Grief is weird.
Two days after the craziest most joyful celebration we’ve had for many years, the family turned around to back it up with the funeral of my father’s mother.
I’ve never really been able to connect much with funerals. It’s probably because the funerals for my three grandparents (my mother’s father died before I was born) have involved anything but tragedy; they’ve all been celebrations of long and fruitful lives.
It was different last year when I attended funerals for Krysti and Rita: They were larger than life people cut down way too soon by illness. For those women, a corporate expression of mourning was not only necessary, but deeply moving.
I really didn’t feel like that at Nanna’s recent funeral. Is that bad? She made it to 87, and in the end her passing was an end to an unwinnable struggle with illness and physical deterioration with age. She passed away peacefully, surrounded by her loving family.
So somehow the very large and public funeral seemed strange – even unnecessary. I mean, I get that there were heaps and heaps of people who wanted to pay their respects, and I get that funerals are just something we do to mark a person’s death in our culture, but through the whole thing I felt completely disconnected – even when I went forward with the rest of the family to carry the coffin out to the hearse. Like I was watching a ceremony on TV from a culture I don’t understand.
I had thought that last sentence was a really original perpsective, until realised I wrote the same thing on my post about my other grandmother's funeral. Well I may be insensitive, but at least I'm consistent.
I don’t really do external displays of emotion, particularly sadness. My Australian maleness, coupled with the particular stoicism that seems to define the men in my family, means that when I’m surrounded by emotional people, even people I love, my default strategy is to keep quiet and keep my head down, or find somewhere else to be. An alternative strategy I’ve been working on is to climb up on a stage and pretend to be someone else for a while, but that’s another story (and potentially a rather expensive therapy session).
The point is between a thousand (okay… four) aunties plus everyone my elderly grandmother had ever met coming through to pay their respects and no Happy Yess to run away to I really never felt like I had any business sitting in the church that afternoon. My dad gave a great eulogy and the music was nice, but I didn’t feel like it fulfilled any function in terms of ‘saying goodbye’, or ‘getting closure’ or whatever.
And so ended one of the weirder weeks I've ever had in Adelaide. After so many days of heightened, strained and at times forced emotions, I was extremely grateful to escape from the whole thing later that night to the relative tranquility of a Boeing 737 and a good book.
Make of that what you will. And so say we all.
Garry with 2Rs
Showing posts with label Death. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Death. Show all posts
15 July 2012
A Week in Adelaide: Part 1 - What The Buck?
I’ve always found buck’s parties to be really weird. I understand the concept of spending a day/night having fun doing things you might no longer have the opportunity/time for once you’re married, but I’ve also wondered: if the party is all about doing things that celebrate being single, how come the only time us single guys do most of them is at buck’s parties?
Christian buck’s parties are even weirder. The absence of the clichéd excessive drunkenness and female nudity which denote the prototypical secular buck’s night, coupled with the fact that in any gathering of modern Christian men, eighty six and a half per cent* are married anyway, means you’re left with a group of guys out for the day doing … what exactly?
In fact there’s only one thing weirder than a Christian buck’s day: A Christian buck’s day for the man who’s marrying your sister.
From the outset, I made it as clear as I diplomatically could that I did not expect an invitation and was not really keen on going at all. I don’t even know my sister’s new husband that well, let alone his crew of close mates, most of whom I’d never met.
I’ll admit, I actually had a pretty good time. It’s a cultural given that what happens on a buck’s day stays on a buck’s day, so I’ll limit myself to saying that My sister’s fiancé and his mates were cool enough to make traipsing around the Adelaide Hills in the cold and wet enjoyable despite the Adelaideness of it all.
We returned a tired, celebrated and thoroughly narrated groom-to-be to his parents’ house later that evening, where I was met with a phone call to tell me my grandmother had passed away, and the family was gathering at the hospital.We did so quietly and solmenly, and with a great sense of relief for the end of suffering.
