This summer, much of life felt un-bloggable during my father’s illness and recent death. However, one reality of church life is that monthly newsletter deadlines keep coming whether one feels like writing or not. So... here is a version of something I wrote for our September newsletter:
Over the years and in recent weeks my parents had talked at length about end of life issues – what they wanted and what they didn’t concerning medical care, financial matters, funeral and burial arrangements, the farm. As he was able in the last few weeks, my dad made things as easy as possible for Mom and the rest of us, making sure we knew where to find important papers and phone numbers, pointing out things that needed to be done on the farm and making sure we knew how much he loved his life and each one of us.
Although my father had not wanted a visitation, he reluctantly agreed to my mother’s request, negotiating a spot in the sunny narthex addition he had helped to imagine and build one summer years ago. A beautiful arrangement of sunflowers, red Gerber daisies, ears of corn and pieces of denim graced the simple closed casket.
My mom had delegated the task of finding the altar flowers to a cousin, but when the vases arrived for the evening visitation, they were missing the cheerful sunflowers my mom had specifically requested. As I stood in the aisle of the still-empty sanctuary looking at the altar and its not-quite-right flowers, I contemplated where I could possibly track down some yellow blooms much later that evening—not an easy task in that rural community. Just as I had decided to troll through the gardens of neighboring farms with a flashlight, the funeral director approached and asked, “What do you need?”
It was a pretty big question on the eve of my father’s funeral – the list of what my broken heart longed for at that moment was a long one.“I need a dozen sunflowers,” I told the kind young man, holding up my hands about six inches apart. “This big,” I said.
“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it,” he said as a humbling wave of family, friends, old classmates of mine and students of my mother, farmers, business people, neighbors and church folks began flowing into the parking lot and through the building. An hour into the visitation, I glanced at the altar to see that sunflowers had been carefully added to each vase. Daisies too. That act of kindness buoyed me through the long evening. Those flowers greeted me again the next day as we celebrated the extraordinary life, deep faith and generous love of a simple farmer, husband, father and grandfather.
On the eve of his death, Jesus told his disciples, “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.” Well, actually, John’s Gospel puts it this way: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”
For the many ways, big and small, that God speaks to our troubled hearts, our fears, our grief, our hopes, our doubts—I am amazed and so grateful. For the preparations and promises that Christ has made for my dad, for you, for me—I rejoice. For the gift of this life and the opportunities we are all given to minister to one another in joy and in sorrow—I say “yes.”
Occasionally, its new owner delivers sandwiches to hungry folks at church, pausing just long enough to offer an update about the flagging health of our mutual motorized friend, other junkers he's working on, or news from the neighborhood.
