The funeral home called and asked if I would conduct a funeral. Caught by surprise, I at least thought to ask for information. When is the service? What day and time? Where? Not only was I surprised by the sudden call, I quickly thought back to my seminary training to remember if I had ever received any kind of practical instruction about the conduct of funerals.
In fact, I had not thought about conducting funerals at all, nor had I anticipated I would need such instruction. I had arrived as a very young campus minister a the university, fresh out of a highly regarded theological school with what I thought to be a great education in languages, history, ethics, biblical scholarship, archeology, systematic theology, worship in the Protestant tradition, world religions, and an introduction to psychology and counseling that would enable me to handle general problems as well as how and when to refer and to whom.
But, funerals? I really had not thought much about that because I planned to focus my work in the university setting, first as a campus minister or university chaplain, and then after a little while, I would decide which area I would concentrate on for doctoral studies. So why worry about funerals and such, because college students seldom die—I supposed.
But this was not a college student, the funeral director informed me quickly. Obviously, he felt pressure to get the matter settled quickly and told me he had already asked four or five clergy. One had committed to do the funeral, but called at the very last minute to say an emergency had come up and he wouldn't be able to do the service. He went on to suggest that the funeral director call me.
Well, I was not feeling to warm about any of this whole matter—the sense of urgency, the last minute reaching out to me, not to say anything about never having conducted a funeral. All of these thoughts whirled through my head as I heard my voice asking what time and where. And the funeral director's quick response expressed his relief, but also his resolve to nail this matter down before I also changed my mind. "Great!" he said with he quick instructions to meet him in an hour at his funeral home on 5th Street where I could follow him to the cemetery for a grave-side service.
Caught in my jeans and T-shirt, it came tome pretty quickly that I really should dress respectfully for the funeral service. But first, I had to call my wife and tell her I had to conduct a funeral, and I would rush home to change clothes. Also, she might plan on our having dinner a little later than usual tonight.
My wife was a clinical social worker who did not get disturbed easily by a change in plans. But at the time, she was on a month's leave of absence as our daughter had just been born, and I could not be sure where she might be in her daily schedule of nursing, and tending to our cat, and taking care of the house. Even so, she greeted me at the door with questions about the sudden responsibility of conducting a funeral and did I know what I was doing. I tried to fill her in as best I could with the very scanty information I had been given, while I quickly changed into my dark suit and somber tie. Quickly she pushed me out the door before I woke up the sleeping baby, but she could not resist a humorous wave and quip, "Such an important event in your life—your first funeral service with someone, somewhere"!
Leaving my house and rushing to the funeral home on 5th Street, I saw the home but also a pickup truck with two men inside. The funeral director waved for me to get in line between the hearse and pickup truck as he rushed to the side of my car. I rolled down the window, shook his hand, and was hurriedly told to stay close behind the hearse as traffic was likely to get heavy along the route we would be traveling. "No problem," I responded, having gained some confidence as I touched my tie again to make sure it was tight, sitting snugly in my Volkswagen Beetle convertible that was proving to be a conversation opener on campus.
So began my first funeral procession: the hearse, my Volkswagen Beetle, and the red pickup truck. From 5th Street, we wandered through the university town to the outskirts and a county road I had never traveled before. Not exactly what I expected, I was thinking. Then, at the post where I feared the funeral director had lost his way, we turned on a gravel road, bumping along until we came to a grove of trees that sheltered a red Formall tractor with an old flat-bed trailer hitched to the rear of the tractor. This explains why the funeral director wanted to complete the service—he was rushing to get out of the woods before the sun went down.
Then quietly, the two men in the pickup truck walked over to the rear of the hearse, and slowly slid out a simple pine wood casket with rope handles, and gently lay it on the trailer. When the casket was in place, the funeral director stepped out of the hearse, walked over to the passenger side, and helped out a very old man simply dressed in a grey flannel shirt and very old wrinkled pants that looked like maybe in some distant past they belonged to a suit.