It was such a strange day; madcap antics with a bunch of guys I hardly knew, followed by what should have been a truamtic night but which was completely, almost eerily, peaceful.
All in all it was an eventful first day, but the week was only just getting started.
*Yep. I made that one up
Christian buck’s parties are even weirder. The absence of the clichéd excessive drunkenness and female nudity which denote the prototypical secular buck’s night, coupled with the fact that in any gathering of modern Christian men, eighty six and a half per cent* are married anyway, means you’re left with a group of guys out for the day doing … what exactly?
In fact there’s only one thing weirder than a Christian buck’s day: A Christian buck’s day for the man who’s marrying your sister.
From the outset, I made it as clear as I diplomatically could that I did not expect an invitation and was not really keen on going at all. I don’t even know my sister’s new husband that well, let alone his crew of close mates, most of whom I’d never met.
I’ll admit, I actually had a pretty good time. It’s a cultural given that what happens on a buck’s day stays on a buck’s day, so I’ll limit myself to saying that My sister’s fiancé and his mates were cool enough to make traipsing around the Adelaide Hills in the cold and wet enjoyable despite the Adelaideness of it all.
We returned a tired, celebrated and thoroughly narrated groom-to-be to his parents’ house later that evening, where I was met with a phone call to tell me my grandmother had passed away, and the family was gathering at the hospital.We did so quietly and solmenly, and with a great sense of relief for the end of suffering.
It was such a strange day; madcap antics with a bunch of guys I hardly knew, followed by what should have been a truamtic night but which was completely, almost eerily, peaceful.
All in all it was an eventful first day, but the week was only just getting started.
*Yep. I made that one up
13 July 2012
A Week in Adelaide: Prelude
Long-time readers will by now be well acquainted with the rather strained relationship I have with the city of Adelaide. New readers can catch up here. And non-readers can go and… yeah I really don’t know where I was going with that.
It’s full of my father’s side of the extended family, and more recently my own immediate family and I love them all dearly. But the city itself, its culture and its attitude really rub me the wrong way. So every time I go there, which is usually once about every eighteen months or so depending on what family occasions are coming up, I always come away with some experiences which are great, some which are rubbish, and some which are just plain weird.
My most recent trip was no exception. Ostensibly I was there to help prepare for and celebrate my sister’s wedding, which would have been a surreal enough experience on its own. However, just a week before the wedding my grandmother passed away after a long battle with … just about everything. It was a release for her and a sad relief for everyone else, but not really on anyone’s list of top ten wedding preparations.
So there we were, in a house full of aunties attempting to facilitate both joy and grief in the same week. In Adelaide. This is the story of one man’s journey through the strangest week in other people’s lives.
Garry with 2 Rs
P.S. As an extra nugget of CTC trivia, this is my 200th Far From Home/Cum Tacent Clament post. It seems somehow appropriate that I have spent it whinging about Adelaide. Make of that what you will.
It’s full of my father’s side of the extended family, and more recently my own immediate family and I love them all dearly. But the city itself, its culture and its attitude really rub me the wrong way. So every time I go there, which is usually once about every eighteen months or so depending on what family occasions are coming up, I always come away with some experiences which are great, some which are rubbish, and some which are just plain weird.
My most recent trip was no exception. Ostensibly I was there to help prepare for and celebrate my sister’s wedding, which would have been a surreal enough experience on its own. However, just a week before the wedding my grandmother passed away after a long battle with … just about everything. It was a release for her and a sad relief for everyone else, but not really on anyone’s list of top ten wedding preparations.
So there we were, in a house full of aunties attempting to facilitate both joy and grief in the same week. In Adelaide. This is the story of one man’s journey through the strangest week in other people’s lives.
Garry with 2 Rs
P.S. As an extra nugget of CTC trivia, this is my 200th Far From Home/Cum Tacent Clament post. It seems somehow appropriate that I have spent it whinging about Adelaide. Make of that what you will.
22 December 2011
To Live Is Christ
Sorry, sorry. I know I promised you all a heart-warming Christmas edition. I’ll still do that next week sometime, but in the meantime here’s a piece about death.
