The Funeral That Should Have Been

On January 29, 2014, my mother died at the age of 65 from advanced breast cancer. Her obituary, which I wrote, attempted to honor her extroverted spirit, love of music, and perseverant life. I wrote that obituary in spite of the fact that I had a mostly troubled relationship with my mom that included physical and emotional abuse when I was a child. I've spent years mending that damage and stitching together the patches I needed transform myself into a quilt that people find beautiful... and sometimes I do too.

But I'm not writing because of that. I’m writing because I've had a nagging discontent with her funeral. The minister she chose to perform her funeral was her pastor. He had known her for many years and he did justice to what was theologically important to her. Nevertheless, he missed an opportunity to offer a different vision of redemption, hope, and healing for a woman who was complicated to make sense of at best. This concern isn't as much for my sake or the others in attendance at her funeral but more so for my nephews who will someday want to understand who their grandmother was in a fuller way than to say that she believed in Jesus Christ. Albeit an important part of my mother’s identity, it doesn't begin to tell you her story or capture the meaning that lives on in her legacy.

I did speak briefly at Mom’s funeral and I offered a reflection that came to me the night she died. As I stood in her quiet house standing vigil over her body and waiting for the hospice nurse and mortician to arrive, I felt a Holy presence that spoke the following meaning to me and I shared it at her funeral. This is what I said that evening to the best of my recollection:

Good evening. Thank you for being here. Many of you know me but for those of you that don’t, I’m Lavender, Mom’s daughter that lives in Chicago. I’m a minister and chaplain there at a pediatric hospital. I was also educated as a Presbyterian pastor so that means two things: I can find symbolism in anything and see the trinity in everything. (pause for laughter) So, I’d like to share with you something that happened the night Mom died and the symbol that marked the occasion.

It goes without saying for anyone who has spent any time around Mom that her life was marked by resilience and patience rather than peace and good fortune, by perseverance and tenacity rather than comfort and rest. It’s in recognizing that long-suffering that I want to share a piece of scripture:

Revelation 7:9-17 - After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!” And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, singing, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.” Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?” I said to him, “Sir, you are the one that knows.” Then he said to me, “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. For this reason they are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them. They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

I share this passage because if you remember Tuesday night when she died, it snowed. And it wasn’t a typical snow. It was that really fluffy beautiful snow that flocks everything and cloaks the earth in white. And as I stood next to her body and watched out the window, I just kept hearing in my heart, “Who are these, robed in white?” “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” Come out of the great ordeal… made white in the blood of the lamb.

It’s not a stretch to see this story and connect it to Mom's experience and need for deliverance and salvation. I stood there keenly aware of a new peace and release that Mom now has. Her life did not end in the suffering of cancer or any of the other circumstances that beat her down. It ended with release from pain and sorrow and draped in a robe of white victory.

Almost a year has passed since I offered those words at her funeral. They still ring true and begin to point to the story and meaning that is part of her living legacy. She endured a great deal of suffering, loss, sorrow, and heartache. Yet she sojourned on until the very end with remarkable style. Even after she was diagnosed as terminal, she managed to fall in love one last time with a very nice man and outlive her life expectancy because she wasn't finished visiting with her friends.

See, what has always stuck with me about Mom, regardless of all our past difficulties, is that the woman would not give up. She survived a car accident when she was 18 that left her partially paralyzed and neurologically impaired. Her ability to walk was a miracle of stubborn persistence in and of itself if you knew which muscles worked and which ones didn't. On top of that, the neurological impact would cause painful ripples through the rest of her life. The simplified version is that she was emotionally freeze framed in time, which explains her inability to grow from mistakes and move past bitterness. Further exacerbating that limitation was the fact that the doctors and her parents never told her about that element of her injury. The loss of identity (she was in college to become a professional pianist) and mobility from the car accident was just the first in a long line of injuries and deaths that she would confront. She also lived through abusive relationships and broken marriages. She endured poverty and all the damages it causes to the mind, body, and spirit. And she bore the oppressive weight of depression that was deeply complicated by her sense of shame, bitterness, and sorrow. How she got up and got up and got up each and every day is amazing to me.

She couldn't make sense of why so many of her relationships were fraught with strife because of her neurological limitations. Yet, she continued to try to make friends, cultivate love, and be family to the best of her ability. Regardless of the quality of those relationships, what is remarkable is that she persisted in reaching out until the very end. She exhibited a kind of hope in love and relationship that could change the world if we all had it. Her refusal to give up is a kind of faithfulness that takes courage beyond measure. Her willingness to love regardless of limits is a witness to the Holy. And our ability to look at the whole Debbie with all of her flaws and yet see her intention is a kind of graceful forgiveness.

I know that what the pastor said at Mom’s funeral had integrity with her beliefs but I want to make sure that our inheritance has integrity with her life. In her obituary I wrote, “Her love of music, laughter, and fellowship will continue to live on in all she touched.” It is my prayer that her faithful, persevering hope lives on as well.

Epilogue

In my previous words, you will find echoes of my favorite theologian and pastor, Reinhold Niebuhr. In his book The Irony of American History, he said,

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.

I also wish to share the words of Victoria Safford from her article entitled “The Gates of Hope” because I think they have bearing on the steward I want to be of living Mom’s legacy.

Our mission is to plant ourselves at the gates of hope--not the prudent gates of Optimism, which are somewhat narrower; nor the stalwart, boring gates of Common Sense; nor the strident gates of Self-Righteousness, which creak on shrill and angry hinges (people cannot hear us there; they cannot pass through); nor the cheerful, flimsy garden gate of "Everything Is Gonna Be All Right." But a different, sometimes lonely place, of truth-telling about your own soul first of all and its condition, the place of resistance and defiance, from which you see the world both as it is and as it could be, as it will be; the place from which you glimpse not only struggle but joy in the struggle. And we stand there, beckoning and calling, telling people what we're seeing, asking them what they see.

Obituary

Weaver, Deborah Keith – age 65, passed away on Wednesday, January 29, 2014 at home surrounded by her children and loving prayers from around the world. She was a vibrant presence in her faith community and wide circle of friends.  Her love of music, laughter, and fellowship will continue to live on in all she touched. She was preceded in death by parents Sam and Bea Keith; husband Robert “RC” Weaver; brother Gregg Keith.  She leaves to hold her memory: daughter, Lavender Kelley of Chicago; son, Keith Fox of Kingston; grandsons, Kaiden and Tanner Fox; and a host of beloved relatives and friends.  Funeral services will be held at Second Baptist Church in Lenoir City, TN on Saturday, February 1, 2014 at 6pm where Rev. Rick Harrell will officiate.  The family will receive friends from 4:30pm prior to the funeral.  In lieu of flowers the family requests that donations be made to the American Cancer Society in her memory.