Beside the old man, holding his other arm was a young woman. Who in the world is this, I wondered, and why had I to noticed her before? Later Would learn that she worked for the county, given the herculean task of providing support and services for the street people, the homeless, the destitute who had not shelter, food, medicines, or family members to keep them off the streets. I had not seen her because she sat in the darkened hearse with the old man who was the sole, surviving family member of the person in the old pine casket. It was she who ushered the dying man through the last hours of his life and then arranged for the funeral home to bury him as part of the contract she negotiated with he funeral home.
There we all stood, the funeral director, the old man whose relative we would be burying, the social worker, and the two grave diggers. Taking charge quickly, the funeral director assigned us to our posts. The two assistants would place the casket on the trailer where the hold man would sit with them, the funeral director would drive the tractor while the social worker and I stood behind him on a metal step at the rear of the tractor.
Beneath the shading bugs of the pine trees we processed to the municipally owned, public, "potter's field" cemetery, marked by old wooden crosses, some of which rotted or fell down with severe weather. The two funeral home employees, who dug graves and assisted at times such as these, came to lower the casket into the freshly dug grave. As they did so, I crushed dried leaves in my hand, sprinkled them on the casket, read St. Paul's hymn of love in 1st Corinthians, and closed my first funeral service with the benediction from Numbers 6:24-26:
The Lord bless you and keep you;
The Lord make his face to shine upon you;
The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.
And then I paused, standing in the silence of the pine grove, momentarily reflecting upon what I might do next as a conclusion to my first funeral. Customarily, the officiant of a funeral service will greet the attending family members with words of comfort, appropriate to the time, place, and family members' background. My hesitation was very brief, however, as our eyes met, the one family member probably wondering along with me, "What next?"
Stepping over to the forlorn old man, taking his arm, and placing his hand in mine, I said, "I am very sorry for your loss." Then, in his broken voice, barely above a whisper, he said, "He was my brudder." "You lived together, the two of you?" I asked. "We did. We lived in da old house 'til they made us leave," he said with a long pause and added, "Da pos-man don' stop here no mor."
Finally, feeling as if only seconds had passed, or was it a century, the social worker came over and held his other arm, leading him back to the trailer, "Come on, John," she said, "I've got to get you back to the home." Walking along slowly beside her, I heard him say, resisting, confused?, "Da pos-man don' stop here no mor."
I prepared to find my place at the rear of the tractor for my ride back to the funeral home and the university, not sure I could find it ever again.
In fact, I had not thought about conducting funerals at all, nor had I anticipated I would need such instruction. I had arrived as a very young campus minister a the university, fresh out of a highly regarded theological school with what I thought to be a great education in languages, history, ethics, biblical scholarship, archeology, systematic theology, worship in the Protestant tradition, world religions, and an introduction to psychology and counseling that would enable me to handle general problems as well as how and when to refer and to whom.
But, funerals? I really had not thought much about that because I planned to focus my work in the university setting, first as a campus minister or university chaplain, and then after a little while, I would decide which area I would concentrate on for doctoral studies. So why worry about funerals and such, because college students seldom die—I supposed.
But this was not a college student, the funeral director informed me quickly. Obviously, he felt pressure to get the matter settled quickly and told me he had already asked four or five clergy. One had committed to do the funeral, but called at the very last minute to say an emergency had come up and he wouldn't be able to do the service. He went on to suggest that the funeral director call me.
Well, I was not feeling to warm about any of this whole matter—the sense of urgency, the last minute reaching out to me, not to say anything about never having conducted a funeral. All of these thoughts whirled through my head as I heard my voice asking what time and where. And the funeral director's quick response expressed his relief, but also his resolve to nail this matter down before I also changed my mind. "Great!" he said with he quick instructions to meet him in an hour at his funeral home on 5th Street where I could follow him to the cemetery for a grave-side service.
Caught in my jeans and T-shirt, it came tome pretty quickly that I really should dress respectfully for the funeral service. But first, I had to call my wife and tell her I had to conduct a funeral, and I would rush home to change clothes. Also, she might plan on our having dinner a little later than usual tonight.
