You think you’re doing just fine, but it’s only afterwards you find out what a mess you were (are!). The day, mid-March, when my mother passed away, I made a few phone calls to family across the world, went to the funeral of a wonderful lady who had been mom’s friend since the 1950s, and then popped into a funeral home to make arrangements. All through this I felt I was holding it together just fine — I could drive and breathe at the same time. It was a week or so later that my sister noticed I had given the funeral home the wrong date of birth and the wrong date of death. Minor details, perhaps, but telling — and which will cost us in increased paper work with government agencies.
This false sense of competence is a powerful dynamic, hiding as it does a fear of vulnerability. We fear that if we are weak the world will not accept us. A dear friend took me aside at the viewing and told me in no uncertain terms that I did not have to “be charming” that evening. I told him, it was the only way I knew of getting through the event. He was correct, of course, in his blessed chastisement; and so was I. It was the only way I knew, but it was the wrong way.
Why I needed to be strong is a mystery I’m sure a team of psychoanalysts could unravel. And I probably need to place myself in their hands despite the evidence of care, love and support from the massive collection of communities to which my siblings, my parents and I belong. Even now as I write this a month later I receive emails, letters, cards from our friends and colleagues. It is an impressive reminder that we are not alone.
At the funeral were my parents’ friends; many of them proudly telling me they had known mom and dad longer than me. There were church friends; many who have become more my uncles, aunts and cousins over the years. There were us kids’ friends and colleagues. There was one of my friend’s high school girlfriends; a woman I have met perhaps three times over the past four decades. What compelled her to come to the funeral is beyond me, but is a reminder that our lives extend into areas we may have forgotten but have not forgotten us. At the other end of the time-space scale, there was a young woman I have known only recently. Again, what compelled her to come to suburbia on public transit, eight months pregnant with her first child, for the funeral of a woman she never met, is a testimony to the power of the Holy Spirit knitting us together.
And to my mind it is nothing less than the Spirit at work — a mystery manifest. Even before my mother’s passing I felt the prayers and connections from across continents and oceans. During her last month, I started updating some family members as to her health via email. Those recipients forwarded the emails to others. These new recipients wrote me asking to be placed on the primary list. And so forth.
The common cliché is that blood is thicker than water, which is meant to mean blood connections — family — are the most important. This is utter nonsense; an excuse for tribalism. Spirit is thicker than all; it is what binds us. Sadly we only recognize it in our most vulnerable states. And then there’re folks like me, who even while recognizing it are unable to express their vulnerability.
That doesn’t mean I’m not humbled — which along with being vulnerable is an uncomfortable state for me. I’m humbled that this ordinary life of work, mortgage, giggles and show tunes is connected to hundreds and thousands of remarkable souls through a mystery I don’t fully comprehend. And this isn’t theology or theory; this is fact. I’ve recently seen the numbers at work.
