Our Funeral Lamenting

From 1pm until George's funeral, various members of our Church read Psalms over George. Almost 200, mostly non-Orthodox, people came to the funeral and patiently stood around the Church as there are not many chairs. Father had encouraged me to try to sing in the choir, and since my tears felt spent I went ahead. This was my family's first Orthodox Funeral and the special prayers and hymns with their minor keys are very beautiful.

There is an order of service and explanation from goarch.org of the Orthodox Funeral Service. From that link,

The Funeral Service of the Orthodox Church is an example of how Orthodox theology influences the formation of a healthy understanding of the true nature of life and death. The Service accomplishes the following: a) utilizes the occasion of death to help us develop a more profound understanding of the meaning and purpose of life; b) helps us to deal with the emotions we have at the time of death and as time passes after the death; c) emphasizes the fact that death for the Christian is not the end, and affirms our hope in salvation and eternal life; d) recognizes the existence of the emotions of grief caused by the separation from a loved one, and encourages their expression.

And from oca.org

Sometimes men criticize the funeral vigil for its supposed morbidity and gloom; they say that there should be more words of resurrection and life. Yet the vigil itself is not the Church's "final word" about death. It is simply the solemn contemplation upon death's tragic character, its horrid reality and its power as that of sin and alienation from God. The realization of these facts, which particularly in the modern age is so strikingly absent, is the absolute condition for the full appreciation and celebration of the victorious resurrection of Christ and his gracious gift of eternal life to mankind. Without such a preparatory meditation on death, it is doubtful whether the Christian Gospel of Life can be understandable at all.

Thus it is not at all ironic that the same Saint john of Damascus who wrote the joyful canon sung by the Church on Easter Night is also the author of the Church's songs of death, which are indeed unyielding in their gravity and uncompromising in their bluntness and realism about the inevitable fact of the final fate of fallen human existence.

What earthly sweetness remains unmixed with grief? What glory stands immutable on the earth? All things are but feeble shadows, all things are most deluding dreams, yet one moment only, and death shall supplant them all. But in the light of Thy countenance, 0 Christ, and in the sweetness of Thy beauty, give rest to him whom Thou hast chosen, for as much as Thou lovest mankind.

I weep and lament when I think upon death, and behold our beauty created in the likeness of God lying in the tomb disfigured, bereft of glory and form. 0 the marvel of it! What is this mystery concerning us? Why have we been delivered to corruption? Why have we been wedded unto death? Truly, as it is written, by the command of God Who giveth the departed rest (Funeral Hymns).

Father explained that we mourn because we will miss being able to see, hear, and touch our departed loved ones in this life. I love the validation, support, and unstrained naturalness of Orthodox theology.

Memory Eternal; Vyechnaya Pamyat

While in the spacious courtyard waiting for George after the Retreat, I saw Elder Zacharias make his way across. There was a little scarfed girl, about 5 or 6, dancing around getting her wiggles out, as my daughter would say, oblivious of the Elder's linear path that was about to cut across her circular one. Right before a collision would have occurred, Elder Zacharias did a similar skipping dance in the other direction in perfect concert. What a joyful cherry on top at the end of the Retreat.

It took us two and a half hours to make our way from Dallas to Fort Worth to St. Barbara's because of several traffic jams, so instead of making a pit stop, we just went straight to Church and arrived barely in time for the baptism of sweet baby James. He is the second baby of a very dear couple who just moved to beautiful Tyler, world-famous for it's roses and azaleas, now that Zach has graduated from his doctorate program at UTArlington and has gotten a teaching position at the college there. They are attending the new Tyler Orthodox mission that John has helped start up.

Last week one of our founding members of St. Barbara's passed away suddenly from a stroke. Everyone knew him as a faithful and pious, impeccably dressed, older Russian-Iranian-American gentleman who always removed his hat and knelt on his knees when he venerated the icons and after confession. After Great Vespers which followed the baptism, the funeral home brought him to the Church to lie in repose through the night, through Divine Liturgy the next morning, until his funeral there at 4pm Sunday afternoon. None of us were prepared to see George with his hat removed, but laying with him in the casket, enter the church horizontally instead of on his knees. We barely made it through the Panachida prayer service with him in our midst. Even Father had to restart several of the prayers. It felt very natural to bow in front of his casket and kiss the cross laid on his chest, his hands and forehead which looked like they always did, just asleep. I was very moved when one of our members knelt in front of his casket just as George always had done in front of the icons. We were all very quiet on the way home.

I sometimes feel that I am teetering on the edge of abandoning myself totally to mourning what I have lost. George's soul-separated body sent me irretrievably over that edge Sunday morning starting on the drive to Church. I could hardly stop crying all through the Liturgy, so I opted to stand in the back with my husband George instead of singing in the choir. I pray I didn't make too much of a self-centered spectacle of myself, but it seemed the departed George's beautiful sister, Ilena, didn't mind having the company of a fellow-weeper. It was so appropriate to have him in the middle of the Church in front of the line, which in his earthly life he always lead, to Communion. I pray he be granted rest in Christ, and that he pray for our Church while we await the final resurrection of our ever weakening bodies.

Gone, but not forgotten

I would like to augment my prayers for the departed by writing down their names here since they were not Orthodox on this earth and thus traditionally can't be mentioned during the Liturgy. Though when I was at the Monastery of the Transfiguration, I put some of them on the list, and others were mentioned during our house blessing, and on one odd occasion, my Priest out of the blue mentioned my maternal grandparents during a week day feast day Liturgy. I loved the prayer that the nuns recited about those who died alone, fell from cliffs, died at sea, at the hands of another, etc. Even before I inquired into Orthodoxy, while I was in the theater watching Titanic, after a lifetime of being intrigued by the previously lost relics of the ship, I got the distinct, heart-felt impression that the souls of those that died in that tragedy earnestly desired for us to know what happened to them in detail. I feel the same when I hear of murdered victims. They need the truth to be known. I am so thankful for the Orthodox commemoration of and communion with the departed.

Please pray for the following,

My son Isaac, my grandparents, Alton and Sadie Babb, Granddaddy Lueg, George's Grandma and Grandpap Rovny and Grandmother and Grandfather Edinger, his Aunt Gloria and Uncle Jim, my friend Janelle and her father who died in a car crash, and my friend Brian who committed suicide in high school.

These are the ones I have in mind at present. May God comfort and keep them (with those you have in mind) and may we all grow with the Saints towards Christ's Likeness now and ever and unto ages of ages, amen.