This week it was 42 years since my daughter, Carrie Jane, went to be with Jesus. Her final resting place is at the head of the grave of my father who died on my 22nd birthday. I miss being able to drive through this very special cemetery where I used to go to church with my grandmother. St. Phillips is a beautiful old Anglican (Church of England - Protestant) Church in Weston, Ontario in West Toronto. The graveyard is remarkable because there are so many interesting tombstones and the front, where my family's tombstone faces is on a busy street.
When my father was so very sick, he told my mother he wanted to be buried at St.Phillips - not "Wind Blown Acres". This was a reference to a beautiful cemetery at Alliston, Ontario where my mother's family was buried. When she was very young, her family used to take a picnic lunch to eat there after church on Sunday. It wasn't far from where she was raised on a farm in Innisfil (Barrie), Ontario, Canada. But her parents died within 6 weeks of each other when she was 14 and she moved to Toronto where she lived with her brother and sister-in-law.
Mother was the youngest. Her father was married to Carrie and they had three children: two boys and a girl who died at about age 8. His wife, Carrie died in the dentist chair. (I have to assume that this accounts for my inborn fear of dental work. Hearing about that so many times would do that!) He then married her sister, Abigail and they together had two boys and a girl, my mother. Yes, that makes me the youngest of the youngest.
This past week, my husband's good friend also died. We had been to see Bill several times while he was in hospital and he was so very sick . . .
There are some differences in visitations and funerals here in Texas. Some of it might be the time/generation and some of it would be Texan as compared to Canadian. (I know, I know, but you see the commercial all the time that Texas is a "Whole Other Country".)
We used to have more visitation time and less funerals were held in churches in Toronto.
I want to tell you that the blog I posted over a year ago on The Funeral That Was a Gift still gets the most readers to this site. That funeral (or more precisely memorial) was the most joyous. That man knew he was dying and he gave all of us who attended the wonderful gift of his music.
Probably because I have had so many people die - or maybe because I am getting old - hard to say, but I am always interested in just how a funeral comes together.
The biggest visitation I have probably seen was the one for my father-in-law, J.D. (Dee) Sutton who died - in his recliner, devotion bible in his hand - at age 94, less than a year into my marriage to Keith. Pretty much everyone in Robinson, Illinois came that night and we shook hands with so many people with so many fond memories of the man everyone in that town knew.
The saddest funeral was for my Carrie Jane. It was a tiny white casket like the one described for the victims of Sandy Hook Elementary. It was February cold and only the very best of friends and relatives were there. I still think about that being one of the grimmest days in their lives as well as mine. (Carrie Jane was seven and a half months. She had been born microcephalic which means her brain stopped growing very early in the pregnancy. She was my second microcephalic child. The doctor telling me that no family has two children afflicted this way did not take away the pain.)
I once saw comedian and all-round humanitarian, Bill Cosby at the then O'Keefe Theater in Toronto. He did his irreverent stand-up of how he would have a recording in his casket, saying, "Don't I look nice?" Bill Cosby may be responsible - more than he knows - for cremations and closed caskets.
In Toronto, we had Jewish neighbours and my Father had many Jewish friends from business. You may know that Jewish people bury before the next sundown. I suspect that is why they never came up to the casket, so the family had to go down to greet them and thank them for their condolences.
Funerals tend to teach you about people. We learn that most people are very glad that others would come to support them, give them a hug and say how sorry they are. We know that some people stay away - probably because of their fears about their own mortality. We learn that in our worst hour, some very fine people "step up to the plate" to help in whatever way they can.
Some bake cookies and cakes; some bring whole meals; some help with a eulogy, bearing the casket. Some people just show up. They don't have to be asked. Some come to give a hug and just exit the side door.
Each of us probably has our own interpretation of what happens after we die. There are two books - one about a middle-aged man and one of a child - who were clinically dead and came back to tell what they had seen. Since they were both Christians, they saw the face of Jesus. Better than that . . . they are able to relay that to other Christians.
The topic here is how we celebrate the life of a person and how do we comfort those left behind? Everybody does it differently and that is a beauty of this world where we live . . . for now.
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
John 3:16 New International Version (NIV)
[People who read me on a regular basis might be interested to know that my first published article was in a Dog Magazine about a man who was killed on the way to a dog show in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. And the same person who encouraged me to submit that gave the Eulogy at my late husband's funeral. Some people are in your life for a reason.]
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