Last week I wrote a bit about the experience of being with my mother-in-law as she took her last breath. It was a holy and sacred time and we will never forget it. Since then we have planned and participated in her funeral, not in any formal clergy-ish way, but as a family that gets surrounded by the prayers of the gathered people of God. After the funeral, we gathered with friends and family to tell stories on her and about her, to laugh and cry some and her grandchildren got to be together with their elders and other adults. They got to see what it means to weep and mourn the death of someone we love, but not to weep as people without hope.
Perhaps it would feel like an odd exercise in this season of Easter, but sometime soon, take a minute to read through the Litany at the time of death. It's what we say when we have no words to say. It's a set of prayers that offers our loved one to God and reminds us that "all shall be well." More often than not, I've seen these prayers be a family's final act of love and release for a dying. You may also find it in the Book of Common Prayer ("the red book, found in the pew rack"!) And when you find yourselves in the place that our family did this past week, remember to call one of your priests. We do everything we can to be with the dying and their family and friends. (My only regret from last week is that I didn't ask someone from outside our family to join us around Ellie's bedside. I led the prayers, but upon reflection, we all needed a pastor and that couldn't be me.)
Also, please take some time to read through our Burial Rite. It is full of hope and comfort and joy. Make the effort to attend the funerals of others. And bring your children, at least to ones in the Episcopal Church and other mainline denominations. (I've been to some in other denominations that were scary and inappropriate for children.) As my son Will told me last week when I asked if he was okay being so involved in the process, "Dad, it's a part of life." Indeed it is.
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