Milestones

Funerals are complicated affairs.  I often say wedding when I mean funeral and funeral when I mean wedding.  Somehow, in my mind, the two are almost interchangeable and have been for as long as I can remember.  They are the only two occasions in my family where EVERYONE shows up, dressed to the nines and there is a huge feast afterwards.  Both involve a long procession of cars and a ceremony up in front that involves one or two people.  It is understandable that a child might confuse the two, but part of my mind has never totally separated them and I am way past childhood.

My father refused to allow songs with words at my mother’s funeral and I understood that.  Having his grief wrenched from him in public would have offended his English sense of propriety.  In his honor, we did the same at his funeral and yet, I ask myself what the music is for?

Today I believe music is part of honoring the dead person’s personality.  Yesterday's funeral music was country western.  A couple years ago it was the Beatles at another friend’s funeral.  At my father’s, my son and friend played Amazing Grace on guitar and flute.  The memory of that moment wrings tears from me and I think that is what the music is really for: a way to tap into our innermost place and set some of the grief free.

Setting ourselves free, we also set our beloved’s soul free.

Obviously for me that takes a while and so each funeral I attend is, in a way, the same one, over and over and over again.  Until finally that soul has settled into a heaven I can accept and believe and deal with even in my most innermost thoughts.