The Very End

The hearse drove away, headed to some place in which I would never step foot.  Though her ashes would later be returned to us, it was the driver, unknown and anonymous, who accompanied her body to the last place on earth it would be.  At the sight of them driving away, I instinctively felt I was letting her down, falling somewhere short of my role as one left behind.  Shouldn't I have taken her all the way, accompanied her to the very end?

There is something about the human spirit that inherently understands the importance of caring for the dead, of moving them carefully from the place of death to a place of farewell.  What we have come to know commonly as the funeral is based on this fundamentally human behavior.  It is understood that the dead cannot remain among the living, and yet their removal from society is never a task met with levity.  Evidences of tender ceremony are noted in the oldest human burial sites ever found.(1)  This movement of the dead from the place of the living to a place of parting is full of tremendous symbolic meaning. 

For British statesman and avowed atheist Roy Hattersley, this meaning and symbolism has unavoidably been a complicated part of his worldview.  For years he has disapproved of the funeral service, finding it a paradoxical attempt to soften the blow of darkness, with clergy fulsome about the dead man's virtues and discreet about his vices, and congregations gathered more as a matter of form than feeling.  In the mind (or at the funeral) of one who remains stubbornly addicted to the unpleasant truth that life simply ends as haphazardly as it began, there is no room or reason for the promise of resurrection and the pomp of certain comfort.

And yet, Hattersley writes in The Guardian of an experience that almost converted him to the belief that funerals ought to be encouraged nonetheless.  His conclusion was forged as he sang the hymns and studied the proclamations of a crowd that seemed sincere: "[T]he church is so much better at staging farewells than non-believers could ever be," he writes.  "'Death where is thy sting, grave where is they victory?' are stupid questions.  But even those of us who do not expect salvation find a note of triumph in the burial service.  There could be a godless thanksgiving for and celebration of the life of [whomever].  The music might be much the same.  But it would not have the uplifting effect without the magnificent, meaningless words."(2)

Hattersley's attempt to remain logically consistent from his views of life to his experience of death is admirable.  For it is indeed peculiar that an uncompromising atheist can conclude there is something almost necessary in a distinctly Christian burial.  If what makes for human existence is, in essence, the material, bodies without any facet of the sacred, then the act of moving a body to the place of farewell is far more a matter of disposal than hallowed journey.  In other words, Hattersley's worldview leaves no room for a "decent send-off," a beautiful, last farewell.  And yet, he is far from alone in his need for it.  As Thomas Long notes in his study of funeral practice, "[D]eath and the sacred are inextricably entwined."(3)

The Christian burial is moved by this understanding.  Human beings are seen neither as "just" bodies nor as souls in temporary shells, but as dust (material) into which God has breathed life.  We are embodied within a story that the Christian funeral tells again and again: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.  Because Jesus traveled through death to God before us, Christians believe it possible to make the same journey.  Because Christ has journeyed from birth to tomb to the Father, we take this journey again and again with those we love and let go.  In this embodied gospel of death and resurrection, suffering and redemption, humanity's instinctive need to accompany a body from here to there is strikingly met with the particulars of "here" and "there"—namely, life here among the body of Christ to life resurrected in the presence of the Father.  And this is why we wont go the distance with the body, why we accompany them to the grave, weep at their tombs and follow them with singing: because it is a journey we don't want to miss.

At her request, I will, in a few short days, take her ashes out to sea.

(1) Thomas Long, Accompany Them with Singing: The Christian Funeral (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 3.

(2) Roy Hattersley, "A Decent Send-off," The Guardian, January 16, 2006, accessed March 20, 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/jan/16/religion.uk2.

(3) Thomas Long, Accompany Them with Singing: The Christian Funeral (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 4.