Final Blessings

by Fr. Ron Raab, C.S.C
Originally published in Ministry and Liturgy, August 2007.

I was two thousand miles away in Portland, Oregon when my mother, Rosemary, died in the Midwest. On the flight home I thought about all the goodbyes we shared in my lifetime. Mom sent me off to school everyday with a hot breakfast and a full brown bag lunch. I pictured her holding my head when I was sick as a child and listening lovingly when I was confused about life and my future. I remembered her from my last visit home, suffering from a debilitating stroke and heart failure. All the transitions in our relationship collided in this one moment of fear and regret for me. I was not there to feed her the last meal, to hold her head, or to send her off from this world.

As the journey continued, I sorted out all the transitions, the regrets, and something beautiful struck my heart. I realized in all those goodbyes, Mom always waved to me with both hands. In airport terminals, on the driveway of our family home, and through all the uncertainty of being sick, she always waved both hands over her head. This was her way of blessing me. I never before saw the connection or felt the full reality of her blessing until coming home for the last time.

This time I was home both as her son and as a priest to celebrate her funeral, a summary of all the fragile transitions, and a statement of everything we ever believed. I carried my grief across the country, but I felt something different arriving in the midst of my family and friends who also loved my mother. Being with my family helped me feel assured that I, too, would experience a newness of attitude, well being, and comfort.

For years I imagined what it would be like to celebrate Mom’s funeral. Even though I knew I would straddle the line of son and priest, I needed to send her off with the faith, symbols, and ritual of the Church we both loved. The day arrived for her funeral and all the pieces of me fit together. As her son, I preached the story to the hundreds gathered at her funeral of Mom always waving her goodbyes with both hands. Every face perked up, tears ran down cheeks, and I was surprised that her gesture was not only for me, but a sign of love in all her goodbyes.

Mom not only diapered me when I was an infant, swaddled me at baptism, and dressed me for the cold Midwestern winters as a child, but she also dressed me as a priest. She sewed the chasuble I wore celebrating the Eucharist for the first time. I wore the same garment for her funeral liturgy. At the Final Commendation, I took off the handmade garment and laid it on her coffin to thank her for all the times she dressed me up for life and to thank her for all the blessings she gave to us all.

I fear the fact that numbers of funerals are on the decline, at least here on the west coast. Many people are opting out of the faith, rituals and traditions of their ancestors that honor the life of those they love. However, I believe the problem is deeper than not wanting a church service when death occurs. Many of us are separated from community. We have lost ourselves in our personal goals, moving out of our childhood neighborhoods, and grasping at a culture that says we can have it all. We are trained not to show emotion or weakness, not to convey any need of the heart, and not to claim vulnerability that would show anyone we are not in complete control.

As a culture, we are stifling the passion of life. Suffering is something we throw money and resources at so it will not invade our lives. However, we cannot avoid the passion that ultimately brings death and that will always give way to healing and love. If we are removed from the moments in life that arouse vulnerability and change, we will not want to celebrate the faith we have in Christ who taught us that this is the only pattern to freedom.

Celebrating funerals teaches me that Christ’s rising from the dead is not just for the person who has died. New life is also for those who survive. Most of us do not know what to do with the healing that may occur from death. We can be stubborn and hold on to family grudges, long term regrets, and anger about our inheritance. There is something vital we are missing when funerals are not celebrated. We miss the healing that can happen when two or three gather in faith to honor life as it is, not the life we think we should have lived. Funerals teach us many things about the dead, but they teach us most about our ambitions in life and how to live a life that is more overwhelmingly generous, grateful and loving.

I continue to learn most about life working among those marginalized by society. Poverty and addictions teach us all that we need God to survive. This vulnerability also reveals its face when death occurs among those clinging to survival and sobriety. I entered this process again when members from a narcotics sobriety group knocked on the Downtown Chapel’s door because their friend Tony died of an overdose.

Tony’s friends wanted a safe place that would allow their expression of faith and grieving of their friend. He spent thirty years in prison and was clean and sober only the last nine months of his life. Sixty people memorialized him in a service reflecting many faith denominations and cultural backgrounds. Native American drummers wailed out in grief, former prison mates told stories, and those just clean from drugs spoke about their fragile recovery.

Even though Tony’s memorial service was out of the norm of Catholic funerals, the message for the believers was the same. People need to know their search for a drug-free life could be possible by sharing their grief and loneliness, and telling the truth of their suffering. I was overwhelmed as I heard words I never heard before in church, “I walked the yard with Tony for over twenty years,” and “I knew him in the only clean months of his adult life.”