I went to the funeral of an old family friend yesterday. I say old the sense of the friendship, not in terms of the person; Rita was taken before her time by cancer and was far too young. It goes without saying that her death was tragic, but I have to say that her funeral was absolutely magnificent. It was held in the auditorium at Darwin Uniting, which was packed to the doors; standing room only.
Rita came from the local Fijian community, and so of course the Fijians came in strong numbers to pay their respects. Rita was also strongly involved with literacy training in remote aboriginal communities, so there was a big turn out from the local indigenous community as well, as well as all the people of various ethnicities from Darwin Uniting Church. In the midst of myriad government programs, schemes and interventions that don’t work, it was powerful to see that all that is required to bring the different communities together is one life of absolutely passionate service. Sure, it’s a shame that it takes the death of a wonderful person to bring the groups together, but it’s also a powerful picture of how a person’s life and legacy can go on affecting people long after they’ve passed away.
The most moving moment of the service came when they carried the coffin out of the church, accompanied simultaneously by indigenous tap sticks and a full Fijian choir, plus a bunch of goofy white people, standing by awkwardly not knowing where to look. Kind of a cross cultural cross section of the way we all handle death.
If I can move half as many people half as much when my time comes, I’ll consider it a life well lived.
Garry with 2 Rs
I went to the funeral of an old family friend yesterday. I say old the sense of the friendship, not in terms of the person; Rita was taken before her time by cancer and was far too young. It goes without saying that her death was tragic, but I have to say that her funeral was absolutely magnificent. It was held in the auditorium at Darwin Uniting, which was packed to the doors; standing room only.
Rita came from the local Fijian community, and so of course the Fijians came in strong numbers to pay their respects. Rita was also strongly involved with literacy training in remote aboriginal communities, so there was a big turn out from the local indigenous community as well, as well as all the people of various ethnicities from Darwin Uniting Church. In the midst of myriad government programs, schemes and interventions that don’t work, it was powerful to see that all that is required to bring the different communities together is one life of absolutely passionate service. Sure, it’s a shame that it takes the death of a wonderful person to bring the groups together, but it’s also a powerful picture of how a person’s life and legacy can go on affecting people long after they’ve passed away.
The most moving moment of the service came when they carried the coffin out of the church, accompanied simultaneously by indigenous tap sticks and a full Fijian choir, plus a bunch of goofy white people, standing by awkwardly not knowing where to look. Kind of a cross cultural cross section of the way we all handle death.
If I can move half as many people half as much when my time comes, I’ll consider it a life well lived.
Garry with 2 Rs
31 August 2011
In Memorium
It’s been an emotionally troubling week. I lost an old and dear friend who I shared a good deal of my upbringing with. Not exactly flesh and blood, but near enough.
Last year I wrote about how overjoyed I was when Mary, the Yamaha PSR 225 that had provided the soundtrack to my highschool years, had come back into my life. It’s been a happy year and a half as we’ve relived old times, rolling out like we used to for the fortnightly prison ministry. Even if it has caused a few arguments between me and Samantha, it's been worth every minute.
It is with deep sorrow and the greatest respect that I announce that two weeks ago Mary lost her battle with old age and a tropical disease known commonly as ‘cockroach corrosion’. She had lived a full and meaningful life and she will never be forgotten.
Could such a devastating loss as this spell the end for prison ministry?
Pffft. No.
It’s true that Samantha’s lack of onboard speakers (you can tell if a keyboard is hard core by whether it has onboard speakers or not. If you can get a sound out of it without a power pack, amplifier and a couple of leads, you’re not trying hard enough) makes her a bad choice for carrying in and out of prison (don’t tell her I said that). But all that was needed was a new portable keyboard. A better portable keyboard. A portable keyboard with such destructive power it…
Sorry.
