May 2008

Munger Street Cemetery sits on a low rise in the shadow of the Green Mountains, looking out over pasture land, pine forests and the distant blue peaks of the Adirondacks. Cycling or driving past, I always think, and often say, “That’s where I want to be buried”. Unfortunately, I think I have also said I want to be buried in Australia, and perhaps occasionally expressed a desire to be cremated … can you imagine the drama that would create if we had children, as each child insisted that he or she had heard me correctly? I’ve often noticed how, in death, a parent’s wishes manage to attain a respect and gravitas they never enjoyed in life. And as each child confidently channels their parent’s wishes, I have also seen old rivalries take up exactly where they left off, buried resentments and unresolved hostilities emerge, and with emotions running high, families in grief can inflict and endure damage that is never erased.

Most of us probably don’t care a great deal about what happens after we die, but that is no guarantee that someone, somewhere, at some time, will not care enormously. This is why the Prayer Book directs clergy to instruct their people on the duty to make a will, significantly in the rite of Thanksgiving for a Child. This is about much more than the disposal of property: it is an act of enormous sensitivity and continued care for those we leave behind. And having accompanied many families through a death of a loved one, I think that planning the funeral is every bit as important.

I don’t want my own funeral to be an episode of “This is Your Life”, with the congregation treated to the mind-numbingly tedious details of my history, all the vaguely interesting but ultimately pointless trivia that no one has ever expressed the slightest interest in learning before that day. I want a ritual grounded in the scriptures and in the liturgy of the Church, the great story of God’s mercy and fidelity, of God’s wisdom and creativity, and of God’s unquenchable, inexhaustible, and exuberant life. I want hymns like the great Easter acclamation, “At the Lamb’s high feast we sing”, Peter Abelard’s glorious “O what their joy and their glory must be”, the Wesley’s ardent Hereford, but most of all, “Once in royal David’s city”, with its sublime statement of faith, “And our eyes at last shall see him, through his own redeeming love”. When we leave loved ones to their own resources, so often they muddle around, consumed by grief and immobilized by inexperience; when we direct them towards the resources of our faith, we draw them into the mystery and promise, the failure and forgiveness, the hope and redemption, that constitutes the overarching and ongoing narrative of God and God’s People.

Long before his death, Pope Paul VI wrote his ‘Testament’; far from depressing, it is an irenic song of profound gratitude and joy. He revisited it twice, each time insisting, “I want my funeral to be very simple and I do not want any special monument.” And so, in a papal first, his plain wooden casket lay on the ground of St Peter’s Square, while on it, the pages of an open Book of the Gospels fluttered in the wind; finally he was laid to rest in the earth, as he had requested. And so even if you really don’t care about what happens after your death, spare a thought for those left with the task of reading your mind and interpreting your desires. And spare a thought for the parish community that will bid you your last farewell, respecting the wisdom of this ancient tradition, born of experience and reflection and faith.

TPG+

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