I have come to believe that all pastoral ministers are fragile caretakers of the passion, death and resurrection of the Christ we serve. We are called to enter into life’s most vulnerable times and fragile moments. We must tread carefully where pain longs to change us, where faith can ultimately set us free. However, the healing balm of our weakness is not denial or power. The grace we seek comes from telling the truth. This power in death allows the community to heal from the inside out, from digging deep into wounds from a lifetime of hurt, to find the Christ that binds us together.

When celebrating funerals we find this truth when we confront the real and ordinary issues of death. It is tempting to all of us who plan funerals to squeeze death into socially acceptable terms. The causes of death may be a genuine invitation to allow healing to happen among the living. Death from suicide threatens the status quo of even the most confident among us, so we think our hushed tones will not rock the boat of the survivors. When alcohol poisoning results in death it makes us all question our consumption, so we ignore the truth to those sitting in the pews. When mental illness is the cause of death, we often sidetrack the truth so not to disturb those who cared for the person who died. We must admit our role in bringing survivors to God is not to scratch the surface of life but to confront the authentic issues surrounding death so everyone will not miss the blessings revealed to the rest of us.

As ministers of the Gospel, we are called to find our security through the darkness of sorrow that leads to new light. Often we cling to the false notion that celebrating funerals that are clean, correct and perfect will bring us to the saving presence of God. There are no strict guidelines to heal grief, nor perfect formulas from our files to solve the faith journey. Our real safety rests in opening the wounds of uncertainty so the grace of Christ can show us how to live differently right here on earth.

We are the ones charged with the mission to help people bury their dead. We are also the people responsible for allowing the community to heal itself. I am confident that every community that prays has in its life the grace to find blessings in death, the blessings that will heal all wounds. As ministers to the living, we need to check our egos, stand out of the way of grace, and watch the healing take place. This demand from us is a lifestyle of daily prayer, an attitude that trusts people, and a deep gratitude that God will provide the healing that is necessary for survival.

One of the most challenging moments of my priesthood came with a phone call one evening to meet the parents of a young man at the hospital who was dying of AIDS. His folks were flying in from their home state to be with their son in the last moments of his life. I arrived at the hospital naïve of what was about to happen. I met Tim and discovered we were the same age. Words were difficult for him to form. I listened the best I could. I anointed him at his request and assured him of a Catholic burial.

Within minutes of the anointing, Tim’s elderly parents rushed into the room exhausted from the journey and their fear of their son’s dying. They held their son. They sat on each side of the bed and wiped his face. However, their anger was directed toward me. His mother’s face became tight, anguished, and full of sorrow. I ushered them into a waiting room as soon as I could and offered them comfortable chairs and coffee. They took off their coats, sat down and were suddenly silent. Tim’s mother looked me in the eyes and said, “Father, I am not angry that my son is dying, or that he is dying of AIDS. I am angry because the priest at my home parish told me not to go to my son’s deathbed because he was going to hell anyway”

His cruel words wedged between mother and child left me scrambling to allow Tim to die in peace. Tim died early the next morning in the midst of the chaos. For the next four days, his family and I spent our days talking and listening, planning and educating, and our evenings celebrating the gift of their son.

We buried Tim on my birthday. The funeral became the work of the entire parish. We struggled to sit beside a family confused about a disease that alienated them from their own community that brought fear to the last days of their middle child. After all these years I still receive a birthday greeting from Tim’s mother thanking me for the hospitality of the parish and the kindness of my actions.

I never felt so betrayed by another priest. His soul-scratching words rippled across the country and brought great heartache to a suffering family. He shredded everything I ever learned about ministry and became an obstacle to this family’s healing. Now that some years have past, I try to commend him, the fragile caretaker, and his community to God as I celebrate my birthday and reread the hand-written note from Tim’s mother.

We are agents of the Word-made-flesh. Death is inevitable. Our mission in the church is to allow God to heal us in our grief and open us to the blessings death can offer us. We are compelled into life even in the center of losing those we love. Blessings from the past form our future and it is up to us to keep reaching beyond our grasp for the God who loves us and brings us the hope we need.

My family and my mom’s friends gathered under the shade tree at the cemetery on a warm July morning to offer prayers at my mother’s gravesite. My white chasuble draped the coffin. White and pink flowers piled up against the grave. After the command to go in peace, I invited everyone to wave goodbye to Rosemary with both hands.

Death in the most unsuspecting places, as in an empty tomb, becomes a blessing. Rosemary, Tony and Tim, pray for us.