When you reach your seventies, you don’t need a winter windy day with flickering lights to know that eventually the lights will go out. I remember my mother saying how she most frequently saw her friends when she was at the memorial service for another of them. I thought her humor macabre, and probably suggested to her that she might make a point of going out to lunch more often, or taking one of those senior tours that includes a picnic on a nearby island she has never visited. I can’t recall what I said, only my attitude that dismissed her humor.
But like so many of Mother’s sayings that come dripping in at my open window, this one has returned, for I too have attended more memorial services than weddings in the last few years. I have sat in familiar pews, following along on the program to discern which old hymns I would be singing before filing out to the reception and the lemon bars I brought to do my share for the family. “I Come to the Garden,” “What a Friend I Have in Jesus.. . . “
Lung cancer took a teaching colleague years ago. When I attended his service in a remote cemetery out by the airport, I enjoyed the high volume of rock music he had enjoyed during his life. The roar of jet planes landing nearby could not erase Sargent Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, because I could fill in the words from memory, marrying his generation with my own. Because he died when I was in my 40’s, I didn’t project that his song was my song coming to the final chord.
Now, however, as I walk along mornings, my earphones plugged to Spotify, some song I love begins. I pace my stride to the music that fills me with love and longing and imagination of that very song playing throughout the church, while my family sits before the altar and ponders why in the world I would have selected Billy Joel’s Scenes from an Italian Restaurant to be played at my funeral. “Bottle of white, bottle of red . . . “
Should I make a playlist now? We all know memorial services are for the living, not the dead, but I can enjoy the effect ahead of time, if not at that moment, by framing my musical farewell. What about bagpipes? There was a catchy Irish bagpipe and fiddle tune I listened to this very morning. It had a funny name, something like Mr. Jones, not at all appropriate for a memorial. Nonetheless, the swelling of the bagpipe, the way it melted with the fiddle and a piano in an arpeggio right behind, well, I swear the robins sang around me, the crows cawed, and I drank in the warmth of this morning’s sun, feeling so happy to be alive. I want to feel that way when I am laid out before my family, or at least for them to feel that way, perhaps intuiting a part of my spirit I never expressed to them in life.
It all comes down to wanting to be known. We live with our families for generations, all the while keeping the sacred part of ourselves a secret, something we take out on long walks on warm summer days. As soon as we return home, we leave our elation on the front porch, so when my husband asks, “Have a nice walk?” I answer “Oh yes. Didn’t work up much of a sweat.” Out on the freshly watered lawn I left all my inner feelings that held my hand for each of the six miles to the University and back. Perhaps in death then, it will be nice to be known, to offer our shadow self and express her in music.
Musings over one’s memorial are natural when the lights are flickering. Some people, aware that there are fewer days ahead than behind, start writing a bucket list. I Googled “bucket list,” and was not surprised to find the now popular phrase derivative of the saying “Kicked the bucket.” Such a lighthearted expression for death. It makes slapstick of the event. I can see the unfortunate farmer clumping out to feed the hogs, then clumsily kicking over a bucket of slops, slipping on the slop and sliding to his death down a steep pasture. Now, before kicking the bucket, folks are making “bucket lists” of things they want to experience before they die. Why? Is ticking off a list of experiences a way of savoring each day, thus knowing the hours have been tasted, rather than continuing a workaday pattern that is hard to account for? If so, does the bucket list make us feel more alive? Perhaps when lying on the deathbed, acceptance is easier, if we can recall a cruise to the Galapagos or walk through book stores featuring a novel with our name below the title. Or is making a list an attempt to delay the inevitable? There is some psychological method in that thinking. If we make a list, we cannot be completed with life until the items have been ticked off one, by one. We postpone death, much as if we yell to our children, “I will be right there dear, as soon as I …”
There are even websites for bucket lists, with multiple wishes expressed and nicely illustrated. A great majority of wishes before one dies are experiences rather than things. On the site I scanned, not one wish was to own a Mercedes. Rather people wanted travel, to see the pyramids, to pet a penguin. Many involved romantic travel. Nonetheless thinking of such travel, and considering whether faced with death I would set out for foreign parts, I am schooled by my teacher friend, Clare Roberts, who, at 55 years, died of colon cancer. She taught Spanish at WHS with me. Several years during her career she took her students to Mexico to practice their language skills. When her prognosis came in, so dire in its message, we all encouraged her to take off for exotic Spanish-speaking countries … South America would not be too far.
What did Clare do? At the beginning of spring quarter, she finally took a leave of absence “just until fall quarter,” so she could” regain her strength.” She taught up to the very day winter grades were submitted. Then she went home, where she died within the week. Why had Clare not taken one of those Mediterranean cruises, when she could spend at least a year before her death? Clare had found the life she loved in her classroom. She thrived on the energy of her teenage students. They loved and admired her. Not even standing alone in the Alhambra at daybreak could come close to fulfilling her as did that student-teacher bond. Clare knew who she was and where she was to be found. Dying into her identity was more comforting than dying into her fantasies.
In the Book of John 20: 14 – 16, we have the account of women coming to visit the body of the slain Jesus. The stone had been rolled away. … Although they were the two closest women to Jesus in his earthly lifetime, they failed to recognize the risen Christ.
“Woman, why are you weeping?” Jesus asked her. “Who are you looking for?” Thinking He was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried Him off, tell me where you have put Him, and I will get Him.”…
Amazing. Had the essence of Jesus failed to be known during his life? Was the resurrected Christ a different form in body so they would not have recognized him? Theologians have analyzed this puzzle for hundreds of years. Did Jesus’s followers know the essence of the man better after his death than before it? Does our identity continue to evolve after death, at least in memories and the imagination of those we left behind?
These are all questions worth taking out to ponder the next time you are going on a walk on a lovely summer or autumn day. How do we make ourselves known, first to ourselves and then to our loved ones so that we can shamelessly offer up ourselves with the grace of God? This is who I am. This is the woman I am, the father I am, the child I am. Look at me. Know me. I will take the risk to be known, Brings to mind another old song I could add to my memorial service playlist: To Know Know Know You, is to Love, Love Love You. And God does.
Mary's Room With a View 