We’ve all chucked in a bit of money, and I've made a very special trip to the music shop in Casuarina. Prepare to experience the fury of the Yamaha PSR E423! She's in the same series as Mary was, but is fifteen years younger and - being of the next generation - just a little more tech-savvy, more environmentally friendly and more likely to miss the sunset while playing on her iphone. All the old faithful Yamaha voices are there, plus a new pitch bend wheel, a usb interface and about a billion times more onboard memory.
In honour of her predecessor, I’ve named her Marian.
Make of that what you will.
Garry with 2 Rs
Last year I wrote about how overjoyed I was when Mary, the Yamaha PSR 225 that had provided the soundtrack to my highschool years, had come back into my life. It’s been a happy year and a half as we’ve relived old times, rolling out like we used to for the fortnightly prison ministry. Even if it has caused a few arguments between me and Samantha, it's been worth every minute.
It is with deep sorrow and the greatest respect that I announce that two weeks ago Mary lost her battle with old age and a tropical disease known commonly as ‘cockroach corrosion’. She had lived a full and meaningful life and she will never be forgotten.
Could such a devastating loss as this spell the end for prison ministry?
Pffft. No.
It’s true that Samantha’s lack of onboard speakers (you can tell if a keyboard is hard core by whether it has onboard speakers or not. If you can get a sound out of it without a power pack, amplifier and a couple of leads, you’re not trying hard enough) makes her a bad choice for carrying in and out of prison (don’t tell her I said that). But all that was needed was a new portable keyboard. A better portable keyboard. A portable keyboard with such destructive power it…
Sorry.
We’ve all chucked in a bit of money, and I've made a very special trip to the music shop in Casuarina. Prepare to experience the fury of the Yamaha PSR E423! She's in the same series as Mary was, but is fifteen years younger and - being of the next generation - just a little more tech-savvy, more environmentally friendly and more likely to miss the sunset while playing on her iphone. All the old faithful Yamaha voices are there, plus a new pitch bend wheel, a usb interface and about a billion times more onboard memory.
In honour of her predecessor, I’ve named her Marian.
Make of that what you will.
Garry with 2 Rs
03 May 2011
The Rollercoaster - Part Two
What a week for celebration it’s been. It started with all the pageantry and … more pageantry of the royal wedding and ended with the well deserved end of one of the modern era’s most despised figures.
Committed republican though I may be, it was easy to feel good about joining in with the celebration for William and Kate. Everyone loves a good wedding, even one on the other side of the world.
Less salubrious were the celebrations marking the death of Osama bin Laden. Images of crowds of people outside the Whitehouse waving flags and yelling patriotic chants left me feeling just a little cold. How can killing anyone, even someone as evil as bin Laden, bring us joy and celebration?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying his death wasn’t well deserved, and I’m certainly not sorry to see him go. But when I see crowds of people cheering for a person’s death, even the death of an enemy, I can’t help but feel that something is going horribly wrong.
I was recently party to an online discussion on whether the assassination of bin Laden is better classified as justice or revenge. Some were firmly of the opinion that killing bin Laden did bring a measure of justice to those who lost loved ones in the world trade centre attacks or in the numerous terrorist bombings that followed it. Others felt that it was nothing more than a revenge killing and won’t bring closure to anything, least of all the ongoing feelings of resentment against the West that fuel organisations like al Qaeda in the first place. Still others didn’t think it made the slightest difference. He’s dead either way, and got what he deserved.
In the end, I’m not sure what to call it, but I am convinced that justice and revenge are not the same thing. If those who have lost loved ones to terrorist attacks in the past decade can take any solace from the death of bin Laden, then that’s great. I sincerely wish them peace and comfort. But I’m not convinced justice is the right word for it. Surely we in the West, even our brothers and sisters in America who still endorse capital punishment, have developed a moral-ethical framework that can move beyond “You killed us, so we’re going to kill you right back”. And even if we haven’t, “an eye for an eye” doesn’t really cut it for a man who orchestrated the death of thousands, but whom we only get to kill once. And as Ghandi put it “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”.
