In a blog about remembering, stories from a morning I’ll never forget
We sat in my car, just inside the cemetery entrance, parked behind the hearse that carried Evelyn’s ashes.
Terrae, the cemetery employee who had worked with me to plan this morning, was waiting for us, just as he had promised. He drove his golf cart to my car, and I rolled down the window, feeling the outside air cold on my face. “We’ll be ready in just a minute,” said.
“No problem,” I assured him. We were early.
As we waited, certainly more than a minute, I felt the wave coming. The wave of grief.
My eyes watered. I was breathing hard, as though I’d walked up a flight of stairs to get there. My son, beside me in the front seat, noticed. “Are you alright?” he asked.
“Oh, yeah,” I said, reaching for a tissue. For the last 7 weeks, I’d been saying I was fine. But this was my son, not an acquaintance or even a friend I wanted to see me smiling. So I said more.
“I didn’t expect this to be difficult,” I told him, yielding to the wave, and the tears rolled down my cheek.
No hiding
More than one person has told me about this wave. You can’t fight a wave, they advise; you just ride it out. Try to deny it, and you’ll go under.
Over time, they say, the waves come less and less often. But when they hit, each one is as intense and uncontrollable as the first one. And more often than not, especially after weeks or months or years, they surprise you.
I was surprised. I had been thinking for a week or more about what we’d do, our little family of ten on the day after Thanksgiving, when we stood at the site where these cremains would rest.
I wanted to remember the occasion. I wanted to make it memorable for my kids and their spouses and their kids. I wanted to say something important.
I tried. But despite the warm sunshine, the winter breeze made us tighten our scarves and raise our collars. This wasn’t the moment for a long speech. Besides, I was still fighting the wave. Again and again, it forced me to quit speaking until I could reestablish my equilibrium.
I did manage, though, to tell them two stories I wanted them to hear.
No restrictions
This is the first:
The day before Evelyn died was her 80th birthday. She had no idea of it, but I needed to remember the occasion. So I brought cookies, the sweet ladies in her wing sang “Happy Birthday,” and I wrapped the ribbon of a helium birthday balloon around the handle of her wheelchair.
But I didn’t tie it well, and that evening Jessica texted to tell me the balloon had flown away. The wind took it into the sky while she was pushing Evelyn outside.
Was this an omen? I see it now as at least a picture of what would happen that night. Evelyn would break free, no longer tied down by the limitations of this world. Like a helium balloon whose landing place we don’t know, Evelyn’s spirit would whisk away to a place we can’t understand.
I was a little sad when Jessica told me the balloon was gone. I was overwhelmed when the hospice volunteer told me Evelyn was gone. But keeping either of them in her room would have been only for our benefit, not hers.
As I stumbled through my little speech at the graveside, my sentences were not nearly as well arranged as those I’ve written here. But the dear people with me were patient. I hope I drew a picture they will remember.
And I hope they’ll remember the second story I told them, about the day my grandfather died.
No barriers
All my mother’s siblings and their spouses and their kids, a couple dozen of us, gathered with my grandmother in her living room, where her minister came to pray for us.
He read a passage I don’t think I’d heard before. (I was a grade schooler.) But I’ve come across it often since then, and David Faust read it when we gathered for Evelyn’s memorial service. From Romans 8:
“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? . . . No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
“The apostle’s promise gives us hope,” I said, my eyes fixed on the walnut box holding the ashes. And today I’ve concluded we can believe the waves of grief are just one more burden of life in a broken world, a life sustained by something perfect, “the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
No pain
I had asked my son-in-law to close our few minutes there with a prayer.
“God our comfort,” he prayed, “as we commit these ashes to this place, we are consoled by our Lord Jesus, who knew the grave and is also the resurrection and the life. We believe in your mercy and trust that you love Evelyn as she loved us and you.
“Make us the harvest that is multiplied by Evelyn’s life.
“As she worked hard, may we not shy from hard things.
As she honored her family by following you, may we honor her through our faithfulness.
As she was a lifelong learner and shared her knowledge, may we be teachable and generous with our privilege.
As she fed us in great quality and quantity, may we sustain others with abundance.
As she laughed and made us laugh, may we find and spread joy.
As she took risks, may we also be brave.
As she felt a fierce sense of justice, may we stand with the oppressed.
As she loved us for who we are, may this family’s love grow in kind.
“Lord, with perfect confidence we ask for what you have promised:
that you grant Evelyn your peace
that your light perpetually shines on her
that she rests in your presence with all the saints, where sorrow and pain are no more, but there is life everlasting.
“Father, grant this in the name of your Son, Jesus the Christ.”
His words, like so much about that day, I want always to remember.
Note: I wrote that this week would be my last post for a while, but that was before our morning at the cemetery. I decided sharing it would be an important part of my story. I’ll try again next week for a “final” column.