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.