The hard fact is that there is never a nice, satisfying way to end the hunt for a mass murderer. A sense of real justice in a post-modern world is as elusive as it has ever been. I’m as glad as everyone else that Osama is gone. But just the same, this is not the time for celebration. This is a time to reflect on the people, both good and bad on both sides, who have lost their lives for the sake of the war on terror. Or whatever the other side calls it. Osama bin Laden makes just one more.
But at least he’s one who had it coming.
Garry with 2 Rs
11 April 2011
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
I lost another old friend and role model yesterday. And this time it’s not an actor or a rock star. This time it’s personal.
She was a great woman of God, who was part of the team that taught not just me, but dozens of other Darwin Christians roughly my age how to own our faith and be serious about the things we claim to believe. Even as she battled cancer she was a source of joy to all those who knew her, especially her husband and young children, who now prepare to enter a very different world.
It comes as a bit of a kick up the trousers for me too. There’s the pain and sadness of losing an old friend for starters. But something deeper than that twists when I think back on all the truth and charisma that was imparted to us back in the day. And how for the last eighteen months or so I’ve been so vocal and bombastic about carrying on those ideas now I’m old enough to do something about it. And how I’ve done basically nothing at all about it.
Lately it seems I’m dealing with the vanishing or flat out destruction of some pillar of my youth every other week. I suppose that’s how it should be, as I’m far too old to be standing on pillars these days. But when I look around I don’t see many signs of reconstruction. I’m not over-awed by the abundance of great role models like I was when I was a starry eyed teenager at Easter Camp.
Maybe I’m getting old, or maybe I’m just a cranky cynic whining about how they don’t make them like they used to.
The obvious solution is to do it myself. “You wanna see a miracle son? Be the miracle.” And while it’s all very inspiring and self congratulatory to imagine stepping up to become the very hero I looked up to as a kid, the more I look back on those days the more I question whether I’ve got anything like what it takes. They really don’t make them like the used to.
For today, it’s enough to mourn and remember the life of a magnificent woman of God. Tomorrow is a question for tomorrow.
Garry with 2 Rs
In memory of Krysti Etherington
She was a great woman of God, who was part of the team that taught not just me, but dozens of other Darwin Christians roughly my age how to own our faith and be serious about the things we claim to believe. Even as she battled cancer she was a source of joy to all those who knew her, especially her husband and young children, who now prepare to enter a very different world.
It comes as a bit of a kick up the trousers for me too. There’s the pain and sadness of losing an old friend for starters. But something deeper than that twists when I think back on all the truth and charisma that was imparted to us back in the day. And how for the last eighteen months or so I’ve been so vocal and bombastic about carrying on those ideas now I’m old enough to do something about it. And how I’ve done basically nothing at all about it.
Lately it seems I’m dealing with the vanishing or flat out destruction of some pillar of my youth every other week. I suppose that’s how it should be, as I’m far too old to be standing on pillars these days. But when I look around I don’t see many signs of reconstruction. I’m not over-awed by the abundance of great role models like I was when I was a starry eyed teenager at Easter Camp.
Maybe I’m getting old, or maybe I’m just a cranky cynic whining about how they don’t make them like they used to.
The obvious solution is to do it myself. “You wanna see a miracle son? Be the miracle.” And while it’s all very inspiring and self congratulatory to imagine stepping up to become the very hero I looked up to as a kid, the more I look back on those days the more I question whether I’ve got anything like what it takes. They really don’t make them like the used to.
For today, it’s enough to mourn and remember the life of a magnificent woman of God. Tomorrow is a question for tomorrow.
Garry with 2 Rs
In memory of Krysti Etherington
29 November 2010
Farewell Old Friend
Famous people are always making the news. They’re getting married, or they’re getting divorced, or they’re going into rehab or they’re going into politics or they have a baby or they die or whatever. It’s all over the mainstream media and it flows straight over me like so much hot air.
