Funeral

We're okay. 

We're not happy. We're broken up a little, we're not above a flood of tears, but we're okay--and I think I'm speaking for all of us.

Doctors like to create pain meters: "On a scale of one to ten, where are you?" You ever get that question, Dad? Don't know if you had it posed to you sometime before you died, but maybe it'll help if I say that by my calculation, all day on Saturday we were right there in the middle, right there at a five.

A funeral's a funeral, after all, a word whose upbeat definition, "a ceremony for celebrating, respecting, sanctifying, or remembering the life of a person who has died," is undercut by the word's own murky sound. Funeral is a word you can't say and smile at the same time because there wouldn't be one if someone wasn't dead--may as well use the word. Everyone knows there's an empty spot at the table. One chair goes unsat-in; one voice is stilled and the entire choir hears it. 

Something's missing. It's like phantom pain because the person whose life you're celebrating isn't there. I say maybe a five, which is to say, still very real but not deadly. 

Like I said, Dad, we're okay. Can't speak for everyone, but it could be a lot worse. Could be much, much worse.

Weird. Here I am, telling you about death.

The preacher did a fine job, even though he didn't know your son-in-law. He told people he thought he knew him because he'd listened to the man's kids talk about him. He knew your son-in-law because of what your grandkids told him, and not just what they told him either but how they told him what they did. That preacher said he knew their dad by way of his kids. 

That's when I thought of you. I've never forgotten what you told me years ago, just as you hadn't forgotten what your father must have said long, long before. Grandpa Schaap--Rev. Schaap, your father--used to tell people that they'd know how good parents they were when they saw their grandchildren. Not their kids necessarily, but their grandkids. Your grandkids will testify to how your raised their kids, which is to say how you loved 'em. That's what you told me you heard him say, what you yourself couldn't forget.

That's why I was telling you about the funeral, Dad. It was good, even beautiful. His brothers told stories that brought him back a bit, stories that made people laugh and cry. Like I said, we were right there at a five, but every once in a while that needle almost flattened. 

Your great-grandson sang. You would have loved it, and Mom would have lost it, I'm sure. And the song was so right: "If Christ is Lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing." Had me singing too, inside. Once in a while the needle was registering nothing at all. Joy was overwhelming.

And your grandchildren, his kids, were a sheer blessing. That's why I'm telling you this. They were great. One of them put together a video scrapbook that surveyed an entire blessed earthly life, perfectly beautiful,"Blessed Assurance" playing all the while in the background. We sang that old hymn at your funeral. Those words are inscribed on your tombstone because your wife and your children wanted them there.

Your granddaughter got up and told stories that created the warmest laughs and best wet tears one could muster at a funeral, just as her uncles had. You would have been proud. And then your grandson let go with a mighty prayer that had to rival anything your preacher dad ever loosed from the pulpit. He even asked a blessing on the man whose inattentive driving caused this whole bittersweetness. What a prayer, Dad. 

Anyway, I just thought I'd tell you that we're okay. There's a gaping hole in all of our lives that nothing will ever fill in this vale of tears. It'd be nice if you could visit your daughter somehow. She's soon to be on her way home. She'll need some assurance. Find a way, okay? 

Now that I've written this out, I'm thinking you probably know it all already. If, like the Bible says, we're "surrounded by a cloud of witnesses," two of them had to be you and Mom. You were there, weren't you? Here I'm going on and on, and you know the whole story.

Anyway, let me say again that we're okay. We've got life, after all. We've got forever-life--you, us, and our brother, the son, the dad, the grandpa, and the adoring husband we remembered together in tears and laughter last Saturday. 

We've got life, don't we? We certainly do. That blessed assurance is a gift from yet another loving Father, Creator of heaven and earth. 

We're okay because we've got life. I suppose it's worth a good cry to know that someday soon they'll be no more tears at all. 

What am I saying? You know.