My Mother-in-Law passed away recently. She was a lovely woman but had been sick for a long time. So long in fact, that I have no memory of her being healthy. I met her first thirteen years ago and she was frail then. Parkinsons and several other diseases wrecked her body and she spent the last two weeks of her life unconscious in hospital after a stroke and my wife spent almost every night with her.
Needless to say, when the passing finally came,
my wife’s family were exhausted and full of the emotional conflict that arises
in these situations. Part relief, part grief and mostly tiredness.
It happened on a Friday night and my wife’s
family gathered the next day to arrange the funeral. They had shared the strain
of looking after their Mother in those last few weeks and it showed on their
faces and in their thoughts. Somebody suggested a slide show at the funeral,
another suggested that the congregation should be invited one by one to come up
and give voice to the memories. It was then that my wife pointed out her Mother
was a devout Catholic and at the very least she would want a Catholic funeral.
Nobody saw a problem with this. Surely the local church would be amenable to
them changing the entire service to suit their needs.
It became clear to me at this point that I was
in a room of Atheists and Protestants (my own Mother would have said they were
one and the same). I stepped forward at this point and offered myself as the
representative of the Holy Church of Rome. I spent the first 22 years of my
life going to Mass, so I could still remember the basic rules.
I didn’t let on that I had stopped believing in
God in my twenties, around the time that I realised that there was very little
evidence that God believed in me. My attendance rate at Mass had diminished
ever since. But I’ve still gone along at Christmas, Easter, Weddings and
Funerals and knew that the words hadn’t changed much in the interim.
And while I no longer believe in God, I still
have respect for the Church. I saw how they helped when my parents died, how
the Church provided structure and support. I was married in a Catholic Church
and it provided a foundation to the day and some mighty fine hymns.
So, I set about choosing the readings and
prayers of the Faithful. I arranged to meet the Priest and to become the family’s
point of contact for all things Churchy.
We adjourned at that point to the living room
and tucked into a bottle of whiskey to toast the dearly departed. The plan was
that we would all drive down to the Coromandel coast the following day, to the
seaside community where my Parents in Law had retired. We came home and my wife
went to bed to try and get her first decent night’s sleep in a week. I tucked
into a six-pack while researching appropriate readings from the Letters of St
Paul.
The first thing that struck me was his
diligence. He kept writing to the Romans, Corinthians, etc with no evidence that
any of them ever wrote back. He never starts his letters with “I refer to your
letter of the 4th inst”. The other thing that struck me was the
number of readings that dealt with violence and misogyny. I realised from our
Saturday discussion that I was dealing with a congregation that used secular funerals
as their point of reference. They were used to Joni Mitchell's lyrics and not the
rantings of a wandering disciple from the first century.
I was on my fifth beer when my wife’s phone
rang. I ignored it. She was deep into a well-deserved sleep and I didn’t want
to disturb her. Then my phone rang and I realised it must be important. It was
my brother-in-law telling me that Auckland was just about to go into one week
of Lockdown. The road South was due to close at 6am the following morning,
which meant that if we didn’t leave soon, we’d be stuck in Auckland and unable
to make the funeral.
I immediately woke my wife who was bounding for
the car before I could stop her. I reminded her that we had a sleeping child
upstairs and that both of us had drunk more than we should if we were to take
command of a heavy vehicle. We compromised on going to bed and rising at 4am to
get through before the check-points were installed.
New Zealand has largely escaped the trials and
tribulations of Covid. We had one serious lockdown last March and April, but
otherwise, it has been life as normal here. But when something happens the
country takes it seriously. While we had escaped Auckland before the shutters
came down, others who had intended to come to the funeral weren’t so lucky.
That included the Priest who initially was supposed to take the service. My
first job on the day we arrived on the coast was to source a new celebrant and
venue. While we were away from the hotspot of Auckland, the rest of the country
was in level two which meant a maximum of 100 at the funeral. It also required
two-meter distancing between groups in the congregation. A quick Maths
calculation suggested that this will limit the funeral to about 25 if we used
the small church in the township my in-laws lived in.
Luckily another Church in the neighbouring town
was found and the Funeral Mass went off without a hitch. We even rigged about a
laptop and set up a Zoom call for all those overseas who couldn’t make it.
My Mother in Law would have liked it, I think. And
my Mother would have been proud of me too. All that Mass going as a child had finally
paid off.
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