I got home about 6.30 last night having spent the afternoon at Adam's funeral. The Church had been packed and mainly with people in their 20's.
As the majesty of the funeral service worked upon us all, I could not help but ask myself why we find funerals so helpful. We are both blessed and cursed as humans by the knowledge that we all face death.
A funeral is surely an effort at finding hope. Hope not only for the one we have lost, but, in the end, hope for ourselves. Hope that this small life is not all that there is. Hope that we have not lost complete touch with the one who is dead.
For Christians this hope is based on an afterlife and the resurrection. Harder to find this specific hope for someone like me who has not the faith to expect that hope.
Alone and confronted by the loss, the void and the grief can become overwhelming. Even those that have faith can find this faith shaken while alone. But there is also something healing about sharing your grief and your fears in public. 1,300 came to Adam's wake. There must have been close to that in the church. Over 700 people have joined a Facebook group and the article in yesterday's local paper is attracting some very moving comment from all over the world.
People come together in the best of ways. As I observed how considerate and tender were the interactions yesterday, it seemed a shame that we could not act like this all of the time.
For death today is a great secret. We postpone signs of aging. We hide our dead. But its true mystery is that when we live with death as an ever present roomate, life becomes richer.
Today, the few who die young often die suddenly in a car crash. It's all shock. But with Adam, death came fast enough but there was this inspiring battle that he undertook to die in full view of his community. He opened himself to offer his death as an act of grace.
Adam showed us all that by embracing the reality of death a much richer life was available for us all. He held back on nothing not even marrage. Adam lived full on and Rosemond joined him in heart and soul for this. No thought of a quiet retirement and fears for how the RRSP would work out. Their life together was total commitment.
Most of us never come close to living like this. So surely this is their memorial.
Shakespeare as usual has some words that fit:
Nothing in his life
Became him like the leaving of it