Funereality

My mother recently passed away. She was 82. I wrote about her back here.

The day after she passed away Allen -- my stepfather who is 90 years old -- and I went to his church to speak with his pastor about my mother, as she would be leading the funeral service. She asked us both to share memories of her which we tearfully managed to do.

My mother had expressed a wish to have the 23rd Psalm read in her service. We pondered its meaning. The pastor wanted additional Scripture and out of nowhere I recalled reading a marked passage in a Bible as a kid. What's odd is that the 40 year-old-memory came from nowhere -- I said it was something about "not storing treasures up on earth." It was an admonition I thought. The pastor instantly recognized it as Gospel, probably from Matthew or Luke. I googled it on my phone as she reached for a Bible. Turns out it was from the Sermon on the Mount. Not being sure of which passages, we left it at that.

The pastor was taking notes like a stenographer as Allen I took turns letting memories go. He recounted the beautiful story of their meeting as widow and widower -- which I had never heard. I suggested that one meaning of my mother's life was in bringing families together -- as if to mend her own as a child. Afterwards we went back to Allen and my mother's home. He was amazed and intrigued with my 40 year old memory of my mother having had an old Bible. He rummaged around and he found the Bible which turned out to be an old KJV and handed it to me. I found three verses check marked (not underlined as I misremembered). They were Matthew 6:19-21:

I wanted to stand and read those verses at her funeral but I didn’t think that I could do so without becoming overly emotional. In addition, I feared that it might look odd to do so without context and explaining to the Congregation would surely do so [choke me up] as it does even to write this now. But there must be something profound about the particular meaning of those words to my mother. As far as I can tell, those are the only words which she marked in the whole Bible. I emailed the pastor, asking her to read them at the service in my place. An explanation would not be needed; I do think that the verses are relevant to her life.

In addition to the marked passages in that Bible, there was a folded single sheet of paper with the words to an old gospel song called “In The Garden.” That was not there 40 years ago. Apparently, the lyrics meant something to her and she tucked that in there sometime afterwards. I didn’t know the song and had to google it. I asked if it would it be possible for the soloist to do that song in addition to two others that my mother had requested.

It was a wonderful service to cap her wonderful life.