There is seriously something going on at my school, in which the parents of my students are dying at what is surely an unnatural rate. Cancer. We curse its name a lot.
Tomorrow I am going to a memorial service for the father of a student from my English and Creative Writing class last year, a lovely, smart, creative and sensitive tenth grader whose father died two weeks ago from brain cancer. School is a safe haven for her, her mother tells us; she does not want any of us to bring up the subject of her father's illness or his death. She wants to be able to ignore it while she is at school.
As if that were possible.
But I was in her English class the day after he died, and she was there too, a little distant, but soldiering on. We were talking about applying to college and taking career interest inventories. She said she was deciding between majoring in education or death studies.
It is of course an understatement to say that I am not looking forward to his funeral tomorrow. Last year I went to two memorial services for students' mothers. Cancer. Cancer. One was at a local botanical garden, and one was at a fairly traditional local church. The first was actually surprisingly lovely, with wonderful stories about a woman I wished I could have known. The second was more formal and not very comforting. To me.
But last week I went to the funeral of my friend K's father-- an octogenarian who had been a respected trustee of his Baptist church, a pillar of his community, a beloved father. A man who was much closer to ready to go. His was the first funeral I've been to that had an altar call, and the first in which all the speakers were so positive about the resurrection and the place he had gone and the shape and feel of the other side and the fact that we would all (because no one admitted to needing to be saved) see him again.
The worst memorial service I have ever been to was the one for the 8th grade sister of my 10th grade student, now 3 1/2 years ago. There was a prayer service the day before, with wailing children and weeping adults, and a closing prayer by a Unitarian preacher that offered no hope for redemption. And the memorial service offered no peace, no comfort. Mind you, I can't really imagine what could have been comforting in the face of that kind of loss, unless you really do believe, as they said at K's funeral, that this is the day the Lord has made, and we will rejoice and be glad in it. I can't blame the preacher, but that experience did launch me on what began as a frantic search for... meaning, peace, comfort... that took me almost obsessively to every kind of church.
I haven't found that comfort yet, certainly haven't found any answers-- but I do have the intuitive idea that a church is more likely to offer some kind of peace than a service in a community center, like tomorrow's. Maybe mostly the comfort of words that have dug grooves into my subconscious. I remember when my grandmother died and the minister came to our house to get our input into the service. He asked about bible verses and hymns she might like, and I suggested "Amazing Grace". My mother pointed out that she would have hated and completely rejected that idea that she had been a "wretch" who was saved. She was right, of course; it was just a song I knew, and the familiarity bred comfort. We ended up with Psalm 139, which was a lot closer to the truth.
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