DEATH BE NOT DEBASED

I went to a funeral yesterday, and I don't know what to make of this. The minister, like a slightly shady salesman or a PR rep for the Grim Reaper, was trying to make a case that the event was a "celebration." He talked for a long time, in a way that seemed too rehearsed — how many times had he made this spiel? — about how when he first started preaching, the term for events like this — you know, events where a loved one stops living and lies in a flower-strewn box in a sob-filled room waiting to be put in the ground forever — used to be called "funerals." And then sometime later in his career the word became "memorial," and now it's "celebration." He seemed quite taken with this notion — he was even grinning — like he had found the perfect spin to put on this catastrophe. He even made the outrageous claim that the deceased wasn't "victimized" by death but was a "victor" because now he was with the Lord. Gee, I wonder when my uncle was dying in his hospice bed whether his wife cheered him on every time he took a turn for the worse: "Honey, you're winning! You're in the lead! Keep it up! Victory is within reach!"

Poppycock.

If Mr. Feelgood wanted to celebrate Fay's passing, he wouldn't have filled the funeral parlor with psychobabble and tried to get everyone to smile. He would have said: Death is terrible. It is pain. It is loss. It is crushing sadness. There is nothing in your life that will feel worse. And it's fitting and proper to feel grief.

Grief is the loved one's due.

I'm not advocating years of mourning and black dresses and debilitating suffering. But can't people just feel terribly sad when something terribly sad happens? Isn't that a better, more honest, coping mechanism in the long run than telling yourself lies about how it's really a positive thing and you should just turn that frown upside down!

And instead of the cheap self-help lingo he was polluting the event with, if he wanted to celebrate this sunny occasion, he could have spent a little time actually talking about Fay instead of making analogies about sheep and the Lord being our shepherd and — I kid you not — how he had worked with actual sheep one summer and knew firsthand how they needed guidance. He could have talked about the three Bronze Stars Fay won in World War II after he was shipped off to the Pacific at age 19. He was just a kid from Mountain Grove, Mo., who knew nothing about the world and — Jesus! —found himself in Japan shooting guns and making history. And about how he loved ham radios and playing the fiddle and harmonica. How he made his own root beer and whittled on the front porch and laughed all the time and slapped his knees at off-color jokes. That's what people want to hear, so why is that such a small part of the "celebration"? Because, unlike a belabored metaphor about Jesus' footprints, it will actually touch people, it will make them cry, it will make them grieve?

Grief is his due.

If this minister wanted to truly "celebrate" Fay, he could have tossed the canned feel-good oration and gotten some material from people who knew him. People I saw at the funeral like:

• The World War II veterans. These men have stories. Working at a newspaper, I read obituaries all the time of men from this generation, many of whose whole identities were poignantly wrapped up in being a soldier. These were humble, working-class men who belonged to only one club their whole lives: the VFW. Let them talk.

• The long-bearded fiddlers and pickers in plaid shirts who made music with him.

• The townspeople who knew him as the carpet layer from the hardware store.

• The Missouri relatives whose best clothing for the occasion was starched blue jeans and polished cowboy boots.

• The friend who let him, and others in their tiny community, be buried on his land for free.

• My aging Aunt Louise, his sister-in-law who played cards with him every week, who, when someone at the funeral expressed condolences, said too loudly (but gloriously), "Well, we're all getting close." (Now that's something that genuinely made people feel better about the situation).

• His wife, for pete's sake, of 57 years.

When my grandpa died, his funeral was a Catholic Mass. And the priest, who was new to the parish, didn't know him very well, but made an authentic effort to celebrate his life by talking to people who did. He found out things about my grandpa that even I didn't know. And the Mass itself, though ritualistic and impersonal in nature, at least was an honest-to-God funeral, a somber observance of someone's death.

And it's not a matter of denomination; it's a matter of dignity.

Here's my promise to those of you I may outlive: I will be sad at your funeral. I won't put a sunny spin on it. I will give you the grief that is your due, instead of trying to make myself feel better with a bunch of psychobabble. And if someone who hardly knew you tries to celebrate your life by talking about Jesus for an hour — mentioning you only occasionally — I will make it right.

(OK, that's off my chest, so if you want to read something fun, check out Ricky's new hippie post below).