My wife was a clinical social worker who did not get disturbed easily by a change in plans. But at the time, she was on a month's leave of absence as our daughter had just been born, and I could not be sure where she might be in her daily schedule of nursing, and tending to our cat, and taking care of the house. Even so, she greeted me at the door with questions about the sudden responsibility of conducting a funeral and did I know what I was doing. I tried to fill her in as best I could with the very scanty information I had been given, while I quickly changed into my dark suit and somber tie. Quickly she pushed me out the door before I woke up the sleeping baby, but she could not resist a humorous wave and quip, "Such an important event in your life—your first funeral service with someone, somewhere"!
Leaving my house and rushing to the funeral home on 5th Street, I saw the home but also a pickup truck with two men inside. The funeral director waved for me to get in line between the hearse and pickup truck as he rushed to the side of my car. I rolled down the window, shook his hand, and was hurriedly told to stay close behind the hearse as traffic was likely to get heavy along the route we would be traveling. "No problem," I responded, having gained some confidence as I touched my tie again to make sure it was tight, sitting snugly in my Volkswagen Beetle convertible that was proving to be a conversation opener on campus.
So began my first funeral procession: the hearse, my Volkswagen Beetle, and the red pickup truck. From 5th Street, we wandered through the university town to the outskirts and a county road I had never traveled before. Not exactly what I expected, I was thinking. Then, at the post where I feared the funeral director had lost his way, we turned on a gravel road, bumping along until we came to a grove of trees that sheltered a red Formall tractor with an old flat-bed trailer hitched to the rear of the tractor. This explains why the funeral director wanted to complete the service—he was rushing to get out of the woods before the sun went down.
Then quietly, the two men in the pickup truck walked over to the rear of the hearse, and slowly slid out a simple pine wood casket with rope handles, and gently lay it on the trailer. When the casket was in place, the funeral director stepped out of the hearse, walked over to the passenger side, and helped out a very old man simply dressed in a grey flannel shirt and very old wrinkled pants that looked like maybe in some distant past they belonged to a suit.
Beside the old man, holding his other arm was a young woman. Who in the world is this, I wondered, and why had I to noticed her before? Later Would learn that she worked for the county, given the herculean task of providing support and services for the street people, the homeless, the destitute who had not shelter, food, medicines, or family members to keep them off the streets. I had not seen her because she sat in the darkened hearse with the old man who was the sole, surviving family member of the person in the old pine casket. It was she who ushered the dying man through the last hours of his life and then arranged for the funeral home to bury him as part of the contract she negotiated with he funeral home.
There we all stood, the funeral director, the old man whose relative we would be burying, the social worker, and the two grave diggers. Taking charge quickly, the funeral director assigned us to our posts. The two assistants would place the casket on the trailer where the hold man would sit with them, the funeral director would drive the tractor while the social worker and I stood behind him on a metal step at the rear of the tractor.
Beneath the shading bugs of the pine trees we processed to the municipally owned, public, "potter's field" cemetery, marked by old wooden crosses, some of which rotted or fell down with severe weather. The two funeral home employees, who dug graves and assisted at times such as these, came to lower the casket into the freshly dug grave. As they did so, I crushed dried leaves in my hand, sprinkled them on the casket, read St. Paul's hymn of love in 1st Corinthians, and closed my first funeral service with the benediction from Numbers 6:24-26:
The Lord bless you and keep you;
The Lord make his face to shine upon you;
The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.
And then I paused, standing in the silence of the pine grove, momentarily reflecting upon what I might do next as a conclusion to my first funeral. Customarily, the officiant of a funeral service will greet the attending family members with words of comfort, appropriate to the time, place, and family members' background. My hesitation was very brief, however, as our eyes met, the one family member probably wondering along with me, "What next?"
Stepping over to the forlorn old man, taking his arm, and placing his hand in mine, I said, "I am very sorry for your loss." Then, in his broken voice, barely above a whisper, he said, "He was my brudder." "You lived together, the two of you?" I asked. "We did. We lived in da old house 'til they made us leave," he said with a long pause and added, "Da pos-man don' stop here no mor."
Finally, feeling as if only seconds had passed, or was it a century, the social worker came over and held his other arm, leading him back to the trailer, "Come on, John," she said, "I've got to get you back to the home." Walking along slowly beside her, I heard him say, resisting, confused?, "Da pos-man don' stop here no mor."
I prepared to find my place at the rear of the tractor for my ride back to the funeral home and the university, not sure I could find it ever again.
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