The Day of the Funeral, Continued

We were all there, and people were beginning to arrive to say their last goodbyes.  People who had known my mother from years ago when she was raising her family and people who knew her years later, after retirement, when she was taking joy in her grandchildren.  Any way you sliced it, it was all so hard. Yet, even in all the sadness and grief I was amazingly strong.  God was, yet again, holding me up.  He was giving me strength to move forward when all I wanted to do was crumble to the ground and cry.  My Dad's eyes were glazed while he greeted people.  I was shaking the hands and accepting kisses from people I had never met, until now.  They all seemed to know me though.  Finally the moment had arrived, it was time to begin.

There was a beautiful picture of my mother at the entrance to the church...so young and happy.  I tried to keep that picture in  my mind's eye, not the marble box.  The service began at the baptismal font where, according to her denomination, life in Christ began. Everyone began their journey to the front of the church.  My brother led the way holding the box that contained my mother. We followed next, a daughter on either side of Dad, holding him up it seemed.  It was a mile to the front of the church where we all took our seat in the front pew. Mom was surrounded by so many beautiful flowers, I remember thinking how fitting as her's was the greenest thumb anyone could ever hope to have.  She could bring a dead plant back to life, she was amazing.  Oh how I wish I had inherited that gift from her, but I didn't.

All I kept thinking was how I couldn't believe that this was finally happening, I was burying a parent, my mother. The women who, the same age as I was when I had my daughter, dreamed of a fourth child - me.  I was her baby.   The woman who raised me from infancy to giving me away in marriage and who helped me be a mom when my baby was born.   The woman who would have laid down her life for me.  How my heart hurt.

Each daughter had a part to play in the service.  I was the second to read.  My oldest sister read the twenty-third Psalm (my mother's favorite),  then it was my turn.  This was my choice:

  "But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope.  For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words."  1Thessalonian 4:13-18

This I remember, a spirit-filled smile came across my face as I spoke these words: "For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord."  I saw my mother, with outstretched arms running towards me,  not unlike the first time I got off the school bus from my first day at school, welcoming her baby home.  Home.  A child feels so at home in her mother's arms. Home...home.   I was comforted, I believe that I will see my mother again one day.

I'll write more about the funeral later, my heart is hurting too much to write any more.