Thinking about death as a last parent passes

It has been 30 years since I worked under the pastoral leadership of Dr. John Richard Ray, a native of Bernie, Missouri, serving as his assistant before Ray was transferred to lead a church in Poplar Bluff.

Ray, now living a well-earned retirement with wife Ruth in rural Kentucky, offered me a lot of insight in those brief 12 months.

He took bereavement very seriously and perhaps as a result, in my years as a pastor, I did, too.

"The church must be able to speak meaningfully to people about death," Ray used to say, adding, "when pastors speak to mourners in the cemetery, they'd better have something to say."

As I write this column, our family is in Pittsburgh, preparing to bury my final parent -- my 85-year-old mother.

I have no leadership responsibility for the funeral, preferring just to be a son this week.

Remembrance

Our adult daughters are with us in Pennsylvania, and in the recesses of memory, I vividly recall my oldest child, then just 5 years of age, kneeling and looking into the rectangular-shaped hole into which her great-grandmother's casket was lowered in 1999.

"Daddy, what's that box for?" she said.

"Honey, in that box is her body and even though what's important about your Great Grandma has gone to be with God, this is a place where we can come and always remember her," I replied.

"Are you saying she's not in that box?" she queried.

In that moment, I drew on everything I believe about death to give a simple response to a deeply felt question.

"Sweetie, the spirit inside of us is so strong that there comes a time when our body can't hold it any longer -- and that's what happened to your Great Grandma. Her spirit got too strong for her body, so she went elsewhere; she went to God," I responded, hopeful that she would be satisfied.

I had nothing else from a theological standpoint to offer her at that moment.

My daughter, in the tiny dress we'd purchased for the occasion, stood up, dusted off her knees, and said, "Okay," and went to stand with her mother.

Great liturgy

The Roman Catholic community offers consoling words in the Rosary, offered as a petition to Mary, the mother of Jesus.

"Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen."

The Magisterium understood in those oft-repeated words by the faithful what we all grasp existentially, that is, death is universal and inescapable -- and, poignantly, death is coming for us all.

Elevator speech

Occasionally, when invited to do so and can do so honorably, I will officiate a funeral -- although those occasions are rarer now that I labor full-time as a reporter for this newspaper.

Let me offer to you, dear reader, a hypothetical situation.

If I was getting into an elevator on the top floor of Cape Girardeau's tallest building, the KFVS Tower, and someone joined me for the ride to the lobby, I'd like to think I'd have something meaningful -- to recall Dr. Ray's long-ago admonition -- to say in the moment.

The scenario I've just described has not yet occurred.

If it does, I'd like to think I'd repeat the graveside story told two decades ago to my daughter, but I'd back it up with Scripture as the two of are lowered to ground level.

Principally, my mind goes to the first letter St. Paul penned that later became part of the New Testament canon.

I draw from the New Living Translation.

"And now, dear brothers and sisters, we want you to know what will happen to the believers who have died so you do not grieve like people who have no hope. For since we believe Jesus died and was raised to life again, we also believe when Jesus returns, God will bring back with him the believers who have died." (I Thessalonians 4:13-14)

There is more to say about death, of course, but the elevator doors have opened, and I part ways with my temporary companion.

Perhaps the bite-sized conversation will be recalled to mind when transition comes -- for him, for me, for you.