Celebrities really don’t interest me. I mean, I’ll pass an approving comment if they make a good movie/song/political point/sporting achievement or whatever. But in general the births, deaths and marriages of the rich and famous go on around me like background noise at a soccer match; you can’t really avoid it, but you can tune out to it if you’re focussed enough on the stuff that matters.
This week was different. This week it wasn’t just another star from a TV show I’ll never watch dating a singer of songs I’ll never listen to. This week I lost a childhood icon. When I learned on Monday morning that Leslie Nielsen had passed away, I was genuinely affected by it in a way that celebrity news never achieves with me. As I read the headline on a news website, I actually exclaimed “Oh No!” out loud in the middle of my open plan office, prompting co-workers around me to enquire as to what was wrong. As I explained that Leslie Nielsen had died, all the cool ones joined me in a reflective chorus of “Surely you can’t be serious!”
Leslie Nielsen taught me how to be funny. Some might argue that he didn’t do a particularly good job, but that’s neither here nor there. I honestly couldn’t tell you how many of our teenaged hours my mates and I spent on various lounge room floors watching the Naked Gun or Flying High (AKA Airplane) movies. Very rarely do the terms ‘laugh out loud’ and ‘roll on the floor laughing’ literally mean what they say, but watching those films, even for the fourth or fifth time, they certainly did. I’ve never heard of anyone literally laughing his or her arse off, but if anyone could have induced such a phenomenon, it was Lieutenant Frank Drebin. They really don’t make films like that anymore. More’s the pity.
It probably says something about my rather non-standard cultural upbringing that I can provide an endless selection of Naked Gun quotes, and yet to this day have never seen Titanic, Top Gun or any of the Terminator movies, all of which were massivly popular amongst my peers during my school years and all of which start with T. Admittedly, Top Gun was released when I was only three, but there again, Flying High was released before I was born. Make of that what you will.
Leslie Nielsen was the one who first taught me the value of saying something utterly absurd and keeping a straight face while doing it. As I grew older my appreciation of this undervalued art would be shaped by the likes of the Monty Python crew and Shaun Micallef, but Leslie will always be my first. His most famous reply: “I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley” is still the benchmark for deadpan delivery styles.
“She was the kind of woman who made you want to get down on your knees and thank God you were a man. She had breasts that seemed to say ‘Look at me! Look at me!’ Yep; she reminded me of my mother alright.”
So farewell my old friend. Eighty four was a good innings, and you can go to your rest knowing that you helped shape at least one horribly confused teenager into the only slightly less confused man that he is today.
Good luck, and we’re all counting on you back here.
Garry with 2 Rs
31 August 2008
Cleaning out the shed
I joined my family in Adelaide this week for my grandfather’s funeral. The funeral itself was relatively untraumatic. Actually it was a really nice ceremony; simple, solemn and dignified – just as he wanted.
The more emotional part of the week was spent in the shed Poppa had built behind the old family home. He was the sort of man who could never throw anything out. Everything was kept, squirrelled away in the shed because “It might come in handy one day.”
My father and I had the task of sorting through the contents of the shed to decide what should be kept, what should be passed to the church fete, and what should be (lovingly and respectfully) thrown out.
There were timber off-cuts from a hundred old home improvement projects (some completed, some not), scrap metal, old oil rags, unused photographic paper, dried up paint in every colour imaginable, empty oxygen tanks and at least twenty different kinds of spanner. We could have set up a museum exhibit entitled “Plastic and metal containers of the twentieth century” and still another entitled “The evolution of computer hardware from the nineteen eighties onward.”
But among the dust, we also found undeniable testament to a man who loved his family and treasured his memories of them; old boy scout handbooks, my aunt’s thirty year old stamp collection, various high school wood-work projects and at least five boxes full of souvenirs from family holidays all over the world. None of them were necessary, and they certainly weren’t useful. But they were important.
