Morning Thanks--Closure

It's all new to me, really. I don't know this stuff. I feel like a kid, an innocent, because I've got like zero experience, nothing but what I read. There's no map to get across the uncharted space in front of me, no guidebook, even though I'm sure there are hundreds of how-tos. Still, right now, I have no clue. No "been there, done that."

I remember a funeral several years ago, an aunt, Alzheimer's, some unquestionable relief at her passing, in fact. Death as a kind of triumph really. Lots of deep, satisfying breaths. The end of a good life, the long-awaited end of several years that held scant meaning. 

The family was there of course, but this old woman's age and her decade-long dance with death drew a sparse crowd. It was a small, intimate affair in what must have been January because the world was an icebox--cold and windy and Iowa-dangerous, especially to the elderly who'd attended, the kind of weather where frostbite is a given. 

After a proper funeral, the cortege left the church for the cemetery; but it had been announced before we left that the family determined there would be no committal service. The pallbearers would lug the casket out of the hearse, but there'd be no service beneath a tent flapping madly in a wind rushing like a untamed river of ice straight out of Alberta. Dangerous--it was actually dangerous outside.

So there we sat in cars while six men carried the casket; and there it sat, alone beneath the tent that could not have kept anyone out of the cold.

But one old woman insisted on walking out to the spot in the graveyard where her sister's bier sat up high on whatever table undertakers create to hold the deceased and her elaborate chariot. One sister, an old woman, and the way out there and back was snowy, treacherous for someone her age. 

The rest of us sat there in our cars while she did what she had to. She walked all the way out there, all by herself, took just one flower from the bouquet on the top of the casket, and returned to the car. She didn't stand there and pray, didn't weep publicly, performed no other task in a ritual she must have determined she simply had to perform. It was beautiful, thrilling, majestic almost in its purposefulness, a determined mission for an old woman.

Closure, people call it, I suppose. A newly fatherless son asked me about an open casket once upon a time--"what that was all about?" He didn't get it really, hadn't thought about it before he had to. I told him that some would say being able to look for the last time on the face of a loved one is something necessary to closure. 

Emphasis on "some would say." Many prefer caskets closed. Some wouldn't think of looking. Some can't. Some can but won't. I remember a young lady I had in class whose casket was thoughtfully veiled. 

Some want to watch the casket lowered, and for years no one would have thought of leaving a graveyard without everyone--even the children--dropping a handful of dirt into the open grave. Closure. I know what it means, but I've got no clue how to get there.

I suppose there is no set rule, no defined way. The scriptures don't lay out a litany. Advice is cheap, I'm sure. Ask a thousand people and you'll get at least 900 answers. 

Maybe we're simply recipients of the process. Eventually closure just happens. I'm far less haunted by my father's startling presence than I am by my mother's, but she died just a year and a half ago. He's been gone longer. Time heals wounds.

But many would say there are things we can do, and should. A funeral or a memorial service is one of them. I'm sure I could google a host of recipes. 

Closure. Among our Native neighbors, I'm told, there may well have been more of a prescription--yell and scream and cry and wander in the wilderness of grief, rent your clothes, run naked, leave the territory, do anything for three days or so. There isn't such a word as improper. But then go back to the band, to the family. Go back to life.

When a father and mother family loses a child--maybe you've heard this one--be ready to forgive anything they do, absolutely anything, for at least five years.

Closure. It takes work, I suppose, and loads and loads and loads of sheer grace from above. Bless us, Lord. Bless us all.

I just walked outside and took this picture of the dawn. I'm just one voice, just another pilgrim, no smarter than the rest of us; but I think there's something to be said for the old Native way of getting up on a morning like this to greet the dawn.

And be greeted.

Maybe the best closure is the simple advent of a new day.  Maybe, like that aged sister in January, we all need a flower to go on.

I'm sure that flower is gone, as is that old aunt. But this morning I remember, and I'm thankful for what she did on that cold morning.