whole-heartedlife.blogspot.com/. You may also contact me at:

Bonnie Jaeckle

In Search of the Whole-Hearted Life

Diagonal Progress

505 Jefferson St.

Diagonal, IA 50845

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Comment by Jim London on June 28, 2012 at 9:16am: Thank you, Bonnie. Indeed, we do much, even during our heart-still- beating lives, to disguise the reality of aging and to avoid up-close engagements with what happens when the heart stops beating. The trauma is understandably unsettling. But we need help to discern what is happening within us when we're either getting closer to our own expiry date or thrust into the wrenching from us, of someone whom we have cherished.

Neither my wife nor I can conceive of life without the other. There are times when we grieve even in imaginatively anticipating that a day will come when one of us will likely live beyond the other. The wound will be so severe, that we can't imagine enduring the pain. But we recognise it as grief -- a sense of wrenching loss. We are, at this point anyway, free of fear, as far as we can tell. And that is important to us. Fear seems to omit recognition of the experiential presence of God, in whom we live and move and have our being. We have open to us the alternative of living our grief within abiding fellowship with Him, knowing His grace within the valley of the shadow of death, but without fear. When Jesus wept (John 11:35) near the burial cave of Lazarus, there may have been many factors precipitating His grief -- His identification with the grief of others, His anticipation of what's ahead for Him when His "time has come", etc -- but we don't see fear. He abides in the Father, where fear does not penetrate.

Also, your subtitle " ... A Final Act of Love" sparked the thought in me that there need not be any finality to the acts of love that we express for those whom we are forced to surrender up. We continue to act out our love for them them, as you have done, by our testimonies concerning them and by our deliberate practical "imitation" of what we saw of Christ in them. What God brought into our lives through them will continue to honor them, when we give expression to it.

Thank you, again, for sharing your personal processing in a way that is helpful.

Jim

Comment by Bonnie Jaeckle on June 30, 2012 at 2:13pm: Jim, I've sensed that you and Irene have a love for one another that few ever know. It warms my heart to hear you speak of that. I apprec. your insight and agree that there need not be any fear and that we have the privilege of "living our grief within abiding fellowship with Him." You are so right that "there need not be any finality to the acts of love that we express for those whom e are forced to surrender up. We continue to act out our love for them them, as you have done, by our testimonies concerning them and by our deliberate practical "imitation" of what we saw of Christ in them. What God brought into our lives through them will continue to honor them, when we give expression to it." I'd like to use this quote in part two of this article if I may.

Often your responses add so much to what I have written that I feel as though it would be a blessing to my readers if I sent you a draft and we share thoughts about it before I submit my articles!!! Thank you so much for your insights!

Comment by Jim London on June 30, 2012 at 8:08pm: Thanks for your gracious reception of what I wrote, Bonnie. If ever there is a place to share anything with which you identify, please do so. I've long thought that exchanging/ sharing with one another how we understand things is what God uses to bring us more fully into Himself. We are pooling what we all "see through a glass darkly", doing so in fellowship with one another, as His people.

On the matter of chatting drafts, frankly I'd rather hear your voice! God has been shaping your heart and has given you uncommon skill for articulation, so that He can find expression through you. But exchanging thoughts with you on anything would be a privilege.

Blessings upon you both.

jim

Comment by Marshall Diakon on July 1, 2012 at 7:53am: American customs & traditions, in the pattern of European norms, so strained and twisted. Funerals, weddings... even modern-traditional birth has been sterilized within an emotional disconnect. If Salvation could be reduced to a "process", the western world would have it so.Early saints in Christ helped neighbors bury their dead, though not as funeral directors.

The Funeral - A Final Act of Love

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