The long flight home...

"We are family

I got all my sisters with me

We are family

Get up ev'rybody and sing..."

- Sister Sledge...lyrics by Edwards, Logan, 

Rogers and More

It was done…good-bye’s said…family dispersed to their respective parts of the country and I was sitting at 35,000 feet (10.6km) on the flight home reflecting on the week that had just gone by in a blur.  There was time to think…time to begin to process…

A Celebration…

“Hello…hello.” She said tapping the microphone. 

“…I’d like to thank everyone for coming today.  I’m overwhelmed by all the faces I see, past and present, people in our lives…it is just amazing seeing everyone coming together around such an incredible woman….It will probably be different than any celebration or memorial service you have been to, but if you knew my mom, you would know she was anything but mainstream…”

While the hair was a different color, there was the statuesque look and elegance that could not be mistaken.  There was little doubt Mariah was her mother’s daughter.  And so the afternoon began with some 250 people who had come to celebrate the life of my sister Nancy. 

It started a week earlier…

It began when Mariah made the call to come to Missouri.  No, that’s not right…it had begun long before this.  The Friday appeal simply signaled that the ‘beginning of the end’ had arrived.

The Saturday arrival had come with some anxiousness…the flight in, not knowing whether she had survived…was she waiting for me? I hoped she was waiting for me, but what did that mean?  Waiting for me for what?  Surely not for her.  For her, the die was cast, the impending result irrevocable – except…except, as she had always lived, maybe she would hang on…a final gift to me.

We were all there, holding her in our arms.  It was the strangest of mixed feelings…”Please, O God, end this now!” “Jesus, hasn’t this gentle soul suffered enough??”  While at the same time, “Please stay a little longer!!  It ‘s too soon for you to go!!” 

The mind and the heart at war in the instantaneousness of the moment…

It was the former prayer, of course, that was answered.  The cry for a little more time, reflected in the hunger to be able to say a few more consoling words. 

In all the honesty I can muster – words of consolation were for me, for my heart, for my soul…a few more moments that might bring some sort of order and understanding that had continued to elude me as the wind that comes from and goes to some invisible, unknown place.

And so for a few moments we looked into each other’s eyes.  I desperately wanted to find some sense of recognition before she was gone.  As I held her eyes, I heard a small groan…it matched in conversation the groan coming from my own heart and lungs.  The scriptures says when we need to pray, but cannot find the words, the spirit groans…we groaned and it was in the most primal and intimate of ways.

I felt the connection, the last connection I would have before the door closed to the room of her life like the last sentence of the novel you had read, hoping to find another 100 pages hidden somewhere – a few more paragraphs of life. 

I understood in the words of Cosette to her father Jean Valjean…

Valjean:
“Now you are here
Again beside me
Now I can die in peace
For now my life is best”

Cosette:
You will live,
Papa you're going to live!
It's too soon, too soon to say goodbye

Valjean:
Yes Cosette, forbid me now to die
I'll obey, I will try…” – Les Miserables

But, of course there would be no trying…

Within 5 minutes her eyes closed for the last time and the gentle gasp that releases the soul from this mortal body escaped those gentle and loving lips that had so often whispered to me in life. The scripture says, “…weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning…” It wasn’t morning yet!

And then she was gone…

It is surprising how much can be accomplished in a short period of time, and under circumstances of distress.  It happens in different iterations millions of times a day with a sense of loss to all those from whom a loved one is taken.  That, of course would be them – this was me…my family…my loved one…my sister no longer in the conversation of life.

The week was eaten up with funeral arrangements, finding an appropriate place for the memorial celebration, getting a sound system in place, pictures edited to be put  on posters…signs for the front of the building so those who came to celebrate would be able to find the right place.

So much to do and so much to absorb…so much to say and no time to say it….so many thoughts...so much to feel…yet no space to reflect…no sir, too much to get done!

In most funerals or memorials ministers or priests or rabbis ask the family for a few anecdotes of the person’s life in order to provide a sense of the humanness of the person who has deceased. 

We, that is the family, of course were going to be doing the celebration ourselves…no ministers, no rabbis, no priests…just us.  It wasn’t a matter of finding one or two stories about this amazing woman, it was about trying to sort out what not to say among thousands of stories that could have been told.

And so it was that each of us participating, would slip into the quietness of our own minds trying to capture just the right phrase…the right idea…the right texture that would provide a special shade to the brush stroke of our life experience with her.

The celebration began…

“Hello…hello.” She said tapping the microphone. 

“…I’d like to thank everyone for coming today.  I’m overwhelmed by all the faces I see, past and present, people in our lives…”

It was a joyous time.  We prayed, we sang, we spoke, and at the end of a wonderful celebration, we fellowshipped and danced to the music from the 1960s and 1970s that Nancy so loved.

It was different than most people had ever experienced at a memorial service for someone they had come to honor, but then again, the woman they came to honor was so uniquely different than anyone they had ever known.

The day was best summed up in the words of a six-year old girl who had just met Nancy in the last few weeks of her life.  On the way home from the celebration with her mother she said this,

"…that was a fun party, I got to play with my friends, dance with Mariah and take home some flowers, and I didn't see anybody crying…"

I smiled some and wept some during that flight home thinking about the event, the week, but mostly about the exceptional celebration of my sister’s uniquely powerful life.

I have little doubt Nancy would not have wanted it any other way.

- ted