A Lesson for Life at a Funeral (05/06/2025)

My father passed away around Thanksgiving in 2008. I remember so much of that week. I had traveled from Mundelein to spend a week with him and my mother. He was ill, but I never expected that he would pass away that week. I will always remember his funeral and what it taught me about life.

We spent time playing cards, talking, and going for special meals. Friday night we’d gone to Green Gables, then we’d gone home and the family in town had stopped in for a visit. Dad kept telling me he was tired and wanted to go to bed. Finally, I realized what he was really telling me. He couldn’t get up out of the chair on his own. We helped my dad, my brother-in-law who was a nurse anesthetist and me, to get to bed. We called Hospice. Dad died early Sunday morning.  

The next few days were especially hard as we admitted that Dad had died and made arrangements for his funeral and internment. The family clung together. We found strength together, in our tears and in our laughter as we shared stories.

The part I dreaded most was the wake and rosary where we stood together as a family while extended family and friends filed by offering their sympathies. At one point, I sort of shut down because one can only hear “His suffering is over,” and “Time heals all wounds” so many times. And then, toward the end of the wake, a gentleman came through who recognized me.

“You are his daughter who played golf,” the man said. I nodded my head. “He so looked forward to his rounds with his children. You know we are going to miss his “birdie” horn around the course. I can still remember his first birdie after his stroke. He told us in the bar after that round that his daughter convinced him that if he’d do his rehab he could golf again. He was a great man who happened to be a good golfer. We are already missing him.”

I took the man’s hand again, shook it tightly, and thanked him for his words and especially his story. And as he walked on, I thought of my dad on his cart, enjoying his golf game, with his Charlie grin. I needed that.

Grief touches us all at some time or another as our family and friends pass away and we try to make sense of our lives shared and our lives without them. Tonight, the grief group that I facilitate at our parish will gather to offer one another support along the difficult journey. Getting ready for the meeting brought back the memory of my father’s passing and the lesson I learned from his golfing buddy – the treasure of a snapshot of our loved ones from the eyes of another who recognized their value.

Part of our journeys of faith, hope and love will surely entail the loss of loved ones and the grief that follows. Grief stays with us; it never really goes away; we just get better at carrying it and doing other things at the same time. But we carry it knowing that it is there only because we loved another who loved us back, and we would never want to change that.

As we journey, let us commit to opening ourselves to loving one another, to loving others, knowing that we will have to say “goodbye” and grieve during our lifetimes. We have the consolation of believing in life in abundance with our LORD and in being reunited with loved ones around the throne of the Lamb. And as we gather together to share our grief with others over the passing of one of us, let us also share our love for the one lost through a story, a snapshot of love lived.

Until tomorrow, let us all love well.