I’m looking up at my shelves as I write this, contemplating the amount of stuff I have in my room. I’ve only been in Sydney for just over a year, but I can already see considerable piles of evidence that I may have inherited more from my father’s side of the family than just grey hair and a taste for Barossa Valley reds. But I think the most conclusive proof that my grandfather lives on in his descendants came when I took my eight year old cousin into the shed to look for spare parts for her cubby house. When she requested that I dig out an oddly shaped wooden step ladder out from behind a stack of cardboard boxes, I asked her what she wanted to use it for.
“I don’t know,” she replied, “but it might come in handy one day.”
Far from home
Garry with 2 Rs
The more emotional part of the week was spent in the shed Poppa had built behind the old family home. He was the sort of man who could never throw anything out. Everything was kept, squirrelled away in the shed because “It might come in handy one day.”
My father and I had the task of sorting through the contents of the shed to decide what should be kept, what should be passed to the church fete, and what should be (lovingly and respectfully) thrown out.
There were timber off-cuts from a hundred old home improvement projects (some completed, some not), scrap metal, old oil rags, unused photographic paper, dried up paint in every colour imaginable, empty oxygen tanks and at least twenty different kinds of spanner. We could have set up a museum exhibit entitled “Plastic and metal containers of the twentieth century” and still another entitled “The evolution of computer hardware from the nineteen eighties onward.”
But among the dust, we also found undeniable testament to a man who loved his family and treasured his memories of them; old boy scout handbooks, my aunt’s thirty year old stamp collection, various high school wood-work projects and at least five boxes full of souvenirs from family holidays all over the world. None of them were necessary, and they certainly weren’t useful. But they were important.
I’m looking up at my shelves as I write this, contemplating the amount of stuff I have in my room. I’ve only been in Sydney for just over a year, but I can already see considerable piles of evidence that I may have inherited more from my father’s side of the family than just grey hair and a taste for Barossa Valley reds. But I think the most conclusive proof that my grandfather lives on in his descendants came when I took my eight year old cousin into the shed to look for spare parts for her cubby house. When she requested that I dig out an oddly shaped wooden step ladder out from behind a stack of cardboard boxes, I asked her what she wanted to use it for.
“I don’t know,” she replied, “but it might come in handy one day.”
Far from home
Garry with 2 Rs
16 May 2007
Forever Man
I've been thinking about death a bit lately. This is partially due to the recent passing of my grandmother, but also due to some well orchestrated coincidences in my day to day living.
The week leading up to my grandmother's funeral was a really strange cultural experience for me. I was gathered with my mother's side of the family in Tasmania, observing the varying ways people had of dealing with their grief. My mother's side are diverse lot with very strong personalities and varying attitudes to things like ceremony, religion and what should and shouldn't happen at a funeral. It was interesting seeing how the louder, seemingly irrepressible members of the family all coped with what was obviously a painful process.
As for me, my reaction was possibly the strangest of all. When I learned last year that my 81 year old grandmother had secondary cancer of the pancreas, I began the process of grieving for her. I knew that the advancement of the cancer and her age and general health meant it would not be a long time frame, and simply prayed that it would not be a painful decline. I also realised that 80 years is a good life for a child of the depression with diabetes. She was at peace with herself and with the Lord, so in a way her death was simply a natural end to a beautifully lived life. All these conclusions I arrived at some time in December. So when her time came in May, not only did I feel at peace with it, but having gone through a lot of the grieving processes earlier, I felt sort of… nothing. I don't mean that to sound harsh (I know it probably does) but I just mean that there was nothing unnatural or mournful about the experience. Sure there was sadness in the loss of a loved one, but as I said, I had dealt with that long before we arrived in Tasmania.
Nanna had left a request for her grandsons to be pall-bearers at her funeral, so the six of us (well, 5 grandsons and a great grandson) bore the coffin out of the church. So there was me with 4 strong men and an energetic teenager all of whom were obviously fighting back tears carrying a coffin through a church packed (and I mean packed) with people of all ages trying to sing "To God be the Glory" around their handkerchiefs. There was so much crying going on, and yet sadness was the last thing on my mind. I felt like I was from another planet. Or like I was watching a documentary on a ceremony from some exotic culture that I didn't understand. It was one of the strangest experiences of my life.
