January 22, 2006

• On January 7, my friend, Kathy Wells, died.  she was 53 years old, and has suffered from muscular dystrophy all  the time i have known her, and yet that was not what killed her.  kathy was out with friends, and either misunderstood or disregarded their instructions as to which way was clear, and rolled her motorized wheelchair into the path of an oncoming vehicle -- she was struck and killed.  her memorial service was held at noon on Jan 14...

  
  

  On January 10th at 5:30PM, Bryan, the young man of 12 i posted about, lost his battle with brain cancer.  his parents and brother were with him when he died.  to the last, he never complained, but always maintained that he was 'good'... his memorial service was held at 3:00PM on Jan 14...

  
  

  you might notice this put both funerals on the same day, and relatively close to each other in time.  since they were held at the same church, St. Mark's (Basking Ridge), and since we knew bryan's service would be well attended, donathan and i realized we would need to be at the second service at least 45 minutes early.  now, kathy had not been at church in over 3 years, since she had to give up her home and move into a nursing home, and therefore a low turnout was expected for her service -- over 100 people showed up.  there were very few of us present who had known her from her days at St. Mark's; most of the mourners had either known her from the very beginning of her life, or were recent friends from the nursing home.  this was a wonderful thing, for we got to know parts of kathy that we had not known before as a result of the eulogies given.  a hidden joy.  regardless of circumstance.

  
  

  kathy's funeral Mass ended at 1:30, and so donathan and i rushed off to grab a quick bite, to return to church at 2:15 for bryan's service.  already there were 50 people there.  by 2:30, the count was at 200, and there were 475 people as the service began, crammed into the chancel, the balcony, and standing wherever they could.  fr rozzelle had been hit hard by this fight with death, and the fact that the healing he had prayed for did not occur in the way he wanted was a blow to him.  his sermon struggled to come to terms with this, and he was left feeling that there were no answers except that the community pulled together for bryan and his family.  but the eulogies of bryan's two godparents, an aunt and an uncle, showed that there was much more.

  
  

  healing had occured, but not in the way everyone who had prayed for it might have hoped.  most, i imagine, expected/desired/prayed for physical healing, for bryan's life to be spared.  however, there was a much more important sort that took place -- there was healing of spirit and soul and family.  my friend Jeff, bryan's older brother, had become estranged from his mom and dad because of a problem with substance abuse, and he had removed himself from the home and gone to live elsewhere, with his biological dad, to come to grips with his addiction.  bryan's illness brougt him home and back  to his parents.  bryan also was able to keep his faith, and to have it grow ever deeper, so that he never once was afraid of what would come next, but always looked toward the future with unswerving anticipation.  that is true healing.  his spirit was kept whole, never crippled, and this allowed his parents to keep their faith, even though they sorely grieved.  this is a true healing --- there are many things worse than death.  and so again, joy, regardless of circumstance.

  
  

  on tuesday, the 17th of January, which would have been my father's 79th birthday, we attended the wake of still another friend, a woman who was 87.  her husband of over 60 years had passed away 3 years before, and we all thought Ginny would not survive her broken heart, but she did.  in the end she died of the physical complications of Alzheimer's, without losing her mental faculties....

  
  

  we are humans, and therefore death and disease, violence and mayhem are part of life.  we cannot avoid them if we are to live.  we can build walls, we can dig moats, we can shut ourselves off from every hint of danger or pain, but then we do not, cannot live.  sometime you should read the lyrics to the Byrds' song "Mind Garden", which says it best.

  
  

  there are worse things than death, and death is not that strong in the end.  love is stronger than death, and so is joy...

  • 4:49 am
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