On a more cheerful note, my small (well, intermediate sized) group had a discussion on Heaven this week. We listened to a chapter about some kids in China who had some visions back in the 30s about life in Heaven. I'm usually sceptical about things like that (I'm usually sceptical in general) but whether their experiences were genuine or not, the ideas in the book and the scriptures they were based on got me thinking. I like to keep my head in this world as much as possible. An eternal perspective is important, but I usually don't like trying to imagine life in Heaven because I have trouble imagining an existence outside of time and space. Stupid limited brain! But the descriptions these kids gave of their visions of Heaven, real or not, got me excited about a world where my stupid brain, not to mention my stupid body, stops being limited and can experience and enjoy the glory of God the way it is supposed to be experienced and enjoyed. Forever.
And then tonight I was listening to an oldish Newsboys song called "Forever Man". I started thinking about the idea of living forever and accidentally blew my own mind. That always happens when I start thinking about these things too hard. So instead, I started blogging… and there you go. Now you too can go blow your own mind.
Far from home
Garry with 2 Rs
The week leading up to my grandmother's funeral was a really strange cultural experience for me. I was gathered with my mother's side of the family in Tasmania, observing the varying ways people had of dealing with their grief. My mother's side are diverse lot with very strong personalities and varying attitudes to things like ceremony, religion and what should and shouldn't happen at a funeral. It was interesting seeing how the louder, seemingly irrepressible members of the family all coped with what was obviously a painful process.
As for me, my reaction was possibly the strangest of all. When I learned last year that my 81 year old grandmother had secondary cancer of the pancreas, I began the process of grieving for her. I knew that the advancement of the cancer and her age and general health meant it would not be a long time frame, and simply prayed that it would not be a painful decline. I also realised that 80 years is a good life for a child of the depression with diabetes. She was at peace with herself and with the Lord, so in a way her death was simply a natural end to a beautifully lived life. All these conclusions I arrived at some time in December. So when her time came in May, not only did I feel at peace with it, but having gone through a lot of the grieving processes earlier, I felt sort of… nothing. I don't mean that to sound harsh (I know it probably does) but I just mean that there was nothing unnatural or mournful about the experience. Sure there was sadness in the loss of a loved one, but as I said, I had dealt with that long before we arrived in Tasmania.
Nanna had left a request for her grandsons to be pall-bearers at her funeral, so the six of us (well, 5 grandsons and a great grandson) bore the coffin out of the church. So there was me with 4 strong men and an energetic teenager all of whom were obviously fighting back tears carrying a coffin through a church packed (and I mean packed) with people of all ages trying to sing "To God be the Glory" around their handkerchiefs. There was so much crying going on, and yet sadness was the last thing on my mind. I felt like I was from another planet. Or like I was watching a documentary on a ceremony from some exotic culture that I didn't understand. It was one of the strangest experiences of my life.
On a more cheerful note, my small (well, intermediate sized) group had a discussion on Heaven this week. We listened to a chapter about some kids in China who had some visions back in the 30s about life in Heaven. I'm usually sceptical about things like that (I'm usually sceptical in general) but whether their experiences were genuine or not, the ideas in the book and the scriptures they were based on got me thinking. I like to keep my head in this world as much as possible. An eternal perspective is important, but I usually don't like trying to imagine life in Heaven because I have trouble imagining an existence outside of time and space. Stupid limited brain! But the descriptions these kids gave of their visions of Heaven, real or not, got me excited about a world where my stupid brain, not to mention my stupid body, stops being limited and can experience and enjoy the glory of God the way it is supposed to be experienced and enjoyed. Forever.
And then tonight I was listening to an oldish Newsboys song called "Forever Man". I started thinking about the idea of living forever and accidentally blew my own mind. That always happens when I start thinking about these things too hard. So instead, I started blogging… and there you go. Now you too can go blow your own mind.
Far from home
Garry with 